WALTER PATER’S novel, “Marius the Epicurean” (1885), gave him an international reputation as a writer of the highest class of fiction. Among scholars he had already become well known from his studies of Plato and his philosophical essays. He differs from many modern students of Plato in the depth of his actual appreciation of his master. His Platonism means something more than mere metaphysics for display or discussion. He gets at the human purpose of the Platonic philosophy, and in presenting it to modern readers strips away the shell of artificial strangeness, which is due to accidental differences of time, country, language, and habits, rather than to anything essentially abnormal or supernormal in the thoughts of Plato. Pater’s “Appreciations,” published in 1889, have found marked favor with the reading public. He died at Oxford, July 30th, 1894.