prevented by the mural pictures and the growing plants set on the wide window ledges. The pictures are roadside scenes such as any traveler may look upon from the window of a railway coach. The woman with her children shaped like assembled plum-puddings, might be on her way to the Middleburgh Fair; the boy just closing his milk can, recalls Ouida's pathetic story of Nello, although he was a little Fleming, and the dog Patrasche is here wanting from the scene; while the girl riding her donkey to the market with her small basket of produce, gives a true idea of the labor and responsibility which come early to the people of industrious, teeming and thriving Holland. These drawings supplement the figure-studies of Mrs. Woodbury in a way instructive to children; since they place the types strange to them in proper surroundings, and thus explain in rapid, general terms the differences separating the child-life of the two countries. The color scheme is composed in accordance with the purpose of the room; green being given predominance, as affording rest to the eyes. This color appears in the tiling in a bluish, or sea-shade; the pictures are also done largely in blue and green, with touches of brilliant red and orange; the plants set in the ordinary, though picturesque florists' jars, should be changed with the season, but limited in springtime to hyacinths and tulips, the characteristic flowers of the Low Countries. Following this scheme, the school-room might be made so hospitable in appearance, so comfortable and healthful, that it would no longer be for the children of the rich a dull place in which to do still duller tasks; while for the children of the poor it would acquire a much more positive value; becoming for them a source of inspiration, and a wide entrance-place into a happy world. So treated, the place of instruction would advance auxiliary culture, which is as necessary as the acquisition of facts and methods. This scheme is fitted to close a series undertaken in the serious hope to amuse, enlighten and develop the men and women of to-morrow. TIQUE OR MODERN HE charm of mystery has always exercised a magic spell As a discussion of possibly more than passing interest, and for the benefit of our readers, who have not been privileged to visit this marble mystery, THE CRAFTSMAN presents two excellent photographic studies of the alleged Aphrodite, together with an outline of the claims made by rival partisans for and against the antiquity of the statue. For the sake of comparison, the familiar front view of the Venus de'Medici, and the famous Hermes, the latter known to be by Praxiteles, are also given, and the readers left at liberty to form their own conclusions. Unless she is exhibited for the esthetic education of the country at large, and the pecuniary benefit of the proposed Home for Old Sculptors, this exquisite and much-discussed Aphrodite of Mr. Frederick Linton has retired definitely from the storm-center of controversy to the comparative seclusion of private life as the chief treasure of a wealthy art collector. During the weeks she has been on view at the National Arts Club, all artistic and literary New York has flocked to see her. The romance of her alleged discovery, in an old stable in Palermo, Sicily, by workmen who sold her to the sailors from whom she was bought by the American collector, as the ship in which she was concealed lay in the London docks, has created an atmosphere of mystery about the wonderful statue that refuses to be dispelled. Whether Praxiteles, in the god-like days of Greek art, thus immortalized Phryne in the marble of Mount Pentelicus, as two Greek authorities declare, or whether she is a modern and very clever copy of the antique, as some American critics assert, has not been settled to the satisfaction of the critics. It has not even been settled that she is Aphrodite at all. It is true that the late Signor Folcardi, the Italian sculptor, who was sent abroad by Mr. Linton to make an especial study of all the famous statues of Venus, in order to arrive at some conclusion as to the authen ticity of this newly-discovered Aphrodite, pending her purchase by Mr. Linton, concluded his researches by cabling four words: "Buy, buy, buy, buy!" But it is equally true that the authorities who attribute her to Praxiteles also assert that beyond doubt she was intended simply as a portrait statue of Phryne, representing the beautiful courtesan at the moment she threw aside her draperies and stepped into the sea at the feast of Poseidon, to sacrifice to the sea-god for the gift of her wondrous charm. There are It has been scornfully asked: "Why Praxiteles? many other sculptors of ancient Greece to whom a newly-discovered antique might quite as probably be attributed?" This question comes almost as a relief, because it is so easily answered. Praxiteles alone of all the ancient Greek sculptors put the breath of life into his marble. He dared to depart from the severely academic school of Phidias, which produced marble images of faultless proportions,—and nothing more, and to make the deities of his dreams in the likeness of perfect men and women. This well known fact gives plausibility to the theory that, supposing the statue to be really antique, it came from the inspired hand of this great Greek sculptor. Her much-heralded likeness to the Venus de' Medici is superficial when it comes to a close comparison of the two statues. On very general lines there is a similarity in the pose of the figure, but there it ends. The Venus de'Medici is a perfect statue, but she is distinctly marble, this Aphrodite or Phryne-with her willowy grace, her satiny-gold surface and her dreamy wistfulness of expression, fairly palpitates with life. One of the chief points of dispute has been the treatment of the surface of the statue and its perfect state of preservation. The skeptics declare that no genuine antique could have preserved for centuries the smooth texture of the marble, and that the darkening of the surface is clear evidence of a clever forgery. For proof of this they point triumphantly to the Hermes of Praxiteles, which is of absolutely undoubted authenticity, and call attention to its scarred and roughened surface as being the inevitable result of the corroding centuries. On the other hand, the Greek experts, one of whom is a graduate of the University of Athens and has passed his life among Greek antiquities, as well as Signor Ettore Pais of the Naples Museum, declare that the marble was beyond doubt quarried on the Island of |