and can therefore have no enduring value. And if by chance the English
artist does occasionally escape from the vice of subject for subject's
sake, he almost invariably slips into what I may called the derivative
vices--exactness of costume, truth of effect and local colour. To
explain myself on this point, I will ask the reader to recall any one
of Mr. Alma Tadema's pictures; it matters not a jot which is chosen.
That one, for instance, where, in a circular recess of white marble,
Sappho reads to a Greek poet, or is it the young man who is reading to
Sappho and her maidens? The interest of the picture is purely
archaeological. According to the very latest researches, the ornament
which Greek women wore in their hair was of such a shape, and Mr.
Tadema has reproduced the shape in his picture. Further researches are
made, and it is discovered that that ornament was not worn until a
hundred years later. The picture is therefore deprived of some of its
interest, and the researches of the next ten years may make it appear
as old-fashioned as the Greek pictures of the last two generations
appear in our eyes to-day. Until then it is as interesting as a page
of Smith's _Classical Dictionary_. We look at it and we say, "How
curious! And that was how the Greeks washed and dressed themselves!"

When Mr. Holman Hunt conceived the idea of a picture of Christ earning
His livelihood by the sweat of His brow, it seemed to him to be quite
necessary to go to Jerusalem. There he copied a carpenter's shop from
nature, and he filled it with Arab tools and implements, feeling sure
that, the manners and customs having changed but little in the East,
it was to be surmised that such tools and implements must be nearly
identical with those used eighteen centuries ago. To dress the Virgin
in sumptuous flowing robes, as Raphael did, was clearly incorrect; the
Virgin was a poor woman, and could not have worn more than a single
garment, and the garment she wore probably resembled the dress of the