We come now to a picture full of pathetic meaning—"Tired Gleaners"—by our well-known English painter, Mr. Fred Morgan. They look so poor and sad, these pretty little girls, who have at the very outset of life already known so much of its hardship. The elder one has a mother's instinct of kindly care for the weaker little sister; her face expresses the self-forgetting resignation of a life filled with love for others. The little one, more beautiful than the elder sister, is one of those beings who are in all stations of life predestined to be loved and cared for. A whole touching life-story is in these two children's faces—beautiful but sad.

"TIRED GLEANERS."

From the Painting by Fred Morgan.

By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co.

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The examples which have been selected to fill the medallions given in this article comprise illustrations of children's heads contained in some of the most celebrated pictures in the world. It is impossible in a limited space to give an adequate idea of the beauty and charm with which the old masters have immortalized childhood—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say babyhood, since the great majority are representations of the Child with the Madonna, and, though varying in age from a few weeks upwards, the infant is seldom shown as older than a year or two at most. These studies of what may, in a double sense, be called the divinity of childhood differ widely according to the nationality of the painter. As we shall see presently, in some of the examples given in these pages farther on, we can enumerate among the artists of this country certain painters, such as Gainsborough and Reynolds, who as delineators of child-life and character are not easily excelled. There are those, however, who would say that in this respect the Italian masters have never been surpassed. Raphael's child-head of Christ from the painting entitled the "Madonna Aldobrandini," which is reproduced in the first medallion above, will through all ages illustrate, perhaps without a rival, the mission of the eternally beautiful—the dignity of innocence, the holiness of love. Bernardo Strozzi, later than Raphael, painted a human child in the arms of the Holy Virgin. It is reproduced in the right-hand medallion above. The childish charm and smile are most alluring. Here we find an allegory of Christianity; but it is not, like the child's head in Raphael's "Madonna Aldobrandini," an allegory of the divinity.

"HIDE-AND-SEEK."