wn dull eye, but Man as he is to the inner retina of
the universe. Man, the simple triangle on two stilts, the creature on
one plane and of one dimension, an outline without entity, a nothingness
staring, faceless, at the nothingness which baffles his soul.

Emotion, idealism, beauty--these have been always the evil spirits that
have fettered art. The new art has so exorcised them that they have fled
from it with demoniac cries. Pulziacco's splendid rhomboid, "Cleopatra";
Weber-Damm's tender parallelograms, "The Daughters of James Bowles,
Esq., J.P"; Todwarden Jones's rectilineal wizardry, "A Basket of
Oranges"; and Arabella Machicu's triumph of astigmatism, "The Revolving
Bookcase," are examples of this conquest of the inner retina over the
brutal insistences of form and matter.

Of still deeper significance is that terribly sad picture of Philip
Martini, "The Mumpers: a Group at Lloyds." Nothing is more illustrative
of the courage demanded for the struggle of the new art against
convention than this poignant work, wherein, true to the verities, the
artist has confounded realism in its own domain by the unrecognisable
faces of his sitters.

Let us sum up the new movement so clearly that the dullest will
apprehend. Surely the inhibition of all apperceptions in art is
correlative to the inner _ego_? That simple postulate granted, it will
be unquestioned that the true focus of vision should co-ordinate the
invisible. Faith we must have, or we faint by the roadside of the
intelligible. The only altruism is that which can defy the cold
brutality of things as they _are_, and convince us with things as they
_are not_. Thus alone can the contemplation of art bring us back to
primal infelicity, and restore in our souls the perfect vacuity of
infants and cows. Thus only can we achieve the suffusion of vision of
the happy inebriate.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Sunday-school Teacher._ "And now, Tommy, about your
prize--would you like a hymn-book?"

_Tommy._ "A yim-book's all right, teacher, but--er--er--I'd sooner 'ave
a squirt."]

* * * * *

THE TROPHY.

I'd dined at home; I'd read till ten;
I'd thought, "The space upon the wall
Above the stuffed Thames trout
Wants filling." That was really all:
And then I closed my eyes, and then
I let my pipe go out.

* * * * *

We crawled, the Khan of Khot and