surroundings
of his home, for whose embellishment the known world had been searched
for hangings, ornaments and _bric-a-brac_. Amid such an _entourage_ of
modern London life, with its Sybaritic indulgence, its keenness of wit
and its subtle intelligence, Mr. Wilde places his characters and works
out his miracle.

Viewing his own portrait, just completed by an artist friend, Dorian
Gray turns from it filled with envy and dissatisfaction, because it has
been whispered in his ear that youth is the supreme possession in life,
and that when youth and beauty have fled from his face and form this
pictured presentment will live for ever, a perpetual mockery of himself,
whom withering age has overtaken. Under the influence of his evil
genius, Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray utters a prayer that he may
always remain young, and the portrait alone reveal the ravages of time,
sin and sorrow. The realization of this idea is the theory of Mr.
Wilde's romance, and the air of probability with which he has endowed
the absolutely impossible evidences the artistic and dramatic power of
the writer. The portrait of Dorian Gray, painted in days of innocence
and loveliness, when his mere presence symbolized to the artist the
entire harmony between beauty of body and beauty of soul, changes day by
day with the degradation of his nature, while the living Dorian Gray,
after years of sin, remorseless cruelty and corruption of thought and
action, preserves all the grace and fairness of his Antinous-like youth.

Love in this romance is an incident, not its crowning event, although an
important incident as a revelation of the character of Dorian Gray. The
reader never meets Sybil Vane; he merely sees her on the stage and hears
of her from the lips of her lover; yet even thus she appeals to us as an
exquisite personation of maidenhood with all its purity and all its
tenderness. As shadowy an outline as the fair child whom Bulwer allows
to captivate the imagination of Kenelm Chillingly, who caught
butterflies, talked philosophy and died young, yet who in her brief
transit across his path realized to his poetic soul all the best
possibilities of life, spiritual and material, Sibyl Vane comes to us
girt about with ideal charm, to fulfil her widely different mission,
which was to reveal to Dorian Gray the sad fact that his soul had passed
beyond her sweet and ennobling influence. His artistic and intellectual
senses were touched by her beauty and dramatic