purpose. As M. de la Sizeranne has well said, few painters have less of that element which in the jargon of the studio is known as _poids mort_. But this very merit causes his pictures to lack concentration. There is no point on which our eye fixes at once as the central, most important, and the meaning of the whole may often be hidden in some accessory that the ordinary observer is apt to overlook. Thus, for example, in one of his Claudius series is seen, poised on a cippus, a head of Augustus, dominating as it were the whole bloody, rowdy, undignified scene. How many who see the work have remarked that the bust is turned toward a picture that represents a naval engagement, and that underneath this picture is written the single word "Actium," suggestive of a vast antithesis. Subtle little touches such as these often render Alma Tadema's more important works a puzzle to those unversed in classic lore, and oblige us to class him, if classed he must be, among the erudite artists whose roots are planted in the soil of literature. Yet, surely, if there exists a domain where erudition should take a secondary place it is that of art, which shares with poetry the high privilege of soaring so high as to have the right to disdain the mere minutiae of history, the petty details of life. Happily, Alma Tadema is saved from being a cold, unattractive antiquarian painter by his rare keen sense of beauty, and here again we come in contact with the difficulty of ranging him as we might range his pseudo-classic brethren. The spectator who misses the allusions, the meaning of his subject-pictures, nevertheless finds matter for full and intense enjoyment as he contemplates the lovely fabrics, the cool half-shades, the clear sunlight, the exquisite flowers, the heat-saturated sea and sky, the marbles and the bric-à-brac that appear on almost every canvas, and are painted with a skill, a consummate science that captivates the connoisseur, and with a reality that delights the uninstructed crowd. Briefly, Alma Tadema's double nationality, his Dutch birth, his long English residence, coupled with his classic tastes, his admiration for the Japanese, have contributed to render his art a curious complex of conflicting tendencies, tendencies that in themselves are again welded into a harmonious whole by the idiosyncrasy of the man. We seem to feel, even through the medium of his pictures, his kind-heartedness, his quick appreciation of all that is good and beautiful, his dislike of mystery, of vain searchings in dark mental places, his love of sunshine, moral and real. Others might paint his portraits as well, but none can paint those exquisite southern idylls of which such numbers have issued from his brush and brain. He has been called the painter of repose. I should rather be inclined to style him the painter of gladness, of the joy of life. The artistic world has certainly been rendered the sunnier by his works. OUR ILLUSTRATIONS