owed his own bent
with such independent zeal as has made him the object of intense
admiration to some, of bitter hatred to others. But Ary Scheffer has
taken his rank at the head of the Spiritualist school, and has awakened
a wider love and obtained a fuller appreciation than either of them. The
spirit which found in them its first expression is continually
increasing in power, and developing into richer life. The living artists
of France are the exponents of her genuine Christian democracy.

"The entire collection of Rosa Bonheur's works," says a French writer,
"might be called the Hymn to Labor. Here she shows us the ploughing,
there the reaping, farther on the gathering in of the hay, then of the
harvests, elsewhere the vintage,--always and everywhere labor." Edouard
Frere, in his scenes from humble life, which the skilful lithographer
places within the means of all, represents the incidents of domestic
existence among the poor. "The Prayer at the Mother's Knee," "The Woman
at her Ironing Table," "The Child shelling Peas," "The Walk to School
amid Rain and Sleet," are all charming idyls of every-day life. With yet
greater skill and deeper pathos does the peasant Millet tell the story
of his neighbors. The washerwomen, as the sun sets upon their labors,
and they go wearily homeward; the digger, at his lonely task, who can
pause but an instant to wipe the sweat from his brow; the sewing-women
bending over their work, while every nerve and muscle are strained by
the unremitting toil; the girl tending her geese; the woman her
cows:--such are the subjects of his masterly pencil. Do not all these
facts point to the realization of Christian democracy? If the king is
now but the servant of the people, so the artist who is royal in the
kingdom of the mind finds his true glory in serving humanity. What a
change from the classic subjects or monkish legends which occupied the
pencils of David and his greater predecessors, Le Sueur and Poussin!

And yet those students of the antique have done French Art good service;
they have furnished it with admirable tools, so that to them we are
indebted for the thorough drawing, the masterly knowledge, which render
Paris the great school for all beginners in Art. Such men as we have
named do not scorn the past, but use it in the service of the present.
While Scheffer always subordinated the material part of Art to its
expression, he was never afraid of knowing too much, but often regretted