There is a revival of interest in mosaic, as the
fine work lately laid down in the entrance hall of the National Gallery testifies. Architects then, and not the archaeologists only, will like to know of Miss Marion Blake's elaborate and attrac- tive essay on the pavements of Roman buildings in the century before and the century after Christ which appears in Volume VII of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Miss Blake is one of the accomplished American scholars, well supported from home, who are doing really valuable work in Italy and Greece. She observes with truth that Roman pave- ments in Italy have been neglected, but she has removed the reproach. Pompeii, destroyed in '79, supplies her with many examples that can be dated, and thus afford criteria for judging others up and down Italy. The variety and the charm of the decorated pavements that she has illustrated in some two hundred photographs, with a large coloured plate of the lion mosaic of Teramo, are remarkable. Miss Blake writes well and inspires confidence : she promises two further volumes on the pavements of the later Empire.
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