artist might produce that is dreaded, not the loss of those wondrous leaps and bounds. The second outstanding personality is that of M. Léon Bakst, to whose designs for scenery, costumes, and all that is summed up in the convenient word _décor_, many of the ballets in the Russian repertoire owe no small part of their success. The impression made by the scenic methods of Léon Bakst was a worthy parallel to that effected by the performance of the dancers--or perhaps one should say that the two were but inseparable parts of the same thing, since the services of Bakst to the Russian Ballet have been not less than the opportunities which the Ballet has furnished to Bakst. One scarcely thinks of the one without the other. The vigour and impulse with which the Russian dancers showed that the ballet, as a means of artistic expression, could be endowed, Léon Bakst demonstrated could inspire the designing of scenery and costumes. Again one finds that a sense of unity and coherence has been the inspiration. Bakst’s broad method is the converse of the stage realist who seeks to counterfeit fact by a laborious building up of detail. He presents the essentials and little more, using colour rather than form to suggest the association of ideas which he wishes to produce. Compare the cool green setting of “Narcisse,” the violent riot of colour which forms a background to “Scheherazade,” the simplicity and dignity of the orange environment of “Cléopâtre,” with the fretful facsimiles of woodland grove, harem, and desert temple which a less original designer might have attempted. In his designs for costumes there is not less vigour and attack. While the conventional “costumier” is drawing a fiddling fashion plate or draping a lay figure, Bakst is portraying not only the clothing which befits the temperament and character of the _dramatis persona_ under consideration, but the very way in which that clothing would by such a one be worn or carried. Especially has he an eye for form and colour in movement--few of his designs for costumes show the wearers in repose--a fact which obviously gives his work a peculiar value for this particular purpose.