des Deux-Mondes"), he would appear to have been
by nature prepared to receive the full academic tradition, and
only because of what appeared a violation of the tradition _as he
understood it_, to have arrayed himself in violent opposition: a
situation which rendered him in work and in life contradictory to his
natural instinct. It is the old story of the defect of system. Even
the most cunningly devised cannot make a place for all the many
manifestations of temperamental activity. Like Gericault, a pupil of
Guerin, Delacroix found in his master and in the general spirit of
the school an insistence on the letter of the classic law to which his
richly endowed nature could not bend, and was thus forced to rebel;
whereas a more elastic application of received principles would have
found him an enthusiastic adherent. In this way he missed acquiring
the technical mastery over form, which proved a stumbling block to him
through life. At times his drawing is possessed of a vigor and life
which even Ingres never had; at others his work is almost lamentable
in its lack of constructive form. In respect to color in its finest,
most harmonic qualities, he is the greatest of French painters; and
at all times he is master of an intense dramatic force. It was with a
masterpiece--"Dante and Virgil"--that he made his first appearance at
the Salon in 1822. At a bound he found himself famous. Guerin, who had
counselled him against sending his picture to the Salon, grudgingly
acknowledged that he was wrong. Gros told him that it was like Rubens,
with more correctness of form--Rubens "chastened" was the word. The
government bought the picture, paying the artist two hundred and forty
dollars--twelve hundred francs--for it.

The same year Delacroix submissively made his final attempt for the
Prix de Rome, but came out sixtieth in the competition. Thenceforward
he was to be constantly before the public, constantly opposed,
misunderstood, criticised; but nevertheless, with all the energy which
shows in his portrait, constantly in the front. When his defenders had
sufficient influence to force the hand of the ministry of fine arts,
he was commissioned to paint for the state; and to this we owe the
decorations in the gallery of Apollon in the Louvre, the decorations
in the church of St. Sulpice, and others. When he received the order
for the entrance of the Crusaders to Constantinople for the Gallery of
Battles at Versailles, the good King Louis