The 'Book of Truth' is in possession of
the Duke of Devonshire, and has been employed in recent years with
reference to the end for which it seemed designed, so woe to that
country-house which has long pride that 'Claude' does not happen to have
a place in the 'Book of Truth,' though I do not know that it is at all
certain that Claude took the precaution of inscribing _every_ painting
which he painted after a certain date in the 'Book of Truth.'

Claude Lorraine is well represented in the National Gallery. Engravings
of his pictures are common.

Charles le Brun was born in Paris, in 1619. He was trained to be a
painter, and went young to Rome, studying there for six years under the
guidance of Nicolas Poussin. Le Brun returned to Paris, and, through the
patronage of the Chancellor Segnier, was introduced to the court, and
got the most favourable opportunities of practising his profession with
worldly success. He speedily acquired a great name, and was appointed
painter to the King, Louis XIV. Le Brun had enough influence with his
royal master, and with the great minister Colbert, to succeed in
establishing, while the painter was yet a young man, the Royal Academy
of Art, of which he was the first member, and virtually the head,
holding, in his own person, the directorship of the Gobelin tapestry
works, which was to be the privilege of a member of the Academy. Le Brun
continued in the utmost favour with the King, who, not content with
employing the painter largely at Fontainebleau and in Versailles,
invested him with the order of St Michael, bestowed on him letters of
nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there
were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the Grand Monarque to the
Emperor Charles V., and Le Brun to Titian.

Le Brun seems to have been a man of energy, confidence, and industry,
neither mentally before nor after his time, and by no means too
retiring, meditative, or original, to fail to profit by his outward good
fortune. He wrote, as well as painted, artistic treatises, which were
received as oracular utterances, and entirely deferred to in the schools
of his day. He died at Paris in 1690, when he was in his seventieth
year.

Le Brun's real merits as a painter were limited to respectable abilities
and acquirements, together with florid quickness and ease, and such an
eye to what was splendid and scenic as suited admirably a decorator of
palaces in an age which prized sumptuous