This is the secret of his originality; it is also the reason of his defects-of something of hesitancy, or even contradiction, which may be noticed in some of his works. One questions whether he was not a little too learned -had not stayed a little too long, at any rate, in the company of the old masters; and whether also he was not a little too eager in the pursuit of the best, too ready to improve by modifying, too quick to admire and imitate the good in others. But nothing can be more interesting than the evolutions of this genius, ever in motion, who passes on from purely classic subjects, like the burying of a Vestal, to such work as "La Vogue" and the decorations for the Opera; and from neutral portraits in greys and browns to portraits more luminous than those of any impressionist. In portraiture Baudry stands alone with Ricard at the head of the French school in the nineteenth century.

Nowhere is the influence of the Impressionist school-the school of the open-air-more striking than in this year's Salon. "Light, more light!" is the cry of our modern painters, as of the dying Goethe. And we do not complain so long as they keep within bounds, and do not altogether lose the shadows, the chiaroscuro, the contrasts which are the charm of Nature, and without which form would be impossible. It must be recognized, moreover, that real progress is being made in truth of tone and precision of effect, that art has become more simple and more sincere, even if it is also less imaginative and less rich in ideas.

The most remarkable work in the Salon is the great decorative painting which M. Puvis de Chavannes has executed for the city of Lyons. It is composed of three parts: the centre is a lovely landscape showing the confluence of two rivers, and with two allegorical figures, the Rhone and the Saône; the left compartment contains a number of women in antique costume, grouped in various attitudes on the hill slope, while in the distance white cavaliers ride by along the shores of a gulf bathed by the azure sea. This panel is called "Vision antique." The other side shows the interior of a Florentine cloister, where a painter is at work on a fresco. This scene is entitled "Inspiration Chrétienne." Notwithstanding the somewhat grotesque forms which M. Puvis de Chavannes sometimes gives to his women, the triptych, taken as a whole, has unrivalled grace, dignity, and even grandeur. You feel yourself in the presence of a true artistic inspiration, and you bring away with you a vision of beauty. This noble creation leaves far behind it the decorative paintings-also remarkable in their various ways-of MM. Humbert, Comerre, Montenard, and De Liphard.

is

Historical painting is badly represented this year. The "Justinian" and the "Judith " of M. B. Constant, in spite of their fine qualities of colour, are cold and insipid. M. Rochegrosse's "Nebuchadnezzar " a heavy fall after two great successes. To find a really interesting historical composition you must go to the designs, and see M. O. Merson's studies for windows. The "Torquemada" of M. J. P. Laurens, however, has boldness and character; the "Battle of Champaubert," by M. Le Blant, is full of life and movement; and M. de Rixen's "Don Juan" is a touching composition.

But the historical pictures are few. Our artists have been attracted rather by modern subjects and the study of the nude. The majority of these figure-studies are ugly, commonplace, or indecent; but there is

one among them which very nearly compels you to pronounce it a masterpiece. This is a reclining figure in the foreground of a landscape by M. Raphael Collin. It is hardly possible to imagine purer and daintier outline, or more refined and harmonious colouring; and yet the impression it leaves is rather that of the exquisite than of the beautiful. It lacks the nobleness of form and attitude which is never wanting to the women of Baudry, and which clothes them with chastity.

As instances of genre painting, I may notice M. Brouillet's well composed and forcibly executed "Paysan Blessé"; two admirable studies by M. Pelez, one of a beggar-boy, and the other of a woman swooning --this last a fine example for its modelling of form; and, finally, the "Déjeûner d'Amis" of M. Cormon, a picture scintillating with force and animation, by a painter who has hitherto accustomed us to nothing but grave historical scenes.

In the "Goûter" of Jules Breton, and the "Retour du Travail" of Edelfelt, we have carefully studied figures associated with important landscape-in the one case a plain of Picardy, in the other a lake-side in Sweden. M. Breton in warm and luminous tones, M. Edelfelt in grey and silver, have given us each a faithful transcript from Nature which leaves an impression at once of strength and sweetness.

Amongst the landscapes we noticed especially the "Forêt " of M. Bernier, the sheep of M. Zuber, the "Plaine" of M. Binet, the pictures of MM. Pelouze, Japy, and Pointelin, the drawings of M. Lhermitte, and last, and most of all, the Norwegian landscapes of M. Normann, which stand out amongst all others of their kind in the room, and eclipse them all by their force, their colour, their relief. Amongst the sea-pieces, M. Courant's picture of fishing-boats in the estuary of the Seine seems to me the most remarkable. One feels in it the fresh and large sensation of the sea.

The portraits are, as always, one of the most interesting parts of the Salon. Here, again, one of the first places is due to M. Edelfelt, whose portrait of M. Pasteur in his laboratory is at once harmonious and profound. He has put into the face of the biologist, whose eyes are fixed upon a phial, the look of powerful and sustained attention and of deep reflection which marks the man who is wrestling with Nature that he may snatch her secret from her; and in the rugged features of M. Pasteur he has happily caught the expression of earnestness and solid goodness of heart which make their beauty. M. Bonnat, with all his powers as a painter, has not succeeded in getting a similar effect out of the same subject.

M. Delaunay has given us two portraits of surpassing vigour ; M. Dubois an exquisitely graceful female head; M. Lefebvre a portrait of a young woman-one of his best; M. Fantin-Latour a fine portrait of a man; M. Friant's portrait of a woman promises us a painter of the first rank in the future; and finally, M. Cabanel, who has seemed for some years past to be declining in power, has suddenly reinstated himself by a master-stroke. Never before has he reached such a height as in this admirable portrait of the foundress of the order of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Nor must we omit to notice the two pictures of M. Ary Renan, the son of the great author. These compositions, which are an attempt at the revival of the Oriental antique, have in them nothing of reality;

they are symphonies in blue and white and red, as fantastic as any of Blake's or Rossetti's; and yet they have an indisputable charm and poetry.

We should not be giving a faithful account of the movement of thought during the last few months if we failed to mention the scandal produced by M. Drumont and his "La France Juive," which has already cost him two duels and two sword wounds. This tedious allegation in two volumes is a tissue of insults and calumnies of every sort against Jews, Protestants, and Freethinkers. It would be possible to write a very interesting and curious book on the part played by the Jews in modern society, on the character they derive from their origin and history, on their peculiar virtues and essential defects. Instead of this, M. Drumont has put together, without the pretence of wit or the slightest regard for veracity, an incoherent mass of anecdotes, most of which are either false or falsified in the telling; and he adds the most impudent incitements to murder and pillage. According to him, the solution of our social problems is to be found in (so to speak) sacking the Jews' quarter. This is childish; it is insane; but it is also odious. He has, unfortuately, got what he wanted-a scandal bad enough to sell twelve editions of his book in a month.

By way of consoling ourselves after this disheartening spectacle, we may turn our eyes to the laboratory in the Rue d'Ulm, where M. Pasteur continues with unabated success his inoculations for hydrophobia. Of course the truth of his system as applied to hydrophobia is not yet scientifically established. We are still in the empirical stage. But the fact that more than a thousand persons bitten by mad dogs or wolves have been subjected to his treatment, and that out of that number only five have died, three of them from the bite of wolves, seems to place the efficacy of the method practically beyond doubt. The most conclusive fact is the immunity, so far, of sixteen out of the nineteen wolf-bitten Russians from Smolensk, since it is well known that a mad wolf's bite is almost invariably mortal. An immense subscription has been started for a Pasteur Institute in Paris, which shall be at once a hospital for persons bitten by mad beasts and a scientific establishment for the study and development of the germ theory. M. Verneuil will there carry on by the side of M. Pasteur his investigations into the causes and the cure of phthisis. This is a truly noble and encouraging spectacle, and one which may help us to forget many of the sadder aspects of our modern civilization.

G. MONOD.

CONTEMPORARY RECORDS.

GENERAL LITERATURE.

BIOGRAPHY.-The

IOGRAPHY.-The "Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons,"* edited by his wife, is a work of more than ordinary interest, because it describes a manly and genuine life governed from first to last by rare purity and elevation of purpose and a certain wise simplicity in all things. The letters contain surprisingly little that is of scientific importance, considering the originality and versatility of the writer. Their interest is almost entirely personal, as revealing, unconsciously but very distinctly, the features of a very attractive character. The events of Professor Jevons's life were only such chances and changes as happen to most men, but it is stimulating to watch the spirit in which they were successively met, and the persistency with which Jevons carries through and over them all his early-formed aim of being "a powerful good in the world." Economists are vulgarly credited with being cold and hard, but, as a matter of fact, their very subject leads them to have more care than others—not less-for the general good and for social improvement. Mackintosh said Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo were about the three best men he ever knew. There have been few purer or more disinterested characters than Mill and Fawcett; and not the least important service of these letters is that they show Jevons to have been one with these great economists in spirit as he was in faculty.-The "Memorials of the Life and Letters of Major-General Sir Herbert B. Edwardes, K.C.B," written by his wife, carry us through more stirring scenes. Sir H. Edwardes was a good type of those great soldier-administrators in whom our Indian empire has been so fertile; a man of striking heroism and resource in circumstances of unexpected danger, with a decided gift of rule, and, like so many other Indian soldiers, with a strong and active Christian faith. His life was well worth writing, and his letters contain much that will interest, but more abridgment would have been an advantage.-Joel Barlow is now an obscure enough name, but he is described on the title-page of his biography, as "poet, statesman, and philosopher," and is declared in the text to have been "the first to give American poetry a standing abroad." Spite of these rather ludicrous pretensions, Joel Barlow was one of the eminent men of the American revolutionary epoch, and his biography is an interesting book. He lived much abroad-in London, Paris, and elsewhere-in official positions,

*London: Macmillan & Co.

+ London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.

"Life and Letters of Joel Barlow, LL.D., Poet, Statesman, Philosopher: with Extracts from his Works and hitherto Unpublished Poems." By Charles Burr Todd. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

was made a citizen of France honoris causa by the National Convention, met people of importance in politics and literature, and gives us in his letters fresh peeps at some phases of public life and men in that stirring period.

TRAVEL.-In February of last year Major de Cosson left England to join the forces at Suakin, and his "Days and Nights of Service"* contain a full record of his experiences till his return in June. Sir Gerald Graham deputed him to look after the water supply, which was conveyed on the backs of camels. He was present on March 20 in the purposeless battle of Hasheen, our loss in killed and wounded being sixty-five, and the death of Captain Dalison of the Scots Guards the particular sorrow of the day. There is a full account of the memorable attack of the Arabs upon Sir John M'Neill's zareba on March 22, and it is pleasant to find Sir John vindicated from the accusation of being surprised, which even his victory could not wipe out. Major de Cosson had charge of the camels whose stampede all but caused a second Isandhlwana. The rest of the narrative is of secondary interest, the abandonment of Suakin closing this chapter of the abortive Soudan war. If the author's poetical temperament gives his prose the air of being long drawn out, his military ardour and gentleness of heart are perhaps none the less apparent.-After Froude's "Oceana "it will be difficult for some time to write on colonial subjects, and Mr. Aubertin, in his "Six Months in Cape Colony and Natal, and One Month in Tenerife and Madeira "+ inevitably suffers from unavoidable comparisons. If both tourists are verging on old age, the mental vigour of the historian is at its best, but the garrulous pleasantry of the translator of "The Lusiads" hints of the approach of St. Martin's summer. It was hardly worth while telling the universal world that the "growing popularity" of the International Hotel, Capetown "will justify Mr. O'Callaghan in building additional rooms." The author made many excursions, and gives valuable practical details about modes of conveyance, food, and other travelling experience, as well as about ostrich and other farming. He discusses the Boers, especially those of the Transvaal, with bitterness, and took the trouble of visiting Majuba Hill and other scenes of British defeat, Isandhlwana included. The Kimberley diamond mines were seen, and on the way to England he broke his voyage to climb the Peak of Tenerife. His style is good, with considerable appreciation of natural scenery; and if not put to too close a test, the book will prove both readable and useful. MISCELLANEOUS.-Mr. H. Larkyn's "Carlyle and the Open Secret of his Life," the first announcement of which excited considerable interest on account of the special footing of intimacy on which the author was known to have stood with Carlyle-will prove very disappointing. It consists mainly of a rather commonplace summary of Carlyle's successive works, and contains almost nothing drawn from the writer's own private knowledge. Even the theory which the book seems to be written to sustain-the so-called "open secret" of Carlyle's life* "Days and Nights of Service with Sir Gerald Graham's Field Force at Suakin." By Major E. A. De Cosson, F.R. G.S., Author of "The Cradle of the Blue Nile," &c. With Plan and Illustrations. London: John Murray.

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+"Six Months in Cape Colony and Natal, and One Month in Tenerife and Madeira." By J. J. Aubertin, Translator of "The Lusiads," and " Seventy Sonnets of Camoens," and Author of "A Flight to Mexico." With Six Illustrations and a Sketch Map. London Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.