[49] Leighton gave this group to Watts, who expressed to me an unbounded admiration for it. "Nothing more beautiful has ever been done! Pheidias never did anything better. I believe it was better even than Pheidias!" were the words Watts used when deploring the fact that he had lent it to a sculptor to be cast--something had gone wrong in the process of casting, and it had been destroyed. When giving me the modelled sketch for the "Python," Watts said, "I am giving you the most beautiful thing I have in my place." [50] The group of singing girls modelled as a study for "The Daphnephoria." [51] See complete list in Appendix. [52] The "Arts of War" lunette was commenced in 1870 and finished in 1880. The "Arts of Peace," begun in 1881, was completed in 1886. An account of these two frescoes appeared in the _Magazine of Art_ written by Mr. J. Ward, the master of the Macclesfield School of Art, who assisted Leighton in the work. [53] In a letter from Mr. J.G. Hodgson, A.R.A., praises are bestowed on this picture and the "Moorish Garden" at the expense of "Clytemnestra" and the "Antique Juggling Girl." The letter is a good example of the criticisms which Leighton's serious work often received--that work in which, nevertheless, he was most true to himself. The ordinary English eye neither longed for nor appreciated Leighton's native Hellenic strain. 5 HILL ROAD, _Friday, April 4, 1874_. MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--I was immensely delighted with your two pictures of the Jew's house and the Alhambra ("Moorish Garden: A Dream of Granada"). I was at the opera last night, but thought much less of Crispin and his Comara than of them; they are quite charming, and excite me with the desire of emulation, at that safe distance which is inherent in the nature of things. For your "Clytemnestra" and the other ("Antique Juggling Girl"), I, being a Philister, care nothing at all. From those to turn to these, seems like leaving a garden fragrant with roses and citron blossoms, where I hear the murmur of cooling streams, Abanah and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, to enter a museum filled with dusty plaster casts.