The artist who painted these pictures is a member of the school of Antonio Pollaiuolo. He betrays the same interest in the nude as does the head of the school but lacks the latter's power to depict ferocious strength.

male type found in Domenico Ghirlandajo's "Adoration of the Shepherds" in Florence.

Guest and the Marquis of Westminster. The picture was exhibited years ago at the Manchester Gallery as a work of Lorenzo di Credi, but one finds it difficult to understand how such an attribution could have been made. In certain details the panel brings to mind an "Adoration of the Magi," by Bartolommeo di Giovanni, in the National Gallery, London. The latter, however, is inferior to the Vassar picture in the charm of its landscape. A spirit of eclecticism broods over the work, betraying in the figure of Mary the hand of an artist not a stranger to the style of Botticelli, and in the figure of Joseph, with his coarse, gnarled

to that in the Vassar picture appears in the "Adoration of the Magi" in the Crespi Gallery, Milan, and in the "Preaching of John the Baptist" in Budapest. Both are by Bacchiaccą.

The little panel showing Mary, the Child, and two diminutive saints is by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo of the Umbro-Florentine school. The artist has drawn the retreating hair above the temples of the infant Jesus just as he did on the Christ Child who is carried by Saint Christopher in the "Crucifixion with Saints Jerome and Christopher" in the Villa Borghese, Rome, and has placed Mary's right hand in almost the same posi

ence of Benozzo Gozzoli, by whom Fiorenzo was affected, shows itself in the winsomeness of Mary and the Child in the picture at Vassar.

A splendid example of the Umbrian school, as it is illustrated in the work of Perugino and his immediate followers, is the tondo showing the lovely Madonna and Child with the little Saint John. The picture is so strongly tinctured by the style of Perugino that perforce one must seek its author among the artists who were most indebted

evolved into the austerely vigorous forms drawn by Mantegna, here still keep in touch with the older, mediæval tradition. The predominating color effect of the panel is that of a cool, low tone.

The last picture in this notable gift-a large canvas from the collection of Martin Colnaghi-represents Erminia's visit to the shepherds, as

to that painter. The only possible reason which might be adduced for doubting the attribution of this panel to Giannicolo Manni would be the fact that the picture is not so saturated with Perugino's wellknown affectations as are most of Manni's works.

To the Sienese school belongs an exquisitely beautiful Madonna and Child with four small adorants painted in the style of Bartolo di Fredi, who, in this excellent work, still retains the gentle beauty which Duccio bequeathed to Sienese art.

Padua contributes to the collection a late fifteenth-century triptych representing three saints-Francis, Jerome (?), and Anthony. The gaunt, ascetic types, which later

it is related in Tasso's "Gerusalemme Liberata." It is painted in the sombre blacks affected at times by the Spanish school and its Roman and south Italian followers. The name which naturally springs to one's lips in connection with this work is Ribera's, who, as we know, was fond of painting in this gloomy key. Even

the brilliant chiaroscuro suggests this artist's hand, but with Ribera's passion lacking it is safer to attribute the picture to Mattia Preti.

In a discussion of the character of the foregoing one is

apt, in searching for authorship, to lose sight of the more important but often forgotten fact that pictures, being things of beauty, ought to be appraised at their face value. An artist's name, after all, is only a label with which critics may conjure. Its absence should in no wise militate against one's appreciation of a picture, because the worth of the painting lies not in the label but in the pleasure the picture itself elicits.

From this point of view Mr. Pratt's fine gift is indeed a thing of beauty. From the contemplation of it one carries away an awakened sense of the dignity of splendid color created by the Italian schools of painting.

OLIVER S. TONKS.

MA

ANY of us whose personal reminiscences do not run back as far as the Civil War have often wondered just what it must have meant to be alive on April 10, 1865, when the bells were being rung to celebrate Lee's The News surrender, when the newsof Victory papers were headed "Victory, Union, Peace," and when Northern citizens dropped business by common consent to assemble in the churches and public halls. Some of us have wished that we might have been present when all the houses in London were illuminated after the arrival on June 20, 1815, of the mud-spattered messenger who had ridden hard from Brussels to Ostend, crossed as the single passenger of a packet-ship, and hurried by relay of horses from Colchester to London.

During the past four years, all of us have sometimes vaguely imagined whether, supposing we had the choice, we should choose to be at the Brandenburger Thor "when the Allied armies march down Unter den Linden," or on the Champs-Elysées when the French troops reach home by way of the Arc de Triomphe, or at the Grand Place in Brussels when King Albert and his Belgians re-enter the capital. The present war (as is always apt to be the case with such expectations) is approaching its end under somewhat different circumstances from those which had been pictured beforehand. Following an unexpectedly sudden turn of events, the King of the Belgians had been welcomed home by Ostend and Bruges in advance even of an armistice, and the parade through the streets of Berlin is not now one of the probabilities. It is, however, the very magnitude of the victory which is occasioning these changes from the

more picturesquely dramatic incidents that marked the termination of other wars. Even the financial markets have been stirred more profoundly than they were in either 1865 or 1815.

THE

HE attitude in which the Allied public on the one hand, and the Stock Exchanges on the other, received the first overtures of the German Government toward military and political surrender was in each case characteristic. Each threw light on the nature of a situation which was in some respects without a parallel in modern history. Public opinion-especially when Berlin first "accepted the programme set forth by the President of the United States," and when President Wilson asked in reply whether Germany meant that it "accepts the terms" and wishes "only to agree upon the practical details of their application"-was certainly governed by distrust of Germany's good faith.

Conditions

With the evidence which soon accumulated that Germany was not only in earnest but desperately anxious for peace on any terms, the popular attitude of suspicion changed to one of astonishment. The President had demanded, as preliminary to of the any discussion of an armi- Armistice stice, that the Central Powers "immediately . . . withdraw their forces everywhere from invaded territory." Three days later the German Foreign Secretary, after replying that the President's general terms of peace were unqualifiedly accepted, declared that Germany was "ready to comply with the proposition of the President regarding evacuation."

When to this Mr. Wilson rejoined