may say, so
ethereally independent of their actual analogues is the interest of his
trees and sky and stretch of sward. This sentiment, thus mysteriously
triumphant over color or form, or other sensuous charm, which
nevertheless are only subtly subordinated, and by no manner of means
treated lightly or inadequately, is as exalted as any that has in our
day been expressed in any manner. Indeed, where, outside of the very
highest poetry of the century, can one get the same sense of elation, of
aspiring delight, of joy unmixed with regret--since "the splendor of
truth" which Plato defined beauty to be, is more animating and consoling
than the "weary weight of all this unintelligible world," is depressing
to a spirit of lofty seriousness and sanity?

* * * * *

Dupre and Diaz are the decorative painters of the Fontainebleau group.
They are, of modern painters, perhaps the nearest in spirit to the old
masters, pictorially speaking. They are rarely in the grand style,
though sometimes Dupre is restrained enough to emulate if not to achieve
its sobriety. But they have the _bel air_, and belong to the aristocracy
of the painting world. Diaz, especially, has almost invariably the
patrician touch. It lacks the exquisiteness of Monticelli's, in which
there is that curiously elevated detachment from the material and the
real that the Italians--and the Provencal painter's inspiration and
method, as well as his name and lineage, suggest an Italian rather than
a French association--exhibit far oftener than the French. But Diaz has
a larger sweep, a saner method. He is never eccentric, and he has a
dignity that is Iberian, though he is French rather than Spanish on his
aesthetic side, and at times is as conservative as Rousseau--without,
however, reaching Rousseau's lofty simplicity except in an occasional
happy stroke. Both he and Dupre are primarily colorists. Dupre sees
nature through a prism. Diaz's groups of dames and gallants have a
jewel-like aspect; they leave the same impression as a tangle of
ribbons, a bunch of exotic flowers, a heap of gems flung together with
the felicity of haphazard. In general, and when they are in most
completely characteristic mood, it is not the sentiment of nature that
one gets from the work of either painter. It is not even _their_
sentiment of nature--the emotion aroused in their susceptibilities by
natural phenomena. What one gets is their personal feeling for col