eleven sequent titles of paintings of death scenes by different artists, principally by chevaliers, and he says they ought to be called chevaliers de la mort. The taste was not a transient one. No visitor to Paris can fail to see that blood is regarded as a standard enrichment of a painting. This is natural to a people who fight duels about trifles, and who treat war as though it were a virtue to find occasion for it; with such a passion it would be impossible that the Art should be of generally pure and ennobling character.
It would require a more extensive survey of the Art of our brilliant neighbours than the occasion allows, to determine its true character. I have not concealed my lack of enthusiasm for the tone of their artistic spirit, but I would not be understood as being blind to the value of their best work. If the accomplishment of paintings exciting great intellectual interest were all-sufficient, undoubtedly France would stand very high, if not pre-eminent, in its modern painters.
De la Roche, Gérome, and Meissonier have each executed works of extraordinary power in this direction; but, for the bountiful genius of Art, for the appeal to that side of our sensitiveness truly described by Browning in his lines—
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted—better to us[1],'
they scorn to show a sign.
The Parisian artist does not cultivate that power
