and the other
barely touching it. And the lamp; ought she to let the light fall
on the eyes of Love? Ought she not to hold it apart, and to shield
it with her hand to deaden its brightness? Moreover, that would
have lighted the picture in a striking way. These good people do
not know that the eyelids have a kind of transparency; they have
never seen a mother coming in the night to look at her child in the
cradle, with a lamp in her hand, and fearful of awakening it."[42]

[42] x. 121.

There have been many attempts to imitate this manner since Diderot. No
less a person than M. Thiers tried it, when it fell to him as a young
writer for the newspapers to describe the Salon of 1822. One brilliant
poet, novelist, traveller, critic, has succeeded, and Diderot's
art-criticism is at least equalled in Theophile Gautier's pages on
Titian's Assunta and Bellini's Madonna at Venice, or Murillo's Saint
Anthony of Padua at Seville.[43]

[43] _Voyage en Italie_, 230. _Voyage en Espagne_, 330. See the same
critic's _Abecedaire du Salon de 1861_.

Just as in his articles in the Encyclopaedia, here too Diderot is always
ready to turn from his subject for a moral aside. Even the modern reader
will forgive the discursive apostrophe addressed to the judges of the
unfortunate Calas, the almost lyric denunciation of an atrocity that
struck such deep dismay into the hearts of all the brethren of the
Encyclopaedia.[44] But Diderot's asides are usually in less tragic
matter. A picture of Michael Van Loo's reminds him that Van Loo had once
a friend in Spain. This friend took it into his head to equip a vessel
for a trading expedition, and Van Loo invested all his fortune in his
friend's vessel. The vessel was wrecked, the fortune was lost, and the
master was drowned. When Van Loo heard of the disaster, the first word
that came to his mouth was--_I have lost a good friend_. And on this
Diderot sails off into a digression on the grounds of praise and blame.

[44] xi. 309.

Here are one or two illustrations of the same moralising:

"The effect of our sadness on others is very singular. Have you not
sometimes noticed in the country the sudden stillness of the
birds, if it happens that on a fine day a cloud comes and lingers
over the spot that was resounding with their music? A suit of deep
mourning in company is the cloud that, as it passes, causes the
momentary