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158 comparatively easy to understand, because they Hence it is, one must suppose, that we are cognisant of the dominance and will of the goddess by lier action and splendid form. For it is not as if there were here any complex web of ideation to unravel, such as one sees in that subtlest surely of all subtle works, the wonderful ' La Joconda ' of Lionardo, which answers one's closest study by an unfathomable smile, that lies as deeply in the shadowy lakes of her eyes as on her lips — a smile which bespeaks a consciousness as of the accumu- lated experience, not of a lifetime, but of centuries, and which fitly enough is environed by a mystery of mountain shapes, slow-moving rivers, and hurrying streams, that wind about and fret the rocky ways into fantastic jagged peaks and gnawing tongues of land, fading and receding by greyer tones into the canvas; even the piercing summits of the mountains fading also, in their turn, into an obscurity of mist and space, typical of things past as of things to come — into which also those trembling waters mix and blend their currents.

In truth there is none of the subtlety of the brilliant Renaissance painter in this majestically simple and powerful creation of the old Greek sculptor; this 'Nike' who stands there upreared as if against some cloud-filled tempestuous sky; rather does she seem a part of the air and wind and the sea which once washed about the weather-beaten prow of the victor s galley as it roundeol the rocky promontories of the Rliodian coast. For the wind which fills the sky seems to beat upon the concave spread of her extended wings, to sweep and rush about her breasts and forward-moving limbs, play- ing with the half-transparent draperies, and fluting out the folds into lissom curves about her flying figure. The golden wall at her back, with its pictured iirmament of stars, less happy as a background than would be a space of open sky, yet illumes this great Victory witii a yellow glamour, making the marble flesh glow with life and faint colour, as if the dying sun had touched it with his vivid fire before sinking beyond the luminous sea. Mary Reed. generalise the intellect, passion, and will of man as ably as his physical beauty is synthesised.

EXISTING at our very doors, amongst our own people, and, I believe, peculiar to them, there is an art industry, for so it may truly be called, which is but little known to the outside world; its products are to be found only in the homes of the workers, and are not laid out in fashionable shop-windows to catch the eye of the tourist. This is the manu- facture of rugs — bed-rugs and floor-rugs — in the more