assumed to be founded on the old German legend of the mermaid who married a fisherman, and bred a human family. In any way it may be interpreted, "An Idyl of the Sea" is intrinsically a delightful work.

Quite as realistic as Kray's picture is poetic is "The Awakening," by Ernest Berger, an artist of Berlin. Here we have the interior of a harem, with a Georgian favorite of the ripest and most alluring beauty, rousing herself from the nap which she has taken after her bath. Her attitude and expression have about them the grace suggestive of a cat, when it stretches itself after awakening from sleep. The painter is a German of entirely modern impulses and methods, rather in sympathy with the French school than that of his own nation. One steps from the harem to the home in the picture by E. Tobias, "The Little Housekeeper," a naive and attractive episode of child life, all the more delightful for the pleasant simplicity with which it is represented. "The Double Star," by Luis Falero, is another of his wonderful adaptations of a suggestion of astronomical science to the uses of art. The original picture was a sensation of the Salon of 1881. When Aphrodite was born of the sea foam, as the mythologies inform us, she landed at Cythera, which received the newly created goddess with proper hospitality. She requited this welcome by taking

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Chapter 4 Text

Ernst Berger