dancing-girl; her right arm is extended, her left arm is bent, she holds a scarf as she dances, and the muscles of the arms are placed so well, and the breasts too, that one thinks that the girl must have been before the sculptor as he worked. Ingres and Antiquity alone knew how to simplify. There is little, but that little is so correct that detail is unnecessary, and I exulted in remembrance of the dainty design of the belly, half hidden, half revealed by little liquid folds. "How exquisite," I said, "is that thigh! how well it advances! And we poor moderns have lived upon that beauty now well-nigh two thousand years? But how vainly we have attempted to imitate that drapery flowing about the ankles, like foam breaking on the crest of a wave." A slender youth stands next; his shoulders are raised, for the pipes are to his lips, his feet are drawn close together, and by him a satyr dances wildly, clashing cymbals as he dances. He is followed, I think--it is difficult to say whether this be a recollection of another vase or whether the figure is included in the same group--by a faun tempting the teeth and claws of a panther with a bunch of grapes. And it was this winsome faun that decided me to select this vase as the repository of my ashes. And I determined to stipulate in my will that this vase be chosen. But my will must not be too complicated, otherwise it might be contested. All that is not common can easily be argued to be madness by a loquacious lawyer before a stupid jury. Who except a madman, asks the lawyer, would trouble to this extent as to what shall be done with his remains? Everybody in the court agrees with him, for every one in court is anxious to prove to his neighbour that he is a good Christian. Everything is convention, and lead coffins and oak coffins cannot be held as proof of insanity, because men believe still in the resurrection of the body. Were the Pharaohs insane? Was the building of the Great Pyramid an act of madness? The common assurance is that it matters nothing at all what becomes of our remains, yet the world has always been engaged in setting up tombs. It is only those pretty satyrs who do not think of tombs. Satyrs wander away into some hidden place when they feel death upon them. But poor humanity desires to be remembered. The desire to be remembered for at least some little while after death is as deep an instinct as any that might be readily named, and our lives are applied to securing some little immortality for ourselves. What more natural than that every one should desire his death and burial to be, as it were, typical of the ideas which he agreed to accept during life: what other purpose is served by the consecration of plots of ground and the erection of crosses? In this at least I am not different from other people; if I am anxious about my burning, it is because I would to the last manifest and express my ideas, and neither in my prose nor verse have