ly of the skill the artist has shown in painting character.
Meissonier was the first artist to bring back into favor the Dutch
school of painting of the seventeenth century. Louis XIV., who set the
fashion in everything in his day, had set the fashion of despising the
Dutch painters, and the French people had never unlearned the lesson.
It was Meissonier who brought back the taste, and taught the public to
admire these small panels where interest in the subject is for the
most part lost in the exquisite beauty of the painting and where the
Dutch painters of similar subjects are successfully met on their own
ground and equalled in every respect except in the charm of color.

There is an old saying: "Imitation is the sincerest mode of flattery;"
and Meissonier's immediate success with the public was the signal for
a bevy of imitators to try to win a like success by like methods. Some
of these artists were very clever, but an imitator is but an imitator
after all, and is more apt to call attention to his model than to
himself. It must be admitted that Meissonier himself has suffered
somewhat in the same way: the evident fact that his methods of
painting were inspired by the study of the Dutch masters has led to
his being called an imitator, and his pictures are often compared, and
not to their advantage, with those of his models. Meissonier is,
however, very much more than an imitator; he was inspired by the Dutch
painters, but he soon found a way of his own, and he has put so much
of himself into his work, that the charge of imitation long since
ceased to be brought against him.

While he was still not much known to the public, the Duke of Orleans
bought of him, for six hundred francs, a picture that to-day is worth
thirty thousand francs. As is usual in such affairs, the purchase was
made, not by the duke in person, but by an agent: in this case, it was
his secretary, M. Adaline, who bought the picture from Meissonier, who
as an acknowledgment of the service gave the secretary a water-color
drawing which, to-day, like everything coming from the hand of
Meissonier, would bring the owner a good round sum if offered for
sale.

In 1865, Meissonier's son Charles, himself a very good painter, went
to a costume-ball dressed like a Fleming of the seventeenth century
and looking as if he had stepped out of a picture by Terburg. The
costume had been made with the greatest accuracy, and Meissonier was
so pleased with his son's a