The last Salon to be held in the Palais de IIndustrie opened this. week. It is. not a brilliant finish to the series of annual shows which the massive building in the Champs Elysees has harboured since 1855. 'There are a few very good pictures, an enormous number of moderate ones, and a F. few bad ones. Ninety per cent of the exhibitors display a very respectable know-Tedge of technique, but one fould willingly have the general' average lower for the sake of one really great picture, and this the 1897 Salon certainly does not possess. Perhaps the most striking work, if not the best, is M. Henri Martin's Vers abide,"" an eerie winged figure leading a file of frantic-human beings towards a gloomy chasm. MI. Bouguereau for once departs from his feminine flesh tints and gives us work on which he has expended many years of toil and which he regard as his most important painting. It represents the crucified Saviour embraced by a worn, weary man bearing a heavy cross, and is an unexpected evolution of Sa Bouguereau's talent. The features, however, are oxpression less, and the general effect does not excite enthusiasm. M. Gervais has introduced some beautiful studies of the nude in La folie de Titania," and M. Bonnat shows a most vigorous painting of an eagle seizing a hare. As usual the sculptures are much better than the paintings, M. Charpentier has a most beautiful figure La Nuit." The ' Hagar," by M. Sicard, a young sculptor with a great future, is to be purchased by the State. That wonderful woman Sarah Bernhardt sends a really first-rate bust of Victorien Sardou.
'THE GINGERBREAD FAIR, pains d'épice or gingerbread fair. This very Popular Paris institution, the faire ana:
Easter Sunday sees the opening of a
is held in the Place de la Nation and the Cours de Vincennes, the latter a splendid avenue, nearly three-quarters of a mile long, extending from the Place de la Nation to the eastern boundary of the city. It is a much more frivolous concern than the ham fair, held the week before. That is all for serious business, whereas in the gingerbread fair one is plunged in a giddy whirl of pleasure. To begin with, there are swings. Then there is a model of the Ferris wheel on a small scale. Merry-goroundsabound. There is a Franco-Russian switchback, whereof the entrance is guarded by "majestic wooden figures of rench and Russian cavalryman. Theatres are numerous, One is playing " Pierrot en Afrique," a ''mimodrama" in three acts, Another announces a Passion Play wherein "Christ is sentenced to death for proclaiming liberty, equality and fraternity." This is followed by views of journey to the holy grotto of Lourdes and winds up with comic Kinetoscope views of Marseilles excursion trait The best seats cost as much as 60 centimes. Next door is a peep-show with all the latest. murders and other horrors served up hot and strong; price, 10 centimes.
The waxwork shows and dime museums have a distinctly scientific bent. In one of them, for instance, we can gaze upon models of children in various stages of diphtheria and croup, baby-hatchers, a post-mortem examination at the morgue, the transfusion of blood, trepanning, child: birth, ete. Ina glass case we see the decaying remains of a gentleman who is alleged to have been one Regiomontanus, an English astrologer, who died in the middle of the fifteenth century after thoughtfully, bequeathing his body to the ity of Medicine. These things are somewhat disturbing to sensitive visitors, but, as the management very truly says in the handbills, '*the study of man and his marvellous organisation is better than any spectacular entertainment." The paintings which adorn the exterior of some of these dime museums are wonderful works of art. One depicts an African tied toa palm-tree with a crocodile engaged in chewing his leg. - An immense: serpent with -a body
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.