The striking contrast of dark and light in Mr. Benson’s panels gives them decorative distinction; a nearer view reveals the emotional tenderness of detail. The white figures, graciously delicate in drawing and color, are silhouetted against a dark background, brocaded with a bold design, and lustrous with interpenetrating tints. The originality of conception in the four _Seasons_ is interesting. They are the four seasons of human feeling: the Springtime of anticipation; the Summer of possession; the Autumn, not of harvest, but of waning joyousness; the Winter of accepted loss. Yet hope and youth remain, and the beauty deepened by experience in the last face is an earnest of still another spring and summer, which shall be fuller, richer, and more precious. Mr. Cox’s paintings in the Southwest Gallery exhibit a strong sense of responsibility to the aims and limits of mural decoration. The method he has adopted is to carry the surrounding architecture up into his pictures and melt it into a canopy of sky. Before this he has suspended, in the case of _Science_, a delicate arabesque, as it were, of line and color accentuated by three important masses. Everything that could interfere with the flatness of his decoration has been rigidly eliminated. It is _to_ the wall and not beyond it that he would direct our attention. The architectural features are only faintly depicted, and the foliage breaks up the background without introducing another plane. But it is in the figures that the artist’s mastery over his restrictions is most complete. With practically no recourse to light and shade, but relying solely on drawing and the handling of a few tones, he has given form and substance to his figures. The work throughout reveals clearness of purpose and certainty of accomplishment. The decorations by Mr. Maynard, in the Pavilion of the Discoverers, strike a distinctly independent note. The starting-point of the scheme is the honor-roll of illustrious men toward whom the central composition stands as a sort of coat-of-arms, symbolically expressing the principle which links the names into a common family. The treatment, in fact, is heraldic, and subtly suggests the mediæval chivalry out of which the various movements grew. This formal character is assisted by the symmetrical distribution of the colors. Virility of mind and method characterizes every detail of the compositions. Compare, for instance, the panels of _Discovery_ and _Adventure_. Energy, assertion, and full-blooded life characterize all the figures. The aims and animating impulse which especially distinguish the Discoverer are expressed in the eager, generous movement of one of the flanking figures, and in the strong calm and steadfastness of the other, shown, for example, in the self-restraint of the sword-arm. In _Adventure_, on the other hand, the roystering abandon of the figures, the easy carriage of the sword, epitomize the Adventurer’s sordid purpose and unscrupulous methods.