Art Lecture.

Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith gave another of his charming lectures last night before a large audience in Sanders Theatre on "The Quality of the Picturesque."

What makes an object picturesque, he said, is the first question to be solved, and it is a decidedly hard question to answer. Beauty is that quality which is constituted in rich, easy flowing lines,- the outline of the human figure, for example; but the picturesque is that subtle quality which results from nature's perfecting the crude attempts of man to produce beauty.

There is a common saying that nature abhors a vacuum, but she has, if possible, a still greater abhorrence of the straight line, and the picturesque lies really in the breaking of the straight line. In fact, nature is never picturesque unless she has been used and discarded by man,- she may be sublime as seen in primeval forests, but she lacks just that subtle charm which gives this quality.

Mr. Smith's descriptions were most vivid and clear. What, said he, could be more picturesque than an old fence, every fibre of which has been whitened and softened by wind and rain until it shines like finely woven silk? The weeds cluster in the patches of earth at its foot, worms eat their way through every splinter, and where some particularly ugly old stump disturbs the eye a little bit of vine peeps gaily over the top and offers its services to hide this blot and leaves at its death a golden patch of color.