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distinguished by its delicate and chaste beauty of expression. The sculptor's finely restrained feeling for line is specially noteworthy, although it may have been the cause of his bestowing too much, almost timid, care on mere smoothness of surface. It may be a minor matter, but the title of this otherwise well-studied work seems inapt. Surely there should be something of joy in the face and bearing of a ' songster.' This youth conveys better the idea of a Greek chorus singer on some solemn occasion. The Last Call, by C. B. Birch, shows con- siderable executive ability, but as a work of art it is defective in conception and rather a concession to popular and ephemeral ideals. The subject necessi- tates too many trivial accessories to be suitable for the medium. The reproduction of horse harness and soldier accoutrements is scarcely worthy of the sculptor's art ; living form and movement are the proj)er subjects. Onslow Ford's portrait statue of Irving as Hamlet is an elaborate and skilfully executed piece of work, but an unsympathetic and superficially understood rendering of the motive ; with greater breadth of treatment we would have liked some expression of the weird and tragic-loving character of the greater actor. This is rather the portrait of a smooth and business-like gentleman than of Irving as the irresolute Dane, under ' the pale cast of thought,' muttering ' To be or not to be.' Rosco Muli.ik's larger works, such as, ' Bless me, even me also, O my father^ show a vigorous natu- ralistic style of handling the clay, and a strong grasp of character which help to redeem the lack of refinement and finish. His little marble statuette, entitled Memories, has evidently been a work of loving and careful study, it is naturally and beauti- fully modelled, and tenderly expressive of simple, maiden pensiveness. Tragedy and Comedy by Nel- son M'Lean, are unsatisfectory works in several ways. One expects highly allegorical matters, such as the representation in figure of Tragedy and Comedy to be treated with greater force of imagina- tion than is here exhibited. There is a want of dignity in the appearance of these statues, caused by their awkward proportion to life-size, conveying an impression of diminutiveness. The technique is intended to be that of the chisel, but shows none of the decision and felicity of handling which should result. Nothing can be finer than the effect of the free and fiery touch of the chisel in marble, when it comes from the sure hand of a Michel- angelo, but ordinary mortals are better to treat the stone according to its kind, and give it the high finish naturally demanded by a hard substance. If not ' native, and to the manner born,' J. Edgar BoEHJi, R.A., has surely been sufficiently long in active practice as a sculptor in London to be reckoned a naturalised member of the English school ; although his work is not free from the Continental character of cleverness, seen at its best in the sculptor's fine little bronze group of Wilhelm and Lconore. Mr. Boehm's best work has been done in porti-aiture, where, notwithstanding mannerism in handling, and a touch of grimace in expression, he is a force. We have here, in his statue of Thoma,s Carlyle, the finest of his large works, and, as it stands in bronze on the Thames embankment at Chelsea, one of the best public statues in this country. It is quiet, simple, and natural, and full of character, — not an epic, but a page from real life. DoRYPHORUS. CIVIC CONNECTION WITH ART— II. EDINBURGH : THE S.S.C. LIBRARY COMPETITION. LAST month we pointed out the ungenial spirit in which as a nation we deal with memorial sculpture, to the loss of what is highest in art, and to the triumph of bourgeois ideals. The S.S.C. Library Competition, recently adjudged in Edin- burgh, affords, unhappily, a too-typical example in architecture of our incapacity for dealing with art matters in a broad public spirit. The Society of Solicitors to the Supreme Courts of Scotland required library buildings on a site in the Cowgate, on a level with, and joined by a bridge to, Parliament House, to comprise, besides the library, a reading-room, a hall to accommodate two hundred, consulting rooms, book stores, etc., all massed, with the aid of a fireproof floor, upon a four-storied substratum of shops, tenements, model lodging-houses, or otherwise. The Solicitors' Society is a wealthy corporation, learned in the law, not lightly to be charged with want of public spirit. They would doubtless scorn the idea that the new library should not rank as one of the public buildings of the ' Modern Athens ' ; it will form part of the cluster of buildings surroimd- ing the historic Parliament House ; to all who look from George iv. Bridge it will be the most con- spicuous building in the Cowgate, scarcely distant