On the Truth of Decorative Art. By Lionel de Fonseka.
(Greening. 2s. 6d. net.)—This " dialogue between an Oriental and an Occidental" is a vivacious essay in aesthetics. The hero of the occasion is, of course, the Oriental, who holds that art should be decorative and not expressive. This personage, however, is enough of a Londoner to scatter over his speeches allusions to such things as the Futurists and the Russian ballet, and has been near enough to Oxford to produce with an alarming frequency such epigrams as that "art seeks to vindicate the ways of man to man." The dialogue is amusingly written and raises some interesting questions; but the argument is never close and, we fear, is unlikely to be of much help to the people of Ceylon, for whom, as we are informed in the preface, it was primarily written
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