it is found both in various works of the
Germans,--their finest, and their least thought of; and more or less in
the works of George Cruikshank,[121] and in many of the illustrations
of our popular journals. On the whole, the most impressive examples of
it, in poetry and in art, which I remember, are the Song of the Shirt,
and the woodcuts of Alfred Rethel, before spoken of. A correspondent,
though coarser work appeared some little time back in Punch, namely, the
"General Fevrier turned Traitor."

The reception of the woodcut last named was in several respects a
curious test of modern feeling. For the sake of the general reader, it
may be well to state the occasion and character of it. It will be
remembered by all that early in the winter of 1854-5, so fatal by its
inclemency, and by our own improvidence, to our army in the Crimea, the
late Emperor of Russia said, or was reported to have said, that "his
best commanders, General January and General February, were not yet
come." The word, if ever spoken, was at once base, cruel, and
blasphemous; base, in precisely reversing the temper of all true
soldiers, so nobly instanced by the son of Saladin, when he sent, at the
very instant of the discomfiture of his own army, two horses to Coeur
de Lion, whose horse had been killed under him in the melee; cruel,
inasmuch as he ought not to have exulted in the thought of the death, by
slow suffering, of brave men; blasphemous, inasmuch as it contained an
appeal to Heaven of which he knew the hypocrisy. He himself died in
February; and the woodcut of which I speak represented a skeleton in
soldier's armor, entering his chamber, the driven sleet white on its
cloak and crest; laying its hand on his heart as he lay dead.

There were some points to be regretted in the execution of the design,
but the thought was a grand one; the memory of the word spoken, and of
its answer, could hardly in any more impressive way have been recorded
for the people; and I believe that to all persons accustomed to the
earnest forms of art, it contained a profound and touching lesson. The
notable thing was, however, that it offended all persons _not_ in
earnest, and was loudly cried out against by the polite formalism of
society. This fate is, I believe, the almost inevitable one of
thoroughly genuine work, in these days, whether poetry or painting; but
what added to the singularity in this ease was that _coarse_
heartlessness was even more offended than p