beyond all dispute at the head of the French school. To-day he shows
us but one considerable work, the _Cuirassiers of 1805_, and fifteen
small pieces--very pretty things, but then he has taught his pupils to
imitate him too well! They have so often and so skilfully counterfeited
the art of their master that the dignity of his work seems lessened and
its value diluted, as it were, until for the substance we are given the
shadow, and the _tableau_ is replaced by the _tableautin_. The same
tendency to contraction is apparent in every country. Paintings are
growing smaller, as if to keep in proportion with the small modern
salons. That this is due to the great influence of M. Meissonier there
is no doubt, but no diminution of his own fame accompanies the dwindling
of his pictures.

And yet there are half a dozen painters at the Champ de Mars who lack
nothing but the golden wall to make them the equals of the master. M.
Detaille is absent, but we have M. Worms, with seven little chefs
d'oeuvre; M. Vibert, with his _Departure of the Spanish Bride and
Bridegroom_, the _Serenade_, and the _Toilette of the Madonna_; M.
Firmin Girard, with his _Flower-Girl_; M. Berne-Bellecour, in his famous
_Coup de Canon_; MM. Fichel, Lesrel, Louis Leloir and others whom I have
not space to mention, as exact and as minute in detail as their _chef_,
and, moreover, almost as well paid by amateurs, especially Americans.

Landscape-painting mourns the loss of its greatest masters. Amongst all
the painters, Death seems to have singled out the _paysagistes_ by
preference. Since the last Exhibition how many have gone! Chintreuil,
Belly, Corot, Courbet, Daubigny, Millet, Diaz, are no more. A few
canvases recall them--the _Wave_ of Courbet, an admirable effect of snow
by Daubigny, and four or five pictures by Corot--but one regrets that
the illustrious dead have not had the honor of a room apart. The members
of the jury have been careful to keep the best places for their own
works, while the masterpieces of departed genius have been banished to
the top of the walls or half hidden in corners. M. Cabanel and M.
Bouguereau fill whole rooms with their pale compositions, and--Millet is
absent!

Has the school of French landscape-painting survived these serious
losses? We may reply with confidence that it has. This very year, in the
Exposition of the Champs Elysees, the _Haymaking_ of M. Bastien Lepage
reveals a great painter. At the Champ de Mars there a