(4) Vanclin and Other Verses.  By John Cameron Grant. (E.  W. Allen.)

(5) Caesar Borgia.  By W. Evans, M.A. (William Maxwell and Son.)

(6) The Cross and the Grail. (Women’s Temperance Association, Chicago.)

(7) Juvenal in Piccadilly.  By Oxoniensis. (Vizetelly and Co.)

(8) The Excellent Mystery:  A Matrimonial Satire.  By Lord Pimlico.  (Vizetelly and Co.)

(9) The Chronicle of Mites.  By James Aitchison. (Kegan Paul.)

VENUS OR VICTORY

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 24, 1888.)

There are certain problems in archaeology that seem to possess a real romantic interest, and foremost among these is the question of the so-called Venus of Melos.  Who is she, this marble mutilated goddess whom Gautier loved, to whom Heine bent his knee?  What sculptor wrought her, and for what shrine?  Whose hands walled her up in that rude niche where the Melian peasant found her?  What symbol of her divinity did she carry?  Was it apple of gold or shield of bronze?  Where is her city and what was her name among gods and men?  The last writer on this fascinating subject is Mr. Stillman, who in a most interesting book recently published in America, claims that the work of art in question is no sea-born and foam-born Aphrodite, but the very Victory Without Wings that once stood in the little chapel outside the gates of the Acropolis at Athens.  So long ago as 1826, that is to say six years after the discovery of the statue, the Venus hypothesis was violently attacked by Millingen, and from that time to this the battle of the archaeologists has never ceased.  Mr. Stillman, who fights, of course, under Millingen’s banner, points out that the statue is not of the Venus type at all, being far too heroic in character to correspond to the Greek conception of Aphrodite at any period of their artistic development, but that it agrees distinctly with certain well-known statues of Victory, such as the celebrated ‘Victory of Brescia.’  The latter is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but the type is unmistakable, and though not a reproduction it is certainly a recollection of the Melian statue.  The representation of Victory on the coin of Agathocles is also obviously of the Melian type, and in the museum of Naples is a terra-cotta Victory in almost the identical action and drapery.  As for Dumont d’Urville’s statement that, when the statue was discovered, one hand held an apple and the other a fold of the drapery, the latter is obviously a mistake, and the whole evidence on the subject is so contradictory that no reliance can be placed on the statement made by the French Consul and the French naval officers, none of whom seems to have taken the trouble to ascertain whether the arm and hand now in the Louvre were really found in the same niche as the statue at all.  At any rate, these fragments seem to be of extremely inferior