CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Portfolio : January. (Seeleys.)—The Portfolio, which has now made itself a high reputation for art of the most genuine kind, puts forth for the coming year a programme of the best promise. Nor, if the following numbers be equal to that which is before us, will any one be able to complain that the promise has been unfulfilled. The frontispiece is an etching by Mr. W. Wise, of 3.dantegna's so-called "Triumph of Scipio," a recent addition to the National Gallery. The subject of the picture, which represents a frieze on a background of marble, is really the reception of the goddess Cybele by P. Scipio Nasica, the " hospes numinis Idasi " of Juvenal. It is a work which will delight the educated eye of the artist, rather than the untaught taste of the popular spectator. But it is unquestionably a great work, and Mr. Wise's etching, which deals with the central portion, worthily represents it. We should add that two interesting papers accompany the illustration, in one of which Mr. Wornum gives an historical account of Mantegna's work, while in the other Mr. F. W. Burton supplies a very able criticism. Mr. Hamerton's "Sylvan Year" is adorned with two etchings, one of which, M. Edouard Hedouin's "Reaping," after Leleux, is peculiarly pleasing, though it is scarcely appropriate to the text. Mr. Alfred Dawson contributes three typographic etchings with which to help Mr. Basil Champneys' effort to call away his countrymen from Switzerland to drink draughts of beauty less exciting, but more easily assimilated, in Romney Marsh and the neighbourhood of Rye and Winchilsea. But the gem of the number is M. Jules Jacquemart's etching, after Sir Anthony More, of Elizabeth de Valois, Queen of Spain. This is a marvel of artistic taste and power of technical exe- cution. It would be a bargain, were it offered to the public by itself at four times the price of the magazine.
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