ing of a few blue-coated soldiers. But Verestchagin, who aspires to teach us the wickedness of war, is powerless to thrill us in this manner. He is probably sincere in his opinions, and he has striven hard to give them form and expression, but, lacking the artistic impulse, he has for the most part striven in vain. His huge canvases, packed with dead and dying, are less impressive, less solemn, less painful even, from their monotonous overcrowding, than a single Zouave, whose wounds De Neuville has no need to emphasize with vast expenditure of vermilion, when the faintness of a mortal agony draws his weary body to the earth. "All real power," says Ruskin, "lies in delicacy." To trouble the senses is an easy task, but it is through the imagination only that we receive any strong and lasting impressions, and no sincerity of purpose can suffice to turn a crude didacticism into art.
It is hard to analyze the peculiar nature of the claims asserted and upheld by the disciples of modern realism. They are not content with the splendid position which is theirs by right, not content with the admirable work they have done, and the hold they have se-
