painter,’ he should choose his ’subject from the Old and New Testament,’ a recommendation, by the way, that many of our Royal Academicians seem already to have carried out.  To paint a real historical picture one requires the assistance of a theatrical costumier and a photographer.  From the former one hires the dresses and the latter supplies one with the true background.  Besides subject-pictures there are also portraits and landscapes.  Portrait painting, Mr. Collier tells us, ‘makes no demands on the imagination.’  As is the sitter, so is the work of art.  If the sitter be commonplace, for instance, it would be ’contrary to the fundamental principles of portraiture to make the picture other than commonplace.’  There are, however, certain rules that should be followed.  One of the most important of these is that the artist should always consult his sitter’s relations before he begins the picture.  If they want a profile he must do them a profile; if they require a full face he must give them a full face; and he should be careful also to get their opinion as to the costume the sitter should wear and ‘the sort of expression he should put on.’  ‘After all,’ says Mr. Collier pathetically, ‘it is they who have to live with the picture.’

Besides the difficulty of pleasing the victim’s family, however, there is the difficulty of pleasing the victim.  According to Mr. Collier, and he is, of course, a high authority on the matter, portrait painters bore their sitters very much.  The true artist consequently should encourage his sitter to converse, or get some one to read to him; for if the sitter is bored the portrait will look sad.  Still, if the sitter has not got an amiable expression naturally the artist is not bound to give him one, nor ‘if he is essentially ungraceful’ should the artist ever ’put him in a graceful attitude.’  As regards landscape painting, Mr. Collier tells us that ’a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the impossibility of reproducing nature,’ but that there is nothing really to prevent a picture giving to the eye exactly the same impression that an actual scene gives, for that when he visited ’the celebrated panorama of the Siege of Paris’ he could hardly distinguish the painted from the real cannons!  The whole passage is extremely interesting, and is really one out of many examples we might give of the swift and simple manner in which the common-sense method solves the great problems of art.  The book concludes with a detailed exposition of the undulatory theory of light according to the most ancient scientific discoveries.  Mr. Collier points out how important it is for an artist to hold sound views on the subject of ether waves, and his own thorough appreciation of Science may be estimated by the definition he gives of it as being ’neither more nor less than knowledge.’

Mr. Collier has done his work with much industry and earnestness.  Indeed, nothing but the most conscientious seriousness, combined with real labour, could have produced such a book, and the exact value of common-sense in art has never before been so clearly demonstrated.