of John Ruskin which is at Oxford.

Then come eight pictures by Alma Tadema, good examples of that accurate
drawing of inanimate objects which makes his pictures so real from an
antiquarian point of view, and of the sweet subtlety of colouring which
gives to them a magic all their own. One represents some Roman girls
bathing in a marble tank, and the colour of the limbs in the water is
very perfect indeed; a dainty attendant is tripping down a flight of
steps with a bundle of towels, and in the centre a great green sphinx in
bronze throws forth a shower of sparkling water for a very pretty
laughing girl, who stoops gleefully beneath it. There is a delightful
sense of coolness about the picture, and one can almost imagine that one
hears the splash of water, and the girls' chatter. It is wonderful what
a world of atmosphere and reality may be condensed into a very small
space, for this picture is only about eleven by two and a half inches.

The most ambitious of these pictures is one of Phidias Showing the Frieze
of the Parthenon to his Friends. We are supposed to be on a high
scaffolding level with the frieze, and the effect of great height
produced by glimpses of light between the planking of the floor is very
cleverly managed. But there is a want of individuality among the
connoisseurs clustered round Phidias, and the frieze itself is very
inaccurately coloured. The Greek boys who are riding and leading the
horses are painted Egyptian red, and the whole design is done in this
red, dark blue, and black. This sombre colouring is un-Greek; the
figures of these boys were undoubtedly tinted with flesh colour, like the
ordinary Greek statues, and the whole tone of the colouring of the
original frieze was brilliant and light; while one of its chief beauties,
the reins and accoutrements of burnished metal, is quite omitted. This
painter is more at home in the Greco-Roman art of the Empire and later