studio of Francois Navez, director of the Brussels Academy. In 1844 Stevens went to Paris and worked under the instruction of Camille Roqueplan, a friend of his father’s; he also attended the classes at the ficole des Beaux Arts, where Ingres was then professor. In 1849 he painted at Brussels his first picture, “A Soldier in Trouble,” and in the same year went back to Paris, where he definitely settled, and exhibited in the Salons. He then painted “Ash- Wednesday Morning,” “Burghers and Country People finding at Daybreak the Body of a Murdered Gentleman, “An Artist in Despair,” and “The Love of Gold.” In 1855 he exhibited at the Antwerp Salon a little picture called “At Home,” which showed the painter’s bent towards depicting ladies of fashion. At the Great Exhibition in Paris, 1855, his contributions were remarkable, but in 1857 he returned to graceful female subjects, and his path thenceforth was clear before him. At the Great Exhibition of 1867 he was seen in a brilliant variety of works in the manner he had made his own, sending eighteen exquisite paintings; among them were the “Lady in Pink” (in the Brussels Gallery), “Consolation,” “Every Good Fortune,” “Miss Fauvette,” “Ophelia,” and “India in Paris.” At the Paris International Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889, and at the Historical Exhibition of Belgian Art, Brussels, 1880, he exhibited “The Four Seasons” (in the Palace at Brussels), “The Parisian Sphinx,” “The Japanese Mask,” “The Japanese Robe,” and “The Lady-bird” (Brussels Gallery). He died on the 24th of August 1906. “Alfred Stevens is one of the race of great painters,” wrote Camille Lemonnier, “and like them he takes immense pains with the execution of his work.” The example of his finished technique was salutary, not merely to his brethren in Belgium, but to many foreign painters who received encouragement from the study of his method. The brother of Alfred Stevens, Joseph Stevens, was a great painter of dogs and dog life.
See J. du Jardin, L’Art flamand; Camille Lemonnier, Histoire des beaux arts en Belgique.
STEVENS, HENRY (1819–1886), American bibliographer,
was born in Barnet, Vermont, on the 24th of August 1819.
He studied at Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1838–1839,
graduated at Yale in 1843 and studied at the Cambridge
(Massachusetts) Law School in 1843–1844. 'In 1845 he went
to London, where he was employed during most of the
remainder of his life as a collector of Americana for the British
Museum and for various public and private American libraries.
He was engaged by Sir Anthony Panizzi, librarian of the
British Museum, to collect historical books, documents, journals,
&c, concerning North and South America; and he was purchas-
ing agent for the Smithsonian Institution and for the library
of Congress, as well as for James Lenox, of New York, for
whom he secured much of the valuable Americana in the Lenox
library in that city, and for the John Carter Brown library,
at Providence, Rhode Island. He became a member of the
Society of Antiquaries in 1852, and in 1877 was a member of
the committee which organized the Caxton Exhibition, for which
he catalogued the collection of Bibles. He died at South
Hampstead, England, on the 28th of February 1886.
His principal compilations and publications were: an Analytical Index to the Colonial Documents of New Jersey in the State Paper Office in England (1858), constituting vol. v. of the New Jersey Historical Society’s Collections; Collection of Historical Papers relating to Rhode Island . . . 1640–1775 (6 vols.), for the John Carter Brown library; historical indexes of the colonial documents relating to Maryland (10 vols.), now in the library of the Maryland Historical Society; and a collection of papers relating to Virginia for the period 1585–1775, incomplete, deposited in the Virginia state library in 1858; a valuable Catalogue of American Maps in the Library of the British Museum (1856); catalogues of American, of Mexican and other Spanish-American and of Canadian and other British North American books in the library of the British Museum; Historical and Geographical Notes on the Earliest Discoveries in America, 1453–1530, with Comments on the Earliest Maps and Charts, &c. (1869), Sebastian Cabot — John Cabot = 0 (1870); The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, 1877 (1878) ; and Recollections of Mr James Lenox, of New York, and the Formation of his Library (1886).
His brother, Benjamin Franklin Stevens (1833–1902), also a bibliographer, was born at Barnet, Vermont, on the 19th of February 1833, was educated at the university of Vermont, and in 1860 became associated with his brother in London. For about thirty years he was engaged in preparing a chronological list and alphabetical index of American state papers in English, French, Dutch and Spanish archives, covering the period from 1763 to 1784, and he prepared more than 2000 facsimiles of important American historical manuscripts found in European archives and relating to the period between 1773 and 1783. He also acted as purchasing agent for various American libraries, and for about thirty years before his death was United States despatch agent at London and had charge of the mail intended for the vessels of the United States navy serving in Atlantic or European stations. He died at Surbiton, Surrey, England, on the 5th of March 1902.
His principal publications include Campaign in Virginia, 1781: an Exact Reprint of Six Rare Pamphlets on the Clinton-Cornwallis Controversy, with . . . Manuscript Notes by Sir Henry Clinton; with a Supplement containing Extracts from the Journals of the House of Lords (1888); Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773–1783, with Descriptions, References and Translations (25 vols., 1889–1898); General Sir William Howe’s Orderly Book at Charlestown, Boston and Halifax (1890); and Columbus: His Own Book of Privileges, 1502 (1893).
STEVENS, THADDEUS (1792-1868), American political leader, was born in Danville, Vermont, on the 4th of April 1792. He graduated at Dartmouth College in 1814, removed to York, Pennsylvania, was admitted to the bar (in Maryland), and for fifteen years practised at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was a leader of the Anti-Masons in Pennsylvania, and was prominent in the national Anti-Masonic Convention at Baltimore in 1831. He served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, first as an Anti-Mason and later as a Whig, in 1833-1835, 1838-1839 and 1841-1842. On the 11th of April 1835 he made an eloquent speech in defence of free public education. A partner's venture in the iron business having involved him in a debt of $217,000, he retired from public life in 1842 and practised law in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, with such success as within six years to reduce this debt to $30,000. He frequently appeared in behalf of fugitive slaves before the Pennsylvania courts, and previously, in the state constitutional convention of 1837, he had refused to sign the constitution limiting the suffrage to white freemen. In 1840 he did much in Pennsylvania to bring about the election of W. H. Harrison, and in the campaign of 1844 Stevens again rendered marked services to the Whig ticket. He was a Whig representative in Congress in 1849-1853, and was leader of the
radical Whigs and Free-Soilers, strongly opposing the Compromise Measures of 1850, and being especially bitter in his denunciations of the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1855 he took a prominent part in organizing the Republican party in Pennsylvania, and in 1856 was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, in which he opposed the nomination of John C. Frémont. He returned to the National House of Representatives in 1859 and bitterly criticized the vacillation of Buchanan's administration. He became chairman of the ways and means committee on
the 4th of July 1861, and until his death was, as James G. Blaine said, “the natural leader who assumed his place by common consent.” During the Civil War he was instrumental in having necessary revenue measures passed in behalf of the administration. He was not, however, in perfect harmony with Lincoln, who was far more conservative as well as broader minded and more magnanimous than he; besides this Stevens felt it an injustice that Lincoln in choosing a member of his cabinet from Pennsylvania had preferred Cameron to himself. During the war Stevens urged emancipation of the slave, and
earnestly advocated the raising of negro regiments. He not only opposed the president's “ten per cent. plan” in Louisiana and Arkansas (i.e. the plan which provided that these states might be reorganized by as many as 10% of the number of voters in 1860 who should ask for pardon and take the oath of allegiance to the United States), but he also refused to accept the Wade-Davis Bill as being far too moderate in character. On the motion of Stevens (Dec. 4, 1865), the two houses appointed a joint committee on reconstruction, and Stevens
