rex, Villa R

ley Str

23,

ear

would apologise for not having written to you since the New Year, were it not that by so doing I

ed your little exhibition of etchings at Obach's. Two of them I have acquired, I am glad to say, and they are looking at me as I write. And now I almost think that I shall have to take a third. It has drifted into O

uld rather have scorned to descend upon so well-worn a theme-it would have seemed a descent in those days. And at first I thought that even now you had thrown it in among the others as a kind of so

collided, and she looked up for a moment from her book. It was a healthy and piquant little face, if typically town-bred, that she turned towards mine. But the look, if I could have captured it on canvas, would have done more than immortalise us both. For there was reflected in it-just for a moment-the very dazzle itself of that authentic Wonder which some of us call Mysticism

fice," s

any merely physical panorama in the world for a new vista of the human soul. So greatly indeed is this preference growing in me that, keenly as I love it, I find my English landscape already rearranging itself in my memory. Where it was once punctuated by trees or monuments or natural wonders, it is now becoming mapped out for me by

ave diagnosed in most of our galleries a small epidemic of-shall we say?-hypertechnique. The origin of the malady cannot, I think, be very deep-seated. But its outward and visible signs are rather striking eruptions of a polymorphic type, for the most part somewhat grotesque, and not infrequently even a little nauseous. And they are very modern. Nothing quite like them has ever been seen before; unless-can it be possible?-every age has known them, but time, in his mercy, has hidden them in due season-a reflection that is not without a certain comfort, since its corollary suggests the same process as being at work to-day-unobtrusively, no doubt, but with equal certainty. As Wensley sai

ammering his years away in the purlieus of Chelsea. I have seen a good deal of him lately, and once I am fairly inside his studio find it very hard to escape those siren hands of his white-limbed men and maidens under a good two hours. His group for this year's Academy, if he has been able to finish it, will be as good as, if not better than, anything that he has yet done, I think. May the gods be kind to him, for he needs their

merely as the little unworthy successes of a very passing hour. Our newest music would appear fain to wed itself to the obscene imaginings of a decadent poesy, to find its loftiest inspiration in pathological versions of Elektra and Salome. Our latest dances seek to lift into the very publicit

eauty, and entirely impervious to the Wildes and the Strausses, the Beardsleys, Johns, and Polaires. After all-let us remember it humbly with thanksgiving-these people do not penetrate our homes. They are doled out to us in public. We scan them in galleries. They are momentary sensations in the circulating libraries. But we don't live with them. At least I don't think we do, and in one way and another I have seen the insides of a good many different homes. For a man may perhaps tempo

of our firesides. Our Blyths and Waleses and Victoria Crosses-my classification is mainly themic-are for furtive journeys on the undergro

f a little sleepy, in her newest evening frock. She has just been with some rather dull girls (Ah, Molly, Molly, t

Pimpernel,'" c

g damnations of a month or two ago. "But surely," I venture t

familiar sound, and Molly

," she says. "I

and cart-tails, and I commis

and of cour

dare not finish the question. S

st with herself, stops short, and begins to grow

u-you don't mean to say

lness; and then, very rosy, she s

says, "you're

r y

r Ha