style." Segantini led the way again up to the heights; but he did not paint the mountain-tops that, like the Titans of old, strive to reach the sky; he painted the plateaus, not the plains of the lowlands, but of the highlands, lonely, weird, sublime, where man draws near to the heart of Nature, far from the noise and struggle of everyday life. The air of the heights is there, the colours and lines speak with no uncertain voice. Thus Segantini learnt from the locale of his pictures to become the first master of line among the Impressionists. How he mirrors in his pictures the stillness, the might and grandeur of these lofty heights! With what astounding truth his cold, clear colours make us feel the coldness and clearness of these regions. Like a dome of steel, the sky stretches over the steel-blue lakes, clear as crystal, over the pale-green meadows in the grip of the frost; the tender foliage rustles and freezes in the quivering ice-cold air: there glaciers gleam, there glitters the snow, there the sun pours down his beams upon the earth like plumes of fire. A thunder cloud draws near, calm and majestic as destiny in its relentless course. There is something Northern and virginal, something earnest and grandiose, which stands in strange contrast with the joyful, conventional smile which is otherwise spread over the countenance of Italian painting. Though he died so young, Giovanni Segantini will live for all time in the history of art. With the exception of Segantini, not one of these painters will own that there are poverty-stricken and miserable people in his native land. An everlasting blue sky still laughs over Italy, sunshine and the joy of life still hold undisputed sway over Italian pictures. There is no work in sunny Italy, and in spite of that there is no hunger. Even where work is being done there are assembled only the fairest girls of Lombardy, who kneel laughing and jesting on the strand, while the wind dallies with their clothes. They have a special delight for showing themselves while engaged at their toilette, in a bodice, their little feet in neat little slippers, their naked arms raised to arrange their red-gold hair. As a rule, however, they do nothing whatever but smile at you with their most seductive smile, which shows their pearl-white teeth, and ensnares every poor devil who does not suspect that they have smiled for years in the same way, and most of all with him who pays highest: "_j'aime les hommes parse que j'aime les truffes_." These pictures are almost invariably works which are well able to give pleasure to their possessor, only they seldom suggest discussion on the course of art. _Trop de marchandise_ is the phrase generally used in the Paris Salon when the Italians come under consideration. Few there are amongst them who are real pioneers, spirits pressing seriously forward and having a quickening influence on others. The vital questions of the painting of