In the painting of _Ambition_ in the ceiling, the scene is supposed to be the top of a high mountain, but only the marble terrace which marks the summit is actually visible in the painting. Here is gathered a group which has toiled along a weary path up the mountain side to comparative success; but none is satisfied. Above them, the Unattainable Ideal, a figure holding aloft in mockery the palm branch of complete achievement, rides through the air on a great winged horse. In front is Fame, grasping the horse’s bridle with one hand, and turning to those below to sound a derisive note on her trumpet. The figures on the mountain top are involved in a scene of mad confusion; some for the moment are distracted by crime or lust, or cynical contempt, but most reach out their arms in ineffectual eagerness to attain the glorious vision above them. They have leapt to the top of the terrace in their fierce desire to gain the slightest advantage. To the left, a murderer shrinks back in horror from the body of the miser whom he has just slain; as he starts away, aghast at his crime, he topples over a flaming tripod which had been set on a post of the terrace. Conspicuous figures in the mad struggle for success are a warrior, with sword, greaves, and helmet, and a sculptor, bearing a statuette of the Venus of Milo. In front of them is the seated figure of a poet, with a bandage over his eyes to indicate the abstraction and ideality of his thought. Further on, a man flings out both arms in a mad appeal, and on the moment is grasped in the arms of a woman, who drags him back to the level of her own baseness. A jester, one of Shakespeare’s fools, in his cap and parti-colored coat, stands near by, holding a bauble surmounted by a skull in one hand, and a statuette of Victory in the other. That fame comes only after death, and that the promptings of personal ambition are but a hollow mockery, is the moral that he preaches. NORTHWEST GALLERY. From Mr. Dodge’s Pavilion, one goes into the Northwest Gallery, which leads directly into the Main Entrance Hall once more. In dimensions, arrangement, and general architectural scheme it corresponds to the Southwest Gallery, with which the visitor began his tour through the Rectangle. The prevailing color, however, is red, and not blue, both in the walls and in the coffers of the vaulted ceiling. =Mr. Melchers’s Paintings.=--At either end, occupying the same position as Mr. Cox’s decorations, and of the same size and shape, is a painting by Mr. Gari Melchers, illustrating, at the north, _War_, and at the south, _Peace_. The same subjects, it is interesting to note, and as many readers will remember, were chosen by Mr. Melchers for his decorations at the World’s Fair in Chicago. The present paintings may be taken, therefore, as representing the development and completion of a favorite idea of the artist.