ends on its being bordered by a frame of
sufficient size and dignity and one which is really and artistically
fitted to allow the finer qualities of the picture to become apparent.
How often is such a frame seen? Who is there who has an adequate
understanding of picture-frames as adjuncts to, or necessary
accompaniments of, great pictures? The splendid carved and gilded
wooden frames of some great pictures have a value of their own as
examples of design. But how many of them are really suited to the
picture which they surround? How much attention has been given by art
experts to the question of the best possible "exhibitional"
surroundings--nearer and more distant--for this, that and the other,
among the great pictures of Europe?

CHAPTER XX

THE SECRET OF A TERRIBLE DISEASE

This generation, which is so thankless to the great discoverers of the
causes of disease, so forgetful of the epoch-making labours of the
English sanitary reformers of last century, has not seen nor even
heard of the awful thing once known as "gaol-fever." A hundred years
ago it was as dangerous to the life of an unhappy prisoner to await
his trial in Newgate as to stand between the opposing forces on a
battlefield. Gaol-fever attacked not only the prisoners, but the judge
and the jury and the strangers in the court. The aromatic herbs with
which the hall of justice was strewn were supposed to arrest the
spread of the terrible infection, and it is still customary to provide
with a bouquet of such plants the judge who presides at a "gaol
delivery." The inexorable ministers of justice, who, seated high above
the common herd, and clad in their ancient robes of office, were about
to deal shameful death to the guilty wretches brought from the prison
cells, were often themselves struck down by the Angel of Death moving
invisibly through the court. The "black assizes" were not isolated,
but repeated occurrences in our great cities. Typhus fever was the
name given by the learned to this awful pestilence. There was a
mystery and horror surrounding it which paralysed those who came into
contact with it, and produced something like consternation. Men fled
in terror from the infected buildings, business was arrested, the
universities deserted, palaces left empty, and the dying abandoned to
their misery when it appeared. There was a feeling that some deadly
unseen power was present, irresistible and malignant.

It is only to-day--in fact, within th