ach
stroke of the pencil seems to hide a grief, each figure speaks to you in
passing, and utters a complaint, a sigh, a prayer,--sad echoes of the
despair of life! The religious tendency of the thinker is here fully
shown; his poetic sympathy, his aspirations, his dreams, have found a
free course. We must mark, also, with what freedom his lamentations
spring from the ground, to carry even to the feet of the Creator the
overwhelming weight of earthly woe. Ary Scheffer's picture is like the
epitaph destined some day for the obsequies of the world; it breathes of
death, and has the sombre harmony of the Miserere. And nevertheless,--a
strange thing!--this dreaming painter, who seizes and afflicts us, is
the same man who at the same time reassures and consoles us,--without
doubt, because by dint of spiritualizing our thoughts he raises them
above our sufferings, by showing the consoling light of eternity to
those whom he would sever from the deceitful joys of earth."

If the picture be not overcolored by the critic's eye, we must believe
this to be the culmination of the morbidly spiritualistic tendency which
we meet in Scheffer's works. Yet it never exists unrelieved by redeeming
qualities. Many will remember the original picture of the "Dead Christ,"
which was exhibited here by an Art Union about ten years ago. The
engraving gives but a faint idea of the touching expression of the whole
group. The deathly pallor of the corpse was in strange harmony with the
face of the mother which bent over it, her whole being dissolved in
grief and love. No picture of this scene recalls to us more fully the
simple account in the Gospels. The cold, wan color of the whole scene
seems like that gray pall which a public grief will draw across the sky,
even when the meridian sun is shining in its glory. We have seen such
days even in Boston. No wonder that darkness covered the land to the
believing disciples even until the ninth hour.

His "St. Monica," which appeared in 1846, met with great success. "Ruth
and Naomi" is yet unknown to us, but it seems to be a subject specially
adapted to his powers. Of those works which he produced within the last
twelve years, very few are yet engraved. When thus placed before the
public, we believe the popular estimate of Scheffer will be raised even
higher than at present.

His pictures of Christ are of very superior merit. His representation of
the person of Jesus was not formal and conventional, but fr