the ground, the corpse of him whom she is bewailing. We might think that this more complete work would be more deeply affecting than the fragmentary one. The contrary, however, is the case. The corpse, although modelled so exquisitely, leaves us cold; it does not realise the conception we have formed of it. We had expected to feel a horror at the sight of it, at which the blood would congeal in our veins. We are astonished and disappointed at seeing lying there only an unknown man who does not concern us. When we look at the old woman petrified by grief we think of the corpse which is not exhibited to us; we see it with our spiritual eyes in the horror of the old woman, we share the feelings of the old woman, the unseen corpse is that of a relation of our own, the dead man himself is dear to us, we ourselves have suffered the loss of him. On the other hand, the completed group makes any co-operative exertion of our imaginative powers superfluous. The corpse lies there visible; it distracts our attention from the old woman; we feel less keenly her emotion; the incident no longer occurs in the Holy of Holies of our soul, but in a forecourt, in a place of inspection. We could, in imagination, endow the corpse with the features of a dear relative, and feel sorrow for the dead man: inspection teaches us that the corpse is a stranger to us, and we have no grounds for shedding tears over it. The two works, placed in juxta-position, fully bear out the old dictum, that a work of art is more powerfully effective in proportion as it more strongly excites our imaginative faculties to creative co-operation. A series of works brings before us the life of the coal-miners. Some of them come to daylight after their shift is ended. They are tired, but cheerful. About their wearied countenances there seems to quiver a reflection of the hearth-fire which awaits them familiarly in their poor homes. Here is a miner at his work. In a painful, half-recumbent position he handles the mattock in the narrow gallery under the seam from which he is dislodging the coal. Here another is sitting inactive, with his spade and lamp, with only a pair of trousers on, the upper part of his body naked, without a particle of fat on his muscles steeled by toil. Here a worker at a smelting furnace, likewise sitting—a reminiscence of the famous “Les Foins” of Bastien Lepage, which is at present in the Luxembourg. Like this peasant lass, Meunier’s labourer is completely bestialised; he stares vacantly before him, with a jaw open like that of an animal; his hand, unused to inactivity, hangs down heavily. It is a shocking picture of the degradation of man through a one-sided exertion of the muscles; a forcible harangue in favour of the eight hours’ day, which would leave more time for the human working machine, not only, as his opponents assert, to visit the public-house, but also for spiritual life.