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Then came the classical subjects of the last new school. Weak imitations
of Alma Tadema. Nero admiring his mother's corpse; Claudius interrupting
Messalina's marriage with her lover Silus; Clodius disguised among the
women of Caesar's household; Pyrrha's grotto. Lady Kirkbank expatiated
upon all the pictures, and generally made unlucky guesses at the
subjects of them. Classical literature was not her strong point.
Mr. Meander, the poet, discovered that all the beautiful heads were
like Miss Fitzherbert. 'It is the same line,' he exclaimed, 'the line of
lilies and flowing waters--the gracious ineffable upward returning
ripple of the true _retrousse_ nose, the divine _flou_, the loveliness
which has lain dormant for centuries--nay, was at one period of debased
art scorned and trampled under foot by the porcine multitude, as akin to
the pug and the turn-up, until discovered and enshrined on the altar of
the Beautiful by the Boticelli Revivalists.'
Miss Fitzherbert simpered, and accepted these remarks as mere statements
of obvious fact.


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