r incident of the story for illustration, so
also would a painter of a less independent school have permitted
himself to be bound down by the historical facts of the
architectural and costume fashions of the time of narration.
Dubufe has so far discarded the unities of time and place, if
any can _really_ be said to exist--as no date was fixed in
the relation of the parable by Christ--that he has adopted the
mingled costumes of Europe and the East, which obtained in the
fifteenth century, and has placed his figures in a Corinthian
porch under the light of Italian skies. Apart from the conception
and the "telling of the story," about which there will be various
opinions, this picture may be justly regarded as a magnificent
work of art.

The great David, a pupil of whose pupil Edouard Dubufe was, and
Horace Vernet, appear to have been the guides selected by him,
rather than the greatest of his masters--Paul Delaroche. The
influence of both is to be traced in this work, although it may
be said to take rank above any production of either of them. In
drawing, color, and composition, rendering of textures, and the
exhibition of the resources of the palette, now better known to
French painters than ever before, the picture leaves nothing to
be desired. The faces of the principal figures are full of
that "expression to the life" in which the English are justly
considered to excel, while the admirable focus of the groups,
the color, and interest, are as un-English as excellent.
Fault-finding in more than one or two unimportant details would
be hypercriticism where so much is perfect, and it becomes our
happy privilege, in this notice, to commend and to point out, to
"lay" readers about Art, the manifold beauties of its technical
execution. A critical examination will show that the composition
is on the pyramidal principle, and the arrangement of groups
principally in threes. In the central portion of the canvas,
where the marble pillars of the porch fall off in perspective,
the Profligate stands holding up a golden cup in his right
hand, as in the act of proposing a toast. His red costume and
commanding figure attract the eye, and the attention falls at
once and equally on him and on the magnificent woman whose arms
embrace his neck, and whose eyes, as her chin rests close on his
breast, gaze with dangerous fascination into his face. Her dress
is of rich white satin, and, with the delicate green and gold
sheen of her rival's