g somewhere."

Young Scheffer worked away at any subject he thought would sell. He
painted just as his teacher, Guerin, told him, and Guerin painted just
like his idol, David, or as nearly as he could.

Art had gotten into a fixed groove; laws had been laid down as to what
was classic and what not. Conservatism was at the helm.

Art, literature, philosophy, science, even religion, have their periods
of infancy, youth, manhood and decay. And there comes a time to every
school, and every sect, when it ceases to progress. When it says, "There
now, this is perfection, and he who seeks to improve on it is anathema,"
it is dead, and should be buried. But schools and sects and creeds die
hard. Creeds never can be changed: they simply become obsolete and are
forgotten; they turn to dust and are blown away on the free winds of
heaven.

The art of the great David had passed into the hands of imitators. It had
become a thing of metes and bounds and measurements and geometric
theorems. Its colors were made by mixing this with that according to
certain fixed formulas.

About this time a young playwright by the name of Victor Hugo was making
much din, and the classics as a consequence were making mighty dole and
endeavoring to hiss him down. The Censor had forbidden a certain drama of
Hugo's to be played until it had been cut and trimmed and filed and
polished, and made just like all other plays.

Victor Hugo was the acknowledged leader of the spirit of protest; in
lyric music Rossini led; and Delacroix raised the standard of revolt in
painting. With this new school, which called itself "Romanticism," Madame
Scheffer and her sons sincerely sympathized. The term "Romanticism" of
itself means little, or nothing, or everything, but the thing itself is
the eternal plea for the right of the individual--a cry for the privilege
to live your own life and express the truth as you feel it, all in your
own way. It is a revolution that has come a thousand times, and must and
will come again and again. When custom gets greater than man it must be
broken. The ankylosis of artistic smugness is no new thing. In heart and
taste and ambition Ary and the Little Mother were one. Madame Scheffer
rejoiced in the revolt she saw in the air against the old and outgrown.
She was a Republican in all her opinions and ideals; and these feelings
she shared with her boys. They discussed politics and art and religion
over the teacups; and this brave and gentl