recalls
several of the famous illustrations the artist contributed to Dalziel's
Bible Gallery. It was exhibited with the quotation, "Oh, that I had
wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest." With the
delightful _Helen of Troy_ we are recalled to the third book of the
Iliad, when Iris bids Helen go and see the general truce made pending
the duel between Paris and Menelaus, of which she is to be the prize. So
Helen, having summoned her maids and "shadowed her graces with white
veils," rose and passed along the ramparts of Troy. In the picture the
light falls on her shoulders and her hair, while her face and the whole
of the front of her form are shadowed over, with somewhat mystical
effect.

To the same year belongs _In St. Mark's_, a picture of a lady with a
child in her arms leaving the church, a lovely and finished study of
colour; _The Widow's Prayer_; and _Mother and Child_, a graceful
reminder of a gentler world than Helen's.

In 1866 the critics had at last a work which seemed to them to follow
the lines of the _Cimabue's Madonna_. This was the radiant and lovely
picture of the _Syracusan Bride leading Wild Beasts in Procession to
the Temple of Diana_. The composition of this remarkable painting
deserves to be closely studied, for it is very characteristic of Sir
Frederic Leighton's theories of art, and his conviction of the
necessarily decorative effect of such works. A terrace of white marble,
whose line is reflected and repeated by the line of white clouds in the
sky painting above, affords the figures of the procession a delightful
setting. The Syracusan bride leads a lioness, and these are followed by
a train of maidens and wild beasts, the last reduced to a pictorial
seemliness and decorative calm, very fortunate under the circumstances.
The procession is seen approaching the door of the temple, and a statue
of Diana serves as a last note in the ideal harmonies of form and colour
to which the whole is attuned. As compared with the _Cimabue's Madonna_,
it is a more finished piece of work, and the handling throughout is more
assured. It was as much an advance, technically, upon that, as the
_Daphnephoria_, which crowned the artist's third decade, was upon this.
According to popular report, it was this picture of the _Syracusan
Bride_ which decided his future election as a full member of the
Academy; but as a matter of fact, it was in 1869 that this election took
place. The picture, let us a