146 
NATURE NOTES 
“To those who only knew his later years it may be sur- 
prising to learn that he was at one time a landscape-painter, of 
no small reputation among his countrymen as ‘ the American 
pre-Raphaelite.’ But even then he wavered between art and 
politics, and yielded to each impulse as it came. Now he was 
rushing to Vienna on a secret mission for Kossuth ; then drift- 
ing to Paris as an art-student ; then at work again in America 
as painter and editor of the Crayon ; then back to England to 
worship at the shrine of Ruskin and Turner ; then taking service 
with the Government as American Consul in Rome during the 
last days of Pius IX. Wherever he went he seemed naturally 
to fall in with interesting people. In London he was the 
intimate friend of Arthur Hugh Clough and the Rossettis. He 
travelled with Ruskin in Switzerland, a somewhat troubled 
journey which developed a considerable incompatibility of 
temper between master and pupil. The ‘Master’ liked sub- 
mission and obedience in his disciples, and Mr. Stillman was 
not eminent in either of these virtues. The Roman Consulate 
brought him into contact with Pius IX., and as Consul in Crete 
Mr. Stillman was in the thick of the Cretan insurrection of 
1866, and, so far as official correctitude permitted, friend and 
helper of the insurgents. 
“In national characteristics Mr. Stillman was both American 
and English. Though after boyhood he lived only at intervals 
in the United States, he was perpetually running to and fro. 
Of a voyage across the ocean he thought as little as ordinary 
people of one across the Channel. In nervous restlessness he 
was always a typical American. 
“ ‘ Perhaps his material prosperity and success,’ says the 
Times in concluding its obituary notice, ‘ might have been more 
signal had his tastes and gifts been fewer. Certainly his life 
would have been less full, and the man less engaging. When 
finally he might have been thought to have earned complete 
retirement, and supposed himself to be enjoying it, he took to 
reclaiming Surrey heathland as earnestly as if his garden had 
been an American pine forest. He was as indignant with the 
savagery of gamekeepers and boys to squirrels and wild birds 
as if the persecutors had been Pashas and Beys. All the time 
he maintained his freshness of interest in the current of inter- 
national politics throughout the globe, and his pen discussed 
in periodical literature every new controversy on art and 
archaeology.’ ” 
Persevering Humanity. — Some of our readers may have 
seen in the daily papers some reference to a noble act of 
humanity on the part of a working man at Shotts in Lanark- 
shire. Mr. J. S. Comrie, a member of the Council of the 
Society, has verified the facts. It seems that some six or seven 
months ago a man threw a dog down a disused mine shaft, 
100 feet in depth. Hearing its cries people threw down food; 
