whole—perhaps the most wonderful form of art production that has ever existed. And then some German tourist would scream, “Ach Minna, komm mal her! ’s doch famos hier oben!” and they would be waked from their day dream of old harmonies into the shrill bustling present again. “It is like all really great fresco painting,” said Peripatetica on one of these comings back, “kept in the flat. Anything huge has to be treated so as to make its meaning tell; it has to be done in flat outline to stay in the picture, to make the whole effective. All the great imposing frescoes are like that; when the seventeenth century tried to heighten its effects by moulding out arms and legs in the round, its pictures dropped to pieces; any idea it was trying to express became lost. One is conscious of nothing but the nearest sprawling realistic limb thrusting out at one. Oh, those delicious marvellous Greeks! everything that is beautiful and perfect they did first, and anything good that has ever been done since is only copying them.” Jane had a deep respect for the Greeks herself, but she sometimes turned against too much laudation of them. 85“Do you suppose the æsthetic effect of their tragedies was really greater than that of a Wagner opera, well given? That the lament for Iphigenia could be more deeply thrilling than Siegfried’s funeral march?” Peripatetica almost bounded from her seat. “But that’s just it!” she cried. “Wagner operas are a revival of the Greek ideal! the only modern analogy of their drama! He had the same idea of painting on a huge canvas great heroic figures in the flat, keeping them in the picture without rounding out into petty realism. And he has attempted exactly what they did, to present his dramatic theme in a mingling of music, poetry, picture, and dance, every branch of art combined!” “That’s interesting, and perhaps true, my dear, but if you discourse on about King Charles’ head, we shall get caught by that shower racing down the coast. There is just time to beat it to home and Vesuvius!” Vesuvius was, after Domenica, their greatest acquisition, and the one that most soothingly spread about an atmosphere of home comfort. Until he came life had been a thing of shivers and sneezes, of days spent in ceaseless trampings to keep their chilled blood in circulation, and of evenings sitting swathed in fur coats and steamer rugs, with feet raised high above the cold drafts of the floor.