Unlike many picture collectors, Mr. Aird has never regarded his "hobby" in the light of an investment. It has been from the first a labour of love. To borrow a well-worn phrase, he has bought his pictures "to live with." They are not arranged in the formal lines of a gallery; they adorn every room of the house; its doors, its lobbies, and its staircases to the very top, are ornamented with them. They are, therefore, the daily companions and friends of their owner, and of his family and their friends. Many of them have owed their execution of his own suggestion; others have been specially painted by their artists for the places where they now hang; every one seems to bear the impress of care and forethought which have selected them on account of some definite and precise reason, not very far to find. It may be stated at once that nearly all Mr. Aird's pictures are of the modern English school.
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On either side of the large folding doors hangs a work of Mr. J. W. Waterhouse's. One is 'Whispered Words', a Greek girl and her lover standing in colloquy together, the artist's earliest success, and its companion, 'Offerings to the Gods.'

IMAGINATIVE ART
On the borderland between this and the foregoing category [MONUMENTAL AND DECORATIVE ART] are a group of works to which we are now about to refer. It is evident that in his 'Ulysses and the Sirens' (Royal Academy), Mr. J. W. Waterhouse has put forth all his powers as an executant, and that it has been to him a labour of love. In a narrow rock-bound cleft of the sapphire-blue Mediterranean is depicted the ship of Odysseus, painted with strange archaic devices; the central figure is that of the Wanderer himself, bound with strong bonds to the mast, while his companions, with ears carefully guarded against the fatal sweetness of the Siren song, are busily plying their oars. Close round the vessel, and even on its very edge, have gathered the Sirens, revealing the heads and the unbound tresses of beautiful women, with the bodies of strong birds of prey. This new realisation of the Odyssean legend is a quaint and curious one, wrought out with an abundance of exquisite detail, especially in the heads of the Sirens, to whom Mr. Waterhouse has, however, too uniformly given the beautiful type of English womanhood. Yet with all this the impression asserts itself that the backbone of the subject is lacking. The temptation, the involuntary effort of Odysseus to follow the ravishing sounds is hardly suggested, while his companions remain stolid and little moved; the clashing elements of struggle, mental and physical, which constitute the drama are therefore absent. And then these strange birds with human heads are rather Harpies than Sirens, and we feel too much that if the piercing sweetness of their song should not prevail, they may too easily rend with those cruel eagle-claws of theirs the coveted victims. Infinitely more beautiful is the Homeric version, in which the sea-nymphs accursed of the gods recline on the shore of their fatal island, and thither seek to lure with their heart-searching music the unwary mariner. The same painter's 'Circe' (New Gallery) is at least as remarkable as the performance just discussed, in virtue of the beauty and certainty of the execution, and the happy fashion in which the accessories are devised; while here again exception might be taken to the handling of the subject. The 'Flora' (Royal Academy) is a little study of rare charm, which some reconsideration of the accessory detail would render quite perfect.

Professor Herkomer, R.A., has accepted from the Government of Victoria an invitation to assume the duty of purchasing works of Art for the National Gallery now being founded at Melbourne. In this connection four pictures have already been purchased by Mr. Herkomer, including 'Ulysses and the Sirens' by Mr. J. W. Waterhouse, A.R.A.; 'The Crisis,' by Mr. F. Dicksee, A.R.A.; and a cattle-piece by Mr. R. Meyerheim.