or best expression.  Still, there are certain elements of beauty in ancient Irish art that the modern artist would do well to study.  The value of the intricate illuminations in the Book of Kells, as far as their adaptability to modern designs and modern material goes, has been very much overrated, but in the ancient Irish torques, brooches, pins, clasps and the like, the modern goldsmith will find a rich and, comparatively speaking, an untouched field; and now that the Celtic spirit has become the leaven of our politics, there is no reason why it should not contribute something to our decorative art.  This result, however, will not be obtained by a patriotic misuse of old designs, and even the most enthusiastic Home Ruler must not be allowed to decorate his dining-room with a dado of Oghams.

Early Christian Art in Ireland.  By Margaret Stokes. (Published for the Committee of Council on Education by Chapman and Hall.)

LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES—­III

(Woman’s World, January 1888.)

Madame Ristori’s Etudes et Souvenirs is one of the most delightful books on the stage that has appeared since Lady Martin’s charming volume on the Shakespearian heroines.  It is often said that actors leave nothing behind them but a barren name and a withered wreath; that they subsist simply upon the applause of the moment; that they are ultimately doomed to the oblivion of old play-bills; and that their art, in a word, dies with them, and shares their own mortality.  ’Chippendale, the cabinet-maker,’ says the clever author of Obiter Dicta, ’is more potent than Garrick the actor.  The vivacity of the latter no longer charms (save in Boswell); the chairs of the former still render rest impossible in a hundred homes.’  This view, however, seems to me to be exaggerated.  It rests on the assumption that acting is simply a mimetic art, and takes no account of its imaginative and intellectual basis.  It is quite true, of course, that the personality of the player passes away, and with it that pleasure-giving power by virtue of which the arts exist.  Yet the artistic method of a great actor survives.  It lives on in tradition, and becomes part of the science of a school.  It has all the intellectual life of a principle.  In England, at the present moment, the influence of Garrick on our actors is far stronger than that of Reynolds on our painters of portraits, and if we turn to France it is easy to discern the tradition of Talma, but where is the tradition of David?

Madame Ristori’s memoirs, then, have not merely the charm that always attaches to the autobiography of a brilliant and beautiful woman, but have also a definite and distinct artistic value.  Her analysis of the character of Lady Macbeth, for instance, is full of psychological interest, and shows us that the subtleties of Shakespearian criticism are not necessarily confined to those who have views on weak