eight girls, handmaidens of the Goddess of Love, are collected by the
margin of a long pool of clear water, whose surface no wandering wind or
flapping bird has ruffled; but the large flat leaves of the water-lily
float on it undisturbed, and clustering forget-me-nots rise here and
there like heaps of scattered turquoise.

In this Mirror of Venus each girl is reflected as in a mirror of polished
steel. Some of them bend over the pool in laughing wonder at their own
beauty, others, weary of shadows, are leaning back, and one girl is
standing straight up; and nothing of her is reflected in the pool but a
glimmer of white feet. This picture, however, has not the intense pathos
and tragedy of the Beguiling of Merlin, nor the mystical and lovely
symbolism of the Days of the Creation. Above these three pictures are
hung five allegorical studies of figures by the same artist, all worthy
of his fame.

Mr. Walter Crane, who has illustrated so many fairy tales for children,
sends an ambitious work called the Renaissance of Venus, which in the
dull colour of its 'sunless dawn,' and in its general want of all the
glow and beauty and passion that one associates with this scene reminds
one of Botticelli's picture of the same subject. After Mr. Swinburne's
superb description of the sea-birth of the goddess in his Hymn to
Proserpine, it is very strange to find a cultured artist of feeling
producing such a vapid Venus as this. The best thing in it is the
painting of an apple tree: the time of year is spring, and the leaves
have not yet come, but the tree is laden with pink and white blossoms,
which stand out in beautiful relief against the pale blue of the sky, and
are very true to nature.

M. Alphonse Legros sends nine pictures, and there is a natural curiosity