p regretting that modern life should be so slightly represented in
the art of an epoch indued with a life so intense. There are laurels yet
to be won in the field of serious painting--triumphs such as Balzac,
Thackeray and Tourgueneff have achieved in literature, and Gavarni in
caricature, by the faithful representation of phases of modern life.

Since so many Frenchmen are converted by their early classical training
not only into citizens of Rome or of Athens, but into veritable pagans,
we naturally find the Exhibition full of gods and goddesses, of demigods
and nymphs--the _Truth_ of M. Jules Lefebvre, for instance, and his
_Vision_, losing itself in the mists of morning; the _Sarpedon_ of M.
Levy; M. Bouguereau's _Flora and Zephyr_ and _Meeting of Nymphs_; the
_Naiads_ of Henner, etc. Amongst all these mythological tableaux one's
attention is arrested by the striking productions of M. Gustave Moreau,
a remarkable union of technical ability and poetical
fancy--hallucinations of an opium-smoker who should be able to paint his
visions with all the confidence and knowledge of a master. Paul de
Saint-Victor, the eminent critic, has called these canvases "painted
dreams;" and they cannot be better described. _Hercules fighting the
Hydra of Lerna_, _Salome_, _Jacob and the Angel_, _Moses exposed upon
the Nile_, are dazzling phantoms, which, eluding the literal text of
history, recede to the depths of an unknown past. We do not think of
discussing their accuracy: we are absorbed in admiration of this
wondrous art, at once subtle and splendid, which makes us dream of lost
civilizations and buried empires. Gustave Moreau is more than a painter:
he is a magician and his pencil is an enchanter's wand.

For the rest, we have plenty of archaeological painters, who painfully
restore antiquity for us, following accurate authorities and examples.
The curiosity to know the past, which has created a literature of its
own, the researches of travellers and of learned men, the excavations
made in Greece, in Asia Minor, in Africa, at Pompeii, have led many
artists to search for new effects in this direction. Every one will
recall the circuses and the Roman scenes of Gerome. This year he
exhibits hardly anything but modern Oriental subjects--Turkish baths,
Bashi-Bazouks and lions--but his pupils have now taken the place which
their master held in 1867. Hector Leroux, one of the thousand and one
painters of this Neo-Grecian school, shows us