rown old;
Death-crowned as Cleopatra, lovely lying
Even to the end; magnificently dying
In pomp of purple and in glare of gold.

S. GERTRUDE FORD.

THE QUEST FOR BEAUTY.

If you have travelled at all frequently on certain of the London
"tube" railways you may occasionally have noticed, facing you in the
carriage, a small framed poster which for beauty and imaginative power
has, I should think, never been surpassed in advertising art. If the
first sight of it did not make you catch your breath you will not, I
am afraid, be interested in this article.

The poster represents a rich landscape, in which noble tree-forms show
sombre against a tumultuous sky--the latter an architectural mass of
pale cloud, spanned by a vivid rainbow. Across the lower part of the
picture is a scroll, on which are written, in musical notation, two
bars from Chopin's Twentieth Prelude. At the top are the words,
_Studies in Harmony_: it is an advertisement of Somebody & Co.'s
wall-papers.

In both colour and design this poster is very beautiful. It would be
scarcely less so without the rainbow; but "the dazzling prism of the
sky" not only intensifies the subtle harmony of colour throughout the
picture: it turns the poster into a symbol. And the artist might well
have stopped there; only, you see, he had an inspiration. When he
wrote across the picture those eight descending chords from the
immortal _Largo_ he made of the poster--a poem.

I do not know anything about the artist who conceived this
advertisement of wall-papers. I do not even know his name. But I
believe him to be the herald of an invasion.

The invasion of life by beauty.

Do you think it a degradation of art that it should be enlisted by the
makers of wall-papers? Are there not too many ugly and discordant
posters? Do you consider trade and manufacture so sordid that they are
beneath the ministrations of beauty? It doesn't matter a new penny
whether you answer such questions with a nod or a no: the invasion has
begun. It is irresistible. Beauty is stooping--stooping to conquer.

Your ardent social reformer is too often obsessed with one idea.
Across his mental firmament he sees only one blazing word: INJUSTICE.
And, fine fellow though he often is, he is inclined to be impatient
with any talk of art or beauty. "How can beauty grow in these vile
cities?" he cries. "What is the use of your music, your statuary, your
fine pictures, your poetry, to the