Welsh Journals

THE WELSH OUTLOOK FEBRUARY, 1914. NOTES OF THE MONTH. Mother Stephan Sinding was born in 846, Earth." at Drontheim on the North Coast of Norway, and is a brother of Christian Sinding the musician. He was not brought up to be a sculptor, and it was not until he was twenty-six that he threw up the studies he had hitherto pursued and devoted himself to modelling. In 1871 he went to Berlin to study under Professor Albert Wolf and afterwards spent 10 years in France and Italy. On the subject of Mother Earth" we cannot do better than quote an article that appeared last summer in The World's Work." Mother Earth' is or was Sinding's greatest work. We say was because in some strange frenzy of self-criticism, the artist has so modified this work that, as it seems to us, only a portion of its former greatness now remains. We will, therefore begin by describing the group as it first appeared and as it may still be seen in the earliest reproductions. At the back of the piece rises a vast, jagged and precipitous rock out of which emerge in gigantic contours the limbs of a Titan woman. The out- lines of the head and face suggests prodigious strength, yet in the eyes is mere vacuity of thought. And on the lips a stolid, bovine smile. Seated on her knees, which loll senselessly apart, and pillowed on her vast and hideous breasts, are the figures of a man and a woman deep in slumber. Nothing can surpass the repulsiveness of the mother or the beauty of the children. To-day the latter figures remain unchanged, but the face and limbs of the giantess have been hewn away. The artist seems to have grown abashed at the audacity of his own conception. Stephan Sinding is still alive, and though even now but little known in the British Isles his fame on the continent is assured. A Black Spot The seriousness of the housing in Mont" problem in Montgomeryshire has gomeryshire. been made abundantly clear in the last report submitted by Dr. C. E. Humphreys, the County Medical Officer of Health? From it we find that the Medical Officer of Health for the Llanfyllin Rural district inspected 659 houses. Ninety of these had only one room, and that on the ground floor 284 had two rooms, 190 had three, 78 had four rooms." There were 216 houses which had two occupants per bedroom. 83 had three, 32 had four, 22 had five, 17 had six, 6 had seven and one had 8 occupants. Is it any wonder that of 259 births 31 were illegitimate ? or that the rate of infantile mortality was 104.2 per thousand, while the average for England and Wales is 95 ? In the same district, there were 88 houses which obtained their water from unprotected wells, 43 with no privy accommodation, 69 had defective privies. 271 houses had no through circulation of air, and 270 windows were not made to open 138 had either no drains or drainage that was out of order. In eight houses there were pigstyes adjoining, and in two cases bedrooms were built over them. At Penmynydd, in the parish of Meifod. Dr. Felix Jones visited a house and found that the husband, wife, three children and a woman suffering from consumption were sleeping in one bedroom. The effects of such abominable conditions upon the health and morals of the people can hardly be exaggerated. It is almost useless to send patients to Dispensaries and Sanatoria for treatment if they have to return to badly ventilated, badly lighted, damp. and crowded dwellings. To declare such places unfit for habitation and issue closing orders either accentuates the evil of overcrowding in that locality, or drives the homeless families into the towns where they are not wanted.