The cataloguing and describing committee comes last; and its work, though done in a hurry, bore no slight relation to the success of the undertaking. It is impossible for the ignorant to even look at a picture with any interest unless they are acquainted with the subject; but when once the story is told to them their plain, direct method of looking at things enables them to go straight to the point, and perhaps to reach the artist’s meaning more clearly than some of those art critics whose vision is obscured by thoughts of ‘tone, harmony, and construction.’ Mr. Richmond’s fine picture of ‘Ariadne’ elicited many remarks. ‘Why, it is crazy Jane!’ exclaimed one woman, following up the declaration in a few moments by, ‘and it’s finely done, too;’ but the story once explained, either by catalogue or talk, the interest increased. ‘Poor soul! she’s seen her day,’ came from a genuine sympathiser. ‘Oh, no! she’ll get another lover; rest sure of that.’ ‘’Tain’t quite likely, seeing that it’s a desert island!’ was the practical retort, which rather dumbfounded the hopeful commentator; but she would have the last word: ‘Well, I would, if it were myself, and she’ll find a way, sure enough, somehow.’ ‘The light is all behind her,’ showed a delicate perception of what, perhaps, the artist himself had put in with the truth of unconsciousness. Mr. Briton Rivière’s representation of the ‘Dying Gladiator’ was the subject of much conversation. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remind any one of the picture, which was in the Academy but a year or two ago. The splendid painting of the tigers, both dead and living, with the vividly depicted physical agony of the martyr, in spite of which he feels triumph, as, faithful even in death, he makes the sign of the cross in the sand, would probably make an impression on and be remembered by those who saw it. ‘There, my boy, there’s your ancestor in the lions’ den!’ was the paternal explanation of one of Abraham’s descendants to his small son; but a reference to the catalogue changed his opinion on the subject, if not on the goodness of the cause for which the gladiator suffered. The description in the catalogue for this picture was: ‘The Romans, for their holiday amusement, made their prisoners fight with wild beasts. The young Christian has killed one of the tigers; but is himself mortally wounded. His last act is to trace in the sand the form of a cross, the sign of the faith for which he dies. The shouts of the excited crowd, the roar of the baulked tiger, are fading in his ears. God has kissed him, and he will sleep.’ Somewhat fanciful, perhaps, but reaching, maybe, the spirit of the picture more truly than a plainer statement of facts would have done. ‘“God kissed him,” it says; I should have said the tiger clawed him,’ was the one adverse criticism overheard on the description. As a rule, the subject of the picture once understood, the people stood before it in thoughtful consideration.