leave us
equally cold, at all events, and in the same way--for the same reason.
They betray the painter's preoccupation with art rather than with
nature. They do, in truth, differ widely from the works which they
succeeded, but the difference is not temperamental. They suggest the
French phrase, _plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose_. Gerome, for
example, feels the exhilaration of the free air of romanticism fanning
his enthusiasm. He does not confine himself, as, born a decade or two
earlier, certainly he would have done, to classic subject. He follows
Decamps and Marilhat to the Orient, which he paints with the utmost
freedom, so far as the choice of theme is concerned--descending even to
the _danse du ventre_ of a Turkish cafe. He paints historical pictures
with a realism unknown before his day. He is almost equally famous in
the higher class of _genre_ subjects. But throughout everything he does
it is easy to perceive the academic point of view, the classic
temperament. David assuredly would never have chosen one of Gerome's
themes; but had he chosen it, he would have treated it in much the same
way. Allowance made for the difference in time, in general feeling of
the aesthetic environment, the change in ideas as to what was fit subject
for representation and fitting manner of treating the same subject, it
is hardly an exaggeration to say that Ingres would have sincerely
applauded Gerome's "Cleopatra" issuing from the carpet roll before
Caesar. And if he failed to perceive the noble dramatic power in such a
work as the "Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant," his failure would
nowadays, at least among intelligent amateurs, be ascribed to an
intolerance which it is one of the chief merits of the romantic movement
to have adjudged absurd.

It is a source of really aesthetic satisfaction to see everything that is
attempted as well done as it is in the works of such painters as
Bouguereau and Cabanel. Of course the feeling that denies them large
importance is a legitimate one. The very excellence of their technic,
its perfect adaptedness to the motive it expresses, is, considering the
insignificance of the motive, subject for criticism; inevitably it
partakes of the futility of its subject-matter. Of course the personal
value of the man, the mind, behind any plastic expression is, in a
sense, the measure of the expression itself. If it be a mind interested
in "pouncet-box" covers, in the pictorial setting forth of theme