lived crayon in hand. He is the first of a long line of newspaper
illustrators. His profession was soldiering, and legend has it that he
accompanied Byron to Missolonghi. The official career of his father
enabled the youth to see much of the world--Greece, the Balkans,
Turkey, Persia, and perhaps India. On returning to France he became an
officer of dragoons and for some time led the life of a dandy and man
about town. With his memory, of which extraordinary tales are told, he
must have stored up countless films of impressions, all of which were
utilised years later.

In 1845 we find him installed at Paris, though no longer in the army.
Then it was he began to design. He became contributor to many
periodicals, among the rest the _Illustrated London News_ and _Punch_.
For the former journal he went to the Crimean war as accredited art
correspondent. The portfolio containing the Crimean set is now most
sought for by his admirers. He is said to have originated the
expression "taken on the spot," in the title of one of his
instantaneous sketches. Few draughtsmen could boast his sure eye and
manual dexterity. The Balaklava illustration is as striking in its way
as Tennyson's lines, though containing less of poetic heroism and more
ugly realism. Like the trained reporter that he was, Guys followed a
battle, recording the salient incidents of the engagement, not
overemphasising the ghastliness of the carnage, as did Callot or Goya
or Raffet, but telling the truth as he saw it, with a phlegm more
British and German than French. Though he had no Dutch blood in his
veins, he was, like Huysmans, more the man of Amsterdam than the man
of Paris. He noted the changing and shocking scenes of hospital life,
and sympathy without sentimentality drops from his pen. He is drily
humorous as he shows us some plumaged General peacocking on foot, or
swelling with Napoleonic pride as he caracoles by on his horse. And
such horses! Without a hint of the photographic realism of a Muybridge
and his successors, Guys evokes vital horses and riders, those seen by
the normal vision. The witching movement of beautiful Arabian steeds
has not had many such sympathetic interpreters.

In Turkey he depicted episodes of daily life, of the courts of the
Sublime Porte itself, of the fete of Bairam, which closes the fast of
Ramadan. His Turkish women are not all houris, but they bear the stamp
of close study. They are pretty, indolent, brainless creatures. In