life. While pictures like Trinet's, "The Bath," can hardly escape the criticism, that is applied justly and unjustly to so many French paintings, of being just a trifle frivolous, the subject has been handled with consummate

skill. The sunlight which pours into the window, envelops the upper part of the figure, and shines in full force upon the discarded gown, does much to temper the triviality of the scene. There is no reason why such scenes should not be represented. There is room for every sort of pictorial expression, if legitimately undertaken and executed with sincere purpose, and I only critize the tendency of this picture because it does not represent the highest standard possible to the nude.

The nudity in Greek sculpture is almost awe-inspiring, free from all earthly longing. And there is nothing languishing or tempting about the best work of the Old Masters. The human body is to the true artist but a harmony of form, line, and color. Childe Hassam in his "Lorelei," Fig. 13, and "Spring," Fig. 15, comes nearer to the ideal. The figures impress us as being nearly a part of nature. In the picture entitled "Spring," the landscape predominates, and the figure is merely a spot in the decorative arrangement, but also in the "Lorelei," where the entire interest centers in the figure, we have the same feeling that the female body did not signify a woman for the painter, but merely a beautiful shape. It is conceived from a purely artistic standpoint. A nude should suggest nothing but beauty, a virile, fresh sense of beauty expressed with breadth and grace, free from prudishness as well as from everything trivial. There may be many roads for the artistic comprehension to proceed upon, but the final aim must be clear. Only then the nude will continue to occupy the exalted place it has commanded hitherto.

FROM FLORENCE TO FIESOLE.

BY GEORGE F. PAUL.

HE heights of Fiesole overlook the city of Florence and the valley of the Arno in which it lies. These ancient heights played an important part in the stormy days of Cicero and Catiline. Hither came the fleeing Catiline with his motley band of followers. No doubt from these summits they looked again and again across the duncolored hills through which the military road led on to Rome. They feared for the punishment that awaited them when the avenging Roman legions should come hot-footed over the hills. Yet a dozen of these insurgents on the towering hill could have hurled back a whole legion in those powderless days. If Catiline had a can opener, he undoubtedly cooked with it during this period. The manner in which his followers would have devoured a spring chicken would have furnished enough material for three impassioned speeches from Cicero. In olden days they called these heights Faesulae, but they are just the same old heights to-day, even if the name is changed a trifle.

A Monastery crowns a hazy height,

Luxuriant creepers cover half the stones,

Above the creamy walls in amber light,

The cypress rears its trim, sharp-pointed cones.

Far off, in deepest, softest, dimnest blue,

The faint, faint mountains melt in mellow skies,

As dreamy-sweet as one whose soul is true
When saying that she loves me with her eyes.

At eight o'clock one evening in August I took it into my head to go up from Florence and inspect Fiesole. The car started from the Duomo, but as the car tracks were being repaired, the car started from wherever it happened to stop a block or two around three corners and down an alleyway. My companion on the same seat was the youngest scion of an Italian house, said scion having been the target for many flattering kisses before embarking on her journey. She kept wiggling around on the seat like a spoonful of macaroni, for the rough leather scratched her skinny brown pipestems of legs, arrayed as they were in stockings that hesitated and stopped climbing when half way to the knee. A pair of well ventilated sandals afforded breathing room for her

toes.

It was an up grade all the way to Fiesole, with a great screeching and grumbling of the car wheels as we rounded the curves. Lumbering oxen of a scared mouse color swung their heads slowly to and fro as they toiled their way up the mountain road. On the way up we stopped at many a hillside villa that peeped out snug and cozy from among the vines waiting for the master and ready to welcome him with a row of gleaming candles on the sideboard. At last the car gave a grunt of thankfulness and stopped under some widespreading trees that mark the beginning or the end of Fiesole according to the point of view.

The minute I stepped off the car a cab driver, mistaking me in the darkness for a bloated bondholder, came up to me with a volley of oratory explaining all the points about his horse. I have no doubt that in the day time these points would have been sharply evident. However, I still had a little