18 APRIL 1903, Page 24

The peculiarities of style have a tendency to harden into

mannerisms, and the strange masses of black which used to seem inevitable in the portraying of the face and body now seem some- times as if they were put there for some extraneous reason. Queen Alexandra, Lord Kitchener, the Kaiser, and Mr. Edison are all good, but not extraordinary. President Roosevelt and Mr. Chamberlain are failures. Happily there is one complete success; it is the portrait of Mark Twain, which is splendid.