n, who held the
glass to his lips. '_Cher ami_!' he said, and, kissing his faithful
pupil's hands, he died. 'He died as he had lived,' says Liszt, 'in
loving.'"

[Illustration: The Death of Chopin. From painting by Felix Joseph
Barrias.]

Barrias has worthily painted the last scene in the life of Chopin. A
native of Paris, where he was born in 1822, this artist has to his
credit a long list of meritorious works which have secured him many
honours. They include the "Exiles under Tiberius," in the Luxembourg,
"The Death of Socrates," "Sappho," "Dante at Ravenna," "The Fairy of
the Pearls," "The Sirens," "The Triumph of Venus," and "Camille
Desmoulins at the Palais Royal," in addition to a number of important
decorative works. The "Death of Chopin" was exhibited in 1885. A gold
medal was bestowed upon Barrias at the Paris Exposition of 1889, when
the artist was in his sixty-seventh year. The critic, Roger Ballu,
said of him: "A painter of style, very careful of the dignity of his
art, he has never made a compromise with the taste of the day."

MEYERBEER.

Among the chief mourners at Chopin's funeral was Meyerbeer, who, though
German by birth and training, passed the most important years of his
life in Paris, as did the gifted Pole. In our picture Hamman has
represented the composer enthroned amid the characters of his chief
operas, doubtless as real to him as creatures of flesh and blood.

[Illustration: Mayerbeer. From painting by E. J. C. Hamman.]

In the foreground, at Meyerbeer's right hand, are seen Nelusko and
Selika, from "L'Africaine," his last opera, which was not produced
until the year after his death. "Vasco da Gama, the famous discoverer,
is the betrothed lover of a maiden named Inez, the daughter of Don
Diego, a Portuguese grandee. When the opera opens he is still at sea,
and has not been heard of for years. Don Pedro, the president of the
council, takes advantage of his absence to press his own suit for the
hand of Inez, and obtains the king's sanction to his marriage on the
ground that Vasco must have been lost at sea. At this moment the
long-lost hero returns, accompanied by two swarthy slaves, Selika and
Nelusko, whom he has brought home from a distant isle in the Indian
Ocean. He recounts the wonders of the place, and entreats the
government to send out a pioneer expedition to win an empire across the
sea. His suggestions are rejected, and he himself, through the
machination