of all, for the old story is repeated, to strength and grace is added Ornament-that is the richness of decoration and the trinity of loveliness is again complete.

Now, of these three great principles-Strength, Grace, Ornament-the natural order is as I have placed them. Unless we build strongly we had better not build at all. If to strength we can add grace we do well. If to grace we add richness, we do again well. But just as strength comes before grace, so grace must come before decoration. If the lines of a building are ugly, the decoration of them can only emphasize their ugliness.

And yet, after all, the greatest of the three is Grace. Only to be strong is not Art. Strength is the means to the end. Decoration is the triumphant assertion that the end has been accomplished-the glorying in its accomplishment. But the end is Beauty.

Recurring for a moment to Mr. Poynter's plea for a more general culture in the Fine Arts; it is more than justified by evidence to be found even within the pages of the book itself. If Mr. Poynter had mastered the companion volumes on Architecture, he would not perhaps, in his preface have confounded the re-polishing of marble decorations (which should never have been allowed to tarnish) with the so-called restoration of

paintings. And if Mr. Head had looked up the subject of perspective, he would not have told us that the Greek painters "never quite hit on the simple law which directs that all parallel lines in perspective converge to one point of the horizon." There is no such law in perspective. And the Greeks, who under the teaching of Euclid and his predecessors must have had more than a "glimmering" of the science of geometry, were probably content to believe that all receding lines parallel to each other appear to converge to the same point, and that if they are horizontal that point is on the horizon.

To both authors and editor, however, the thanks of all lovers of Art are due. If Art is to ring out the changes of our lives, let it ring with a note sweet and true. That is the meaning of these books. Vivos voco-Mortuos plango-Fulgura frango; and yet the Bell is still only in the process of casting. For, however old the world may be, Art is always young.

THE BOOK OF LIVES.

HE series includes the lives of about twenty of

THE

the greatest painters of Italy, France, Germany and England. To name only a few of the men whose lives are thus brought before us-Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Holbein, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Turner-should suffice to arrest the attention of all lovers of Art, and to remind those who care little for the traditions of the studio, how wide a world it is from the interests of which they have shut themselves out. As for the writers of these biographies they are for the most part men qualified for the task of telling in simple language the story of simple lives, and tracing the spécialité of genius that marks each painter with his own peculiar stamp-every one different, and yet every one alike, in that all seem fresh from the mint of heaven.

"Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists.”—Michael Angelo. -By Charles Clément.

These books are valuable also because of their condensed form. Even amidst the press of business— which seems to grow more severe every day we live -it is possible to take up a small volume of a hundred pages and to master its contents with some degree of thoroughness. With one of these books in one's hand, the train that carries us to London in the morning might seem to take us through the little Tuscan town where Michael Angelo was born; to Florence, where he was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio, who was then busy upon the great frescoes of S. Maria Novella; through the narrow streets of Bologna, lying under the shadow of the Apennines; into the dazzling splendour of Venice, where the silent streets are as of crystal. And then, leaving the city in the afternoon, we might, before we get home to dinner, see a little of the marble quarries of Carrara, where he was engineer; visit the fortifications, where he was soldier; follow his grave footsteps into the Sistine chapel, where he was painter; linger with him at his books, where he was poet and scholar; watch him in his studio, where he was sculptor; examine his model of St. Peter's, of which he was architect. And through all this we might learn. to love and reverence him for his integrity, his filial tenderness, his fraternal faithfulness, his kindness to dependents, his loyalty to duty; and to understand a little of his meaning when he wrote, "Borne away

upon a fragile barque, amid a stormy sea, I am reaching the common haven to which every man must come, to give account of the good and evil he has done. Now I see how my soul fell into the error of making Art her idol and her sovereign lord. Thoughts of love, fond and sweet fancies, what will become of you, now that I am near to a double death-one certain, the other threatening? Neither painting nor sculpture can avail to calm a soul which turns to Thee, O God, who hast stretched out Thy arms upon the Cross for us.”

The author who ventures, however, to deal with a large subject in a small space will inevitably run the risk of being favoured with the familiar advice to "re-paint his principal figures, and put in a new background." Now, the life of Michael Angelo is a large subject, and a hundred pages is a very limited space in which to deal with it, and yet one of the merits of this little book is its completeness. The chief figure moves before us, not as a marionette, but as a living man. The incidents of his life are all characteristic of himself, and of the time in which he lived. We feel that we are judging him, not by M. Clément's opinion of him, but by his own actions and words; and when the story is ended it is difficult to believe that we do not know much more of him than we know of many great men of whom we have read