I always look forward •to the Tailor and Cutter's 'single-
minded comments on the pictures in the Royal Academy, and I could wish that its somewhat specialised approach to the problems of art criticism was more widely employed. How firm, how reassuring were the criteria which Baily's Magazine used to invOke on these occasions. " Strittly sporting subjects," it 'observed regretfully in 1908, " are distinctly few and far between at the dne hundred and fortieth Exhibition of the Royal Academy "; but it directed upon the canvases con- cerned an informed and jealous scrutiny. " The otherwise excellent hounds would have been more life-like if they had been represented with hackles up " . . . " ' A Meet of the Tickliam at Sharsted ' is a pretty little work. The thick foliage of the trees, however, seems a little out of place at a November meet " . . . " A big raking chestnut, which has the gait peculiar to the camel or elephant, but never to the horse when walking, both near legs being represented as advanced." I fear that at Burlington House tomorrow strictly sporting subjects will be even fewer and farther between than they were in 1908, and I doubt whether there will even be many of what Baily's con- sidered to be border-line cases, like Mr. Edgar H. Fischer's study of " A group of Indian hunting dogs surprised by a gigantic snake of python-like character." It seems rather a pity.
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