and so confident.

No man could work пке на плиши

what he was about. It is perhaps little understood by lesser artists how

much of the vigorous reality in the works of the great painters is a result of accuracy of detail.

Another great distinction between Mr. Alma Tadema and other artists who have endeavoured to present to us scenes of classical life, is made by Mr. G. A. Simcox; he remarks that it has been the habit of artists to continue in the classical manner of painting when they represented antique life, forgetful of the fact that classic eyes were not trained to see in the manner that modern eyes are. Mr. Alma Tadema, on the contrary, presents his scenes to us as they would appear to a modern observer, with all the wealth of detail which we have learned to perceive. This difference is infinitely more important than one at first supposes it to be; it makes not only the picture a much fuller and more detailed study, but it appeals to the spectator by giving him the richness of beauty which he delights in, instead of stinting him by an imitative classicality. Mr. Tadema does not imitate the antique artists by adopting their meagreness, while unable, from his modern education, to return to their simplicity and vividness of vision; what he does is infinitely more interesting. He simply walks into the houses and homes of the ancients and paints them as though he had brought them bodily back to be gazed at by a modern observer. He will not mimic the art of the ancient sculptor or painter, but he will show the man himself to you, his work, his model, his wife and children. And when he shows him to you he will represent him in all the simple unconsciousness which is so deep a charm in the life of the antique. To us over-conscious moderns it is a real refreshment to look upon a Roman lady who has thrown herself down to rest, without attitudinising, but with the beautiful unconsciousness which women had not outgrown two or three thousand years ago.

“While Mr. Alma Tadema's pictures often leave us uncertain as to what the figures are thinking or feeling, they never leave us uncertain. as to what they are," says an art critic, and it very aptly describes the peculiar truthfulness of Mr. Tadema's painting. Splendid men and women existed in those old days, who lived strongly and simply, and who had not run all to brain, to thought, and feeling. To bring these people home to us requires a gift which, added to the great technical ability and accuracy of detail, makes the master-the gift of imagination. If imagination is the power of realising what is unfamiliar, Mr. Alma Tadema possesses it in great degree. Two pictures which have a very different character from those domestic scenes in which so much imagination is required, and of which Mr. Tadema has given us so many, are yet remarkable instances of the rare quality of the artist's imaginative power. These are "Sculptors" and the "Silent Counsellor." The gigantic scale of the great head upon which the sculptors work, and which is founded only upon tradition, strikes one with a sense of awe. In the grand lineaments of that colossal