14 OCTOBER 1893, Page 42

The Venetian Secret. By Charles Lutyens. (Digby and Long.) —The

" secret " is, to put the matter briefly, the art of painting good pictures. It has been preserved in a mysterious manuscript. The artist into whose possession this manuscript comes uses it with great effect, but not, our readers may not be surprised to learn, with the result of obtaining admission for his pictures into the Academy exhibition. Some love-making is mixed up with the story, and some fox-hunting, both with fair success, though it is not easy to account for the introduction of the latter,—except it be by the fact that the writer evidently knows something about it.