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 poor, half-starved devil, who thought he would have something to eat in the house, if it were only a picture of it?"

B. said he thought the explanation was that the ancient patrons of art were gentry with a very strong idea of the fitness of things. "For their churches and cathedrals," said B., "they had painted all those virgins and maryrsmartyrs [sic] and over-fed angels that you see everywhere about Europe. For their bedrooms, they ordered those—well, those bedroom sort of pictures, that you may have noticed here and there; and then I expect they used these victual-and-drink-scapes for their banqueting halls. It must have been like a gin-and-bitters to them, the sight of all that food."

In the new Pantechnicon is exhibited the modern art of Germany. This appeared to me to be exceedingly poor stuff. It seemed to belong to the illustrated Christmas number school of art. It was good, sound, respectable work enough. There was plenty of colour about it, and you could tell what everything was meant for. But there seemed no imagination, no individuality,