too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus,--

[Drawing omitted]

Romulus's is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all
in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond
Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michel, I don't think
would.

The little picture of "Paris and Helen," one of the master's earliest,
I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely
painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious
ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and
have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the
master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the
varnish? Girodet's pictures are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers
have universally the jaundice. Gerard's "Psyche" has a most decided
green-sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the
enthusiasm which this performance inspired on its first appearance
before the public.

In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's
dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a
man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because
no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his
talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price.
All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he
painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time
among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second
Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably,
with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft
beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing
and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black,
against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a
legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper, because more natural,
than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance: or his livid "Orestes," or
red-hot "Clytemnestra."

Seen from a distance the latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-inspiring
air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold
of a tree. On the green man's shoulders is his old father, in a green
old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and dangling
at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful
head) and a green se