osks and regularly recurring horse-chestnut trees;
_elegantes_ at prayer, in somewhat distracted mood, on _prie-dieus_
in the vacant and vapid Paris churches; seated at cafe tables on the busy,
leisurely boulevards, or posing _tout bonnement_ for the reproduction
of the most fascinating feminine _ensemble_ in the world--owe their
charm (I may say again their "fetchingness") to the faithfulness with which
their portraitist has studied, and the fidelity with which he has
reproduced, their differing types, more than to any personal expression
of his own view of them. Fancy Beraud's masterpiece, the Salle
Graffard--that admirable characterization of crankdom embodied in a
socialist reunion--painted by an academic painter. How absolutely it would
lose its pith, its force, its significance, even its true distinction. And
his "Magdalen at the Pharisee's House," which is almost equally
impressive--far more impressive of course in a literary and, I think,
legitimate, sense--owes even its literary effectiveness to its significant
realism.

What the illustrators of the present day owe to the naturalistic method,
it is almost superfluous to point out. "Illustrators" in France are, in
general, painters as well, some of them very eminent painters. Daumier,
who passed in general for a contributor to illustrated journals, even
such journals as _Le Petit Journal pour Rire_, was not only a genius of
the first rank, but a painter of the first class. Monvel and Montenard
at present are masterly painters. But in their illustration as well as
in their painting, they show a notable change from the illustration of
the days of Daumier and Dore. The difference between the elegant (or
perhaps rather the handsome) drawings of Bida, an artist of the utmost
distinction, and that of the illustrators of the present day who are
comparable with him--their name is not legion--is a special attestation
of the influence of the realistic ideal in a sphere wherein, if
anywhere, one may say, realism reigns legitimately, but wherein also the
conventional is especially to be expected. One cannot indeed be quite
sure that the temptations of the conventional are resisted by the
ultra-realistic illustrators of our own time, Rossi, Beaumont, Albert
Lynch, Myrbach. They have certainly a very handy way of expressing
themselves; one would be justified in suspecting the labor-saving, the
art-sparing kodak, behind many of their most unimpeachable successes.
But the attit