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distracted. Sir Coutts retreated, with a word to one of the uniformed attendants to be attentive to any needs or requests of Mr. Ruskin’s. Ruskin rose and addressed himself to the task at hand. Yes, he would write about this exhibition in this month’s Fors. A representative slice of modern art-commerce lay around him. Here was a fit battleground on which to examine and joust with the pressing matter of honest value for work honestly done. Words began forming in his head, not rushing nor tumbling but an orderly march to conscious utterance. He had the unerring ability–an absolute ability–to ascertain from the opening word the conclusion of every sentence, regardless of length, subsidiary clauses, digressions–and drive towards it with utmost confidence. Not an ability he of a sudden realized, for that implied the acquisition of a skill–it was instinct with him. An hour passed. It was not all new work shown at the Grosvenor; some had been displayed in other galleries or in their artist’s studios or the drawing rooms of fashionable London and Manchester and Birmingham. But there was enough fresh work, and fresh artists, and artists known to be “the coming thing” to offer variety, and enough really well-known men, like Watts and Millais, to pull a cross section of the art-viewing world through the looted doorway. It did not all exert the same demands on him; sight and time were too precious to be thrown away on amateur production or wrong-headedness. He studied his programme and planned the visit to leave the best for last, as a treat, and made his steady way through the rooms, stopping when warranted. He was aware of a little murmur as he was recognized by the few viewers, some polite coughing and subtle gesturing behind him, and an almost imperceptible parting of onlookers making way before him. Some of them knew him by sight, or from photographic prints, and perchance some had even attended on his words at open lectures he had delivered. None approached him though, for which he was grateful not to be interrupted in his course of effort. Near the end of his circuit he quickened his pace. His eyes felt tired and one was watering a little. In the past he had admired the realism of the veins in the Carrara marble depicted by Alma-Tadema’s evocations of the ancient world. Today he passed by some "Roman" scenes of the Dutchman's, inhabited by sloe-eyed, milkyfleshed young women clad in film of gossamer, wanton and vacuous at once. That Tissot–he had an eye, and a hand too, but was soul-starved for want of worthy subjects. Airless, trivialized studies of vulgar “smart” society, young women with an awful macadamized look of hardness; the men cachectic “swells” who might be guilty of Uranism. What a relief to escape to the room dedicated to darling Ned’s work! Much of course he’d seen before, but never quite together like this, and there were two new paintings as well, unfinished things, which in theory Ruskin didn’t approve of showing but the temptation must have been great–and an unfinished Burne-Jones could have as much finish as a handful of other painter’s completed works. This invitation to exhibit had been