Nothing can be further from such admirable solidity than Mr. Wilde’s flashing sword-play, than the glee with which he makes out a case against himself, and then proceeds valiantly into battle. There are but four essays in the volume, rather vaguely called _Intentions_, and of these four only two have real and permanent value. “The Truth of Masks” is a somewhat trivial paper, inserted apparently to help fill up the book, and “Pen, Pencil, and Poison” is visibly lacking in sincerity. The author plays with his subject very much as his subject, “kind, light-hearted Wainwright,” played with crime, and in both cases there is a subtle and discordant element of vulgarity. It is not given to our eminently respectable age to reproduce the sumptuous and horror-laden atmosphere which lends an artistic glamor to the poisonous court of the Medicis. This “study in green” contains, however, some brilliant passages, and at least one sentence—“The domestic virtues are not the true basis of art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement for second-rate artists”—that must make Mr. George Moore pale with envy, when he reflects that he missed saying it, where it belongs, in his clever, truthful, ill-natured paper on “Mummer-Worship.” The significance and the charm of Mr. Wilde’s book are centred in its opening chapter, “The Decay of Lying,” reprinted from _The Nineteenth Century_, and in the long two-part essay, entitled “The Critic as Artist,” which embodies some of his most thoughtful, serious, and scholarly work. My own ineffable content rests with “The Decay of Lying,” because, under its transparent mask of cynicism, its wit, its satire, its languid mocking humor, lies clearly outlined a great truth that is slipping fast away from us—the absolute independence of art—art nourished by imagination and revealing beauty. This is the hand that gilds the grayness of the world; this is the voice that sings in flute tones through the silence of the ages. To degrade this shining vision into a handmaid of nature, to maintain that she should give us photographic pictures of an unlovely life, is a heresy that arouses in Mr. Wilde an amused scorn which takes the place of anger. “Art,” he says, “never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as Thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not necessarily realistic in an age of realism, nor spiritual in an age of faith. So far from being the creation of its time, it is usually in direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress.” That we should understand this, it is necessary to understand also the “beautiful untrue things” which exist only in the world of fancy; the things that are lies, and yet help us to endure the truth. Mr. Wilde repudiates distinctly and almost energetically all lying with an object, all sordid trifling with a graceful gift. The lies of newspapers yield him no pleasure; the lies of politicians