interesting to read the account of the execution of this work,
which is said to have been carried out chiefly on Saturday afternoons,
the artist catching a mid-day train from town, and working on it from
the moment of his arrival until dusk. Experience of the London and South
Western Railway Company thirty years ago makes one doubt whether leaving
town at mid-day should not be taken as arriving at Lyndhurst Road at
that time, for otherwise it would have been a miracle to accomplish the
task by daylight. It is, however, exhilarating to find that the
sustained enthusiasm of the young artist was equal to the effort
involved in mastering so many obstacles; for the result, despite the
increased attention given to decoration in these later years, may even
now be considered, so far as modern ecclesiastical painting is
concerned, to be without a rival in England.

The beautiful _Cupid with Doves_, is also said to be from a fresco;
whether a genuine painting on the wall itself (after the true fresco
manner) or not, it has the larger qualities peculiar to the method which
distinguishes several other works that were certainly not executed in
this medium,--the latest of Leighton's mural decorations, for example, a
painting of _Phoenicians Bartering with Britons_, which the President
of the Royal Academy in 1895 presented as the first of a series of
panels in the Royal Exchange. Although, as this was painted on canvas,
it cannot be ranked as a legitimate successor in the direct line of the
Lyndhurst and South Kensington frescoes, it is marked by many of the
architectural qualities which distinguish a painting designed to be in
true relation to the planes of its surroundings, and employs a
convention which makes it appear an integral part of the wall surface,
not a mere panel accidentally placed within a frame supplied by the
features of the building itself.

The South Kensington frescoes, as we have before stated, were painted in
1872-3. Some ten years later Sir Frederic collaborated with Sir Edward
(then Mr.) Poynter in the decoration of the dome of St. Paul's. His
share was to have filled eight _medallions_, so called, in the
compartments into which his colleague divided the dome. The design for
one of these, _The Sea gave up the Dead which were in it_, was exhibited
at the Academy of 1892, and is now among the works presented by Mr. Tate
to the National Gallery of British Art. This is another treatment of a
great subject, in whi