impression which so charmed me as I saw it from my car-window has faded? Nature unrolled for me suddenly a poem. For symbols she used a great mass of dark, sturdy trees against a majestic cloud, a rugged cliff, and a straggling path. I have ignored them all and insisted that "truth was mighty and must prevail." I am a realist and "paint things as they are." Not so. I am an iconoclast and have broken my god and cannot put together the pieces. I have sacrificed a divine impression to a human realism.

Suppose, however, that the painter who had this glimpse of nature before entering the tunnel was no ordinary man, but a man of steadfast mind, of firm convictions, of a sure touch, with an absolute belief in nature, and so reverential that he dare not offer even a suggestion of his own. He has seen it; he has felt it; it has gone down deep into his memory and heart. The cloud, the cliff, the mass, the path—that is all. And it is enough. The annoyances of the day, the seductions of fresh impressions of newer subjects, the weakness of the flesh do not deter him. With a single aim, to the exclusion of all else, and with a direct simplicity, he records what he saw, and lo! we have a poem. Such a man was Courbet, Corot, Dupré.

But one would say: That may answer for landscape: what about the figure-painter? Let us counsel together.

A man only rises to his own level. In art, as in music and literature, he only expresses himself. Each selects his own method. The school of Meissonier is not content with a few grand truths simply expressed. They want a multitude of facts; they must tell the story in their own way. They are the Dickens and Walter Scott of art. It is iteration and reiteration. My cardinal must not only have red stockings, says Vibert, but they must be silk; every detail must be elaborated. Very well, what of it? you say. What do you criticise, the drawing? No. The color? No. The composition? No. Does the painter express himself? Perfectly. What then? Just this. He expresses himself too perfectly. At first I am delighted. The story is so well told—the well-fed prelates; the half-sneer; the cynical smile; the earnest missionary telling his experience. But the next day?—well, he is still telling it. By the end of the week the enjoyment is confined to allowing him to tell it to a fresh eye, and that eye another's, and watching his pleasure. At the end of the year it becomes a part of the decoration of the wall. You perhaps feel that the frame needs retouching, and that is all the impression it makes upon you, except as would an old timepiece with the mainspring gone. The works are exquisite and the enamelling charming, but it has been four o'clock for forty years.

In the library, however, hangs an etching which you often look at; in fact, you never pass it without noticing it. Two figures, a wheelbarrow, a spade, a stretch of country, a spire pencilled against a low-tone sky; and yet, somehow, you hear the tolling of the bell and the whispered prayer. Ah! but you say this has nothing to do with the treatment; it is the subject. One moment. The missionary's story is as full of pathos and of human suffering and courage as the "Angelus," and at first as profoundly stirs our sympathy; but, in one, Vibert has monopolized the conversation; he has exhausted the subject; he has told you everything he knows. Nothing has been omitted; nails, monograms, and all; there is nothing left for you to supply—he is not so complimentary. But Millet has taken you into his confidence. He says: "Come, see what I once saw. Do you ever remember any such couple working in the field?" And you immediately, and unconsciously to yourself, remember just such a bent back and reverent, uncovered head. Where, you cannot tell, for the picture comes to you out of the dim lumber-room in your brain where you store your old memories and faint impressions of bygone days and sad faces.

But if he added, "See, my peasant wears a woollen jacket trimmed with worsted braid," your impression would immediately fade. You might remember the jacket, but the braid, never. But for this it would have been delightful for you, although unconsciously, to add your own sweet memory to the picture.

Another impression choked to death with unnecessary realism.

But be you realist or impressionist, remember that a true work of art is that which has pleased the greatest number of people for the longest period of time; that the love of beauty indicates our highest intellectual plane, and that if you will express to your fellow sinners burdened with life's cares something of the enthusiasm of your own life, and will assist them to see their mother earth through your own eyes in constantly increasing beauty—you having by your art, in your possession, the key to the cipher, and interpreting and translating for them—you will confer upon them one of the greatest blessings which fall to their lot on this mundane sphere.