larly excited Mr. Ruskin's admiration. It shows a simply
pretty child, with soft brown hair under a black hat, a saffron kerchief
about her neck. The _Letty_ and the _Cymon and Iphigenia_, with a few
other notable pictures, did much to leave a pleasant recollection of the
exceptional Academy of 1884. "A more original effect of light and
colour, used in the broad, true, and ideal treatment of lovely forms,"
said a French critic, "we do not remember to have seen at the Academy,
than that produced by the _Cymon and Iphigenia_." Engravings and other
reproductions of the picture have made its design, at any rate, almost
as familiar now as Boccaccio's tale itself. There are some divergences,
however, in the two versions. Boccaccio's tale is a tale of spring; Sir
Frederic, the better to carry out his conception of the drowsy desuetude
of sleep, and of that sense of pleasant but absolute weariness which one
associates with the season of hot days and short nights, has changed the
spring into that riper summer-time which is on the verge of autumn; and
that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. Under its rich
glow lies the sleeping Iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white,
and her attendants; while Cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition
as Spenser's Colin Clout is unlike an ordinary Cumbrian herdsman, stands
hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision.
Altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; so treated,
indeed, that it becomes much more than a mere reading of Boccaccio, and
gives an ideal picture of Sleep itself,--that Sleep which so many
artists and poets have tried at one time or another to render.

In 1885, among the five contributions of the President to the Academy,
appeared the vivacious portrait of Lord Rosebery's little daughter, _The
Lady Sybil Primrose_, who appears in white with a blue sash, carrying a
doll. _A Portrait of Mrs. A. Hichens_ and _Phoebe_ were the only other
pictures this year. A frieze, _Music_, was shown, and at the Grosvenor
Gallery _A Study_ of a fair-haired girl, in green velvet dress. 1886 was
chiefly notable for the statue in bronze of _The Sluggard_, in which
Leighton again furnished us with a plastic characterization of Sleep,
which he designed by way of contrast to his statue of the struggling
Athlete. It was suggested, Mr. Spielmann says, by accidental
circumstances. The model who had been sitting to him fell a-yawning in
his interval of r