lling powers, which,
heaven be thanked, are as brightly Anglo-Saxon as Hellenic; and painting
for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and the
wonderfulness of childhood."

Upon the _Egyptian Slinger_ of the same year, which Mr. Ruskin terms the
"study of man in his Oriental function of scarecrow (symmetrically
antithetic to his British one of game preserver)," his criticism is
interesting, but adverse. The critic who elsewhere acknowledged fully
the artist's acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the organism of
the human body, confesses himself unable to recognize his skill, or to
feel sympathy with the subjects that admit of its display. It is, he
goes on to say further of the _Slinger_, "it is, I do not doubt,
anatomically correct, and with the addition of the corn, the poppies,
and the moon, becomes semi-artistic; so that I feel much compunction in
depressing it into the Natural History class; and the more, because it
partly forfeits its claim even to such position, by obscuring in
twilight and disturbing our minds, in the process of scientific
investigation, by sensational effects of afterglow and lunar effulgence,
which are disadvantageous, not to the scientific observer only, but to
less learned spectators; for when simple persons like myself, greatly
susceptible to the influence of the stage lamps and pink side-lights,
first catch sight of this striding figure from the other side of the
room, and take it, perhaps, for the angel with his right foot on the sea
and the left on the earth, swearing there shall be Time no longer; or
for Achilles alighting from one of his lance-cast-long leaps on the
shore of Scamander, and find on near approach that all this grand
straddling and turning down of the gas mean practically only a lad
shying stones at sparrows, we are only too likely to pass it petulantly
without taking note of what is really interesting in this eastern custom
and skill."

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN SLINGER (1875)]

The most recent criticism of importance on the art of Leighton is
contained in an admirable volume by M. de la Sizeranne.[13] We take this
opportunity of quoting a few sentences from an appreciation which opens
with the significant remark that Sir Frederic Leighton is officially the
representative of English painting on the Continent, and, in reality,
the representative of Continental painting in England, and concludes by
tracing the definitely English ideal that u