Miscellanies

December

ject, and, when illuminated at night from within, as lovely as a fantastic Chinese lantern, especially when the transparent advertisements are from the clever pencil of M. Chéret. In London we have merely the ill-clad newsvendor, whose voice, in spite of the admirable efforts of the Royal College

hough I am of opinion that it is a thing that the County Council should at once take in hand.

etts that the entire decorative design of the book is due, from the selection of the type and the placing of the ornamentation, to the completely beautiful cover that encloses the whole. The writer of the paragraph goes on to state that he does not 'like the cover.' This is, no doubt, to be regretted, though it is not a matter of much importance, as there are only two people in the worl

for a moment dispute that these are the real impressions your critic received. It is the spectator, and the mind of the spectator, as I pointed out in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, that art really mirrors. What I want to indicate is this: the artistic beauty of the cover o

, as they do to your critic, sponges and Indian clubs and chimney-pot hats. Such suggestions and evocations have nothing whatsoever to do with the ?sthetic quality and value of the design. A thing in Nature becomes much lovelier if it reminds us of a thi

characterises nearly all our English art-criticism, is what makes our art-criticisms, especially as regards literature, so sterile

DES CAPUCI