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group, we have painted below it the salon where, then as now, Princess Mathilde welcomes her literary and artist guests. Her brother, Prince Napoleon, is by her side. Here may be seen Théophile Gautier, SainteBeuve, Flaubert, Viollet-le-Duc, Théodore Rousseau, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, M. de Nieuwerkerke, and Gounod, all chatting and amusing themselves, unmindful of Marshal Niel, then Minister of War, who, lower down in the picture, prepares his vehement prophetic apostrophe to the legislative body: "In refusing to help me constitute a strong army, do you then wish to convert France into a cemetery?"

NAPOLEON III. EUGÉNIE. PRINCE IMPERIAL. PRINCE NAPOLEON.

GAUTIER.

MÉRIMÉE.

VIOLLET-LE-DUC.

Alas, yes, a cemetery! Now comes the Franco-German war, and now the siege of Paris. Under the arcades of the resuscitated Tuileries Palace, while already the sky is studded with bomb-shells and the Hôtel de Ville exhibits its ruins in the background, General Trochu is discovered with those members of the Government of National Defense who have not left Paris: Favre, Picard, and Arago. They are conferring about the best means to carry on an unequal contest. At the same time, by a privilege of ubiquity allowable to all artists, you find yourself suddenly transported to a great distance from Paris in one of those siege balloons which dot the air with the

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the best known military officers of the day, General Saussier, and his Cabinet ministers.

Close by him, or scattered in different parts of the canvas, appear many distinguished personages whose fame will certainly outlive any ministry. They include literary men, artists, scientists, all alive to-day, such as De Lesseps, Berthelot, Taine, Augier, and Pasteur. The illustrious centenarian, the late M. Chevreul, who had well earned the right to a comfortable arm-chair, is seated.

carrier-pigeons - our postmen of the Année at our studio. We have surrounded him with Terrible. Gambetta, with impassioned brow and upraised arm, inspirits with patriotic ardor the generals around him, Bourbaki, Chanzy, and Faidherbe, and even the aged deputy Crémieux and M. de Freycinet, his colleagues. Peace is now concluded and M. Thiers placed at the head of the national government. He has crushed the Commune, whose last champions, Delescluze, Flourens, and Jourde, we have delineated, together with its last victims, Darboy, Deguerry, and Bonjean. M. Thiers is surrounded by Generals de Cissey, Vinoy, and de Gallifet, whom he addresses while issuing his instructions to M. PouyerQuertier and M. Rémusat, his Cabinet ministers.

A change of scene follows. Marshal MacMahon is President, and the coalition of the 16th of May is on foot. Its instigators, the Duc de Broglie and M. Buffet, endeavor to bring about a capitulation of the Republican journalists, Girardin, Ranc, About, and Hébrard, massed in a group below. To the left, at the top of a monumental stairway, Marshal MacMahon presides over the Exhibition of 1878. Ladies in fashionable toilets of the time line the stone steps. It is the last important event of the septennate. M. Grévy then comes to the front as third President of the Republic, with a number of parliamentary notabilities, M. Lockroy and M. Paul de Cassagnac, M. Jules Ferry and M. de Breteuil, side by side with various other militant celebrities, such as the late Admiral Courbet, in full uniform and blue trousers.

We now reach the present hour. M. Sadi Carnot, President of the Republic, was graciously pleased to come and sit for his portrait

All of these distinguished personages, Presidents, ministers, gifted orators, writers, painters, sculptors, chemists, and doctors,— we have painted upwards of a hundred portraits, are grouped about a monument which embodies our panoramic idea. The whole architectural conception is consecrated to France, whose bronze statue stands out underneath a gold mosaic cupola. France grasps a flag the folds of which shelter two other statues, one of which personates the National Defense sharpening the point of a sword, and the other the genius of Labor. Below these are two more statues, one allegorizing Law and the other History. On the pedestal is inscribed the word "France," and underneath is a golden palm-leaf with the two dates 1789-1889. On the left-hand side and on the right of this monument appear the personages first and last described on the left Marie Antoinette and Mirabeau, and on the right M. Sadi Carnot and his ministers; while well in front is Victor Hugo. We thought that he who wrote "La Légende des Siècles" might without presumption be held to incarnate for France the spirit of the century at the commencement of which he was born.

Alfred Stevens.
Henri Gervex.

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PUNDITA RAMABAI.

N this magazine for September, 1887, the facts concerning Pundita Ramabai ended with her coming to America. Her wonderful success here in behalf of her countrywomen justifies, it seems to me, an additional word at this time. With her five-year-old daughter Manorama, she came to this country, it will be remembered, in February, 1886, to witness the graduation of her kinswoman, Anandabai Joshee, by the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia. The two Hindu women there met for the first time, having previously known each other only by correspondence. (For further particulars of the Hindu doctor, see the "Life of Anandabai Joshee," by Mrs. Caroline Healey Dall, published by Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1888.) Ramabai entered heartily into the graduation exercises, rejoicing particularly in the fact that a Hindu woman was, for the first time, to receive the degree of doctor of medicine. She soon became so deeply interested in American institutions, so much impressed with a public-school system which included girls as well as boys, that, instead of returning to her work in England as professor of Sanscrit in Cheltenham College, she decided to remain here for personal investigation in behalf of her downtrodden sisters. Seeing much promise for them in the free kindergartens of Philadelphia, she not only bought the "gifts" and began to translate the games and tokens into their language, but she enrolled herself as a student in a kindergarten training-school. She also began to prepare a regular series of Marathi school-books. She could not forget that of the 99,700,000 women and girls under British rule, some 99,500,000 were unable to read and write. These exceptional few hundred thousand could in no way claim to be educated, since the schoolperiod of a girl is usually between seven and nine years of age, the marriage period for girls among Brahmans all over India being generally from five to eleven years of age. Ramabai's heart went out especially to the childwidows, who, with comparatively few exceptions, are rendered miserable in every possible way. Those who have read the Pundita's book, "The High-caste Hindu Woman," are not ignorant of these wretched little creatures. The more Ramabai thought of them-strangers to any means of support, destitute of the least promise of education, devoid of all hope of second marriage, a curse to themselves and

the world - the more the idea grew upon her of founding an institution which would insure, first, self-reliance; secondly, education; and thirdly, women teachers. Strong in the determination to work in this direction, fully aware of the difficulties in the way, in America as well as in India, she went forth to lecture among the people. Her good knowledge of the English language made this a possibility. Her sincerity, sound judgment, and Christian faith soon won for her the attention of serious and philanthropic minds. At last, in the summer of 1887, after she had spoken in nearly one hundred and fifty meetings, a Ramabai association was discussed in Boston. By December, when the coöperation of the three Hindu gentlemen desired by Ramabai to act as the advisory board in India had been assured, the association was a settled fact, with Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D. D., as President, and Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D., Rev. George A. Gordon, D. D., Miss Frances E. Willard, Mrs. Mary Hemenway, Dean Rachel L. Bodley, M. D., and Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D., as Vice-presidents. The board of trustees and executive committee included names well known in charitable work. By the time the Association had been in existence a year there were sixty circles auxiliary to the central one in Boston, with nearly three thousand members. These with life memberships, scholarships, etc. pledged for the annual support of the school between five and six thousand dollars. Besides this the general fund, as reported by the treasurer of the Association, Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge, Jr., of Boston, had grown to about twenty thousand dollars.

Not only the Atlantic but the Pacific coast claimed Ramabai's attention; for though delicate in health, still following the Hindu custom of eating neither flesh, fish, nor fowl, she traveled alone to the western coast, speaking in every important city in behalf of her Hindu sisters. She spoke in San Francisco at the educational convention of July, 1888, and at fifty other meetings in that vicinity. As a result a branch Ramabai Association of the Pacific Coast was formed with twenty auxiliary circles pledging annual support.

The outlook was now so encouraging that the executive committee assented to Ramabai's going to India to begin her school. So, instead of returning East, she sailed from San Francisco, November 28, 1888. On arriving in Japan she paused to speak, through an in

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