in masterly fashion, but obedience to one person only." Below this statue, where the staircase seems to turn at the landing, is another group. These three suitors, father, son, and daughter, are about to render a gift to accompany their petition, for they know it is well to conciliate even the wealthy with gifts. Behind the whole shimmers one of those wonderful effects of light and sky that Tadema rarely fails to introduce. Like his Dutch ancestors, he is never happy unless he can get some peep into the open through a window or a terrace. He welcomes any device by which is accomplished an outlet to the sky, producing thus an enhanced sense of space and atmosphere. The greater part of this picture was painted in 1875, when the artist spent the winter in Rome, being driven out of England by the wreck of his lovely house in Regent's Park. I well remember those days in the Eternal City, and one little incident connected with this picture illustrates a delightful trait in Alma Tadema's character and his naive enjoyment of his own work. He had finished the tiger skin which lies at the foot of the stairs, and in his delight over its successful achievement, he asked me in boyish glee, "Don't you see him wag his tail?" Even in the indoor picture called _An Earthly Paradise_ (see _frontispiece_), the sense of atmosphere and space is not absent. The tale is here told with direct simplicity, a young mother adoring her firstborn as mothers have done since time began. The dress, the furniture, the surroundings are classic, the sentiment is of all times and all ages. _A Reading from Homer_ (see illustration, p. 16) reproduces some of Tadema's favourite devices,--a marble semicircular bench, a distant glimpse of tranquil sapphire seas, lustrous garments, and flower-wreathed characters. With eager enthusiasm the reader seated on his chair recites from a roll of papyrus that rests upon his knees. Of his four auditors only the woman, daffodil-wreathed, sits upon the marble exedra. One hand rests upon a tambourine, beside which is flung a bunch of flowers. The other holds that of a youth who sits upon the ground beside her. His other hand touches a lyre idly, but without sound, his entire interest is centred upon the reciter, whose words he follows with the eyes of his soul and of his intellect. Yet another youth lies prone upon the marble floor, his chin resting upon his hand. He, too, gazes in entranced wonder as he listens to the immortal verses of the Hellenic bard. On the left stands another figure, also flower-garlanded and wrapped in a toga. His face reveals that his, too, is a keen appreciation of the power of the words being recited. Rarely has even Tadema's magic brush painted a more luminous work, so suggestive of sunlight, so truly transfigured and remote from life's grosser moments. Here, too, his flesh treatment is above his own high average. The modelling of the woman's figure and of the lover is especially fine.