The Witness of Art. By Wyke Bayliss. (Hodder and Stoughton.)—
The legend of "Beauty and the Beast" has been turned to good account as an allegory of the power Which art has awakened and exer- cises in the human mind. The ethics of testheties is certainly a subject. with a very scant literature, especially when we consider how important a function "the King's Messenger, Beauty," performs in the world, and; how closely related she is to those other messengers, Virtue and Truth.. The idea of the legend is well worked out in glancing over the history, a art, and the terrible lapse it underwent in the dark ages, and the chapter entitled "The Message" is a very pleasant discursive roam through some of the phases of the art-influence of mythology. The chapters on the antique, the Renaissance, and the modern schools are well worthy of an attentive perusal. They are attempts at the philo- sophic history of art. The last article, called "Kissing Carrion," is a thoughtfully written criticism on the debased use of the supernatural in art; and the vigorous and trenchant onslaught on such productions as some of the Ingoldsby Legends," when viewed from a true artist's point of view, is deserving of high commendation. If it had been in the scope of Mr. Bayliss's work to have treated music as well as poetry and painting, we can imagine how bitterly he would have inveighed against the prostitution of this sister-art in the witless comic (?) songs of the period.
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