834. At that period Scheffer was engaged in some experiments in
color, and this sad subject led him to employ the dark tints of
Rembrandt. In 1850 he painted a duplicate of it, lighter and more
agreeable in tone. He painted "The Giaour" and "Medora," from Byron,
which pictures we have never seen. The wayward and morbid Muse of the
English Lord does not seem to us a fit inspiration for the pure pencil
of Scheffer.

The well-known composition of "Francesca da Rimini" may well conclude
our brief notice of the pictures of this second epoch. M. Vitet regards
it as the most harmonious and complete of all his works; but we think it
has taken less hold on the popular heart than the "Mignons" and
"Margaret." Yet it is a work of great skill and beauty. The difficult
theme is managed with that moderation and good taste which recognize the
true limits of the art. The crowd of spirits which Dante so powerfully
describes as driven by the wind without rest are only dimly seen in the
background. The horrors of hell are shown only in the anguish of those
faces, in the despairing languor of the attitude, which not even mutual
love can lighten. The love which made them one in guilt, one in
condemnation, is stronger than death, stronger than hell; but it cannot
bring peace and joy to these souls shut out from heaven and God.

"Se fosse amico il Re dell' universo,
Noi pregheremmo."

But even prayer is denied to him who feels that he has not God for a
friend. There is no mark of physical torture; it is pure spiritual
suffering,--restless, aimless weariness,--the loss of hope; it is
death,--and love demands life. How strangely appropriate is this
punishment of spirits driven hither and thither by the winds, with no
hope of rest, to those who reject the firm anchorage of duty and
principle, and allow themselves to float at the mercy of their impulses
and passions! The overpowering compassion and sympathy of the poets is
shown in their earnest faces. Neither here, nor in the well-known "Dante
and Beatrice," which is too familiar to need description, does Scheffer
quite do justice to our ideal of the sublime poet of Heaven and Hell;
but neither do the portraits which remain of him. The picture was first
exhibited in 1835. As it had suffered very much in 1850, Scheffer
painted a repetition of it, with a few slight alterations, in which,
however, his progress in his art during twenty years was very evident.
This copy is very far superio