and of ours; and everywhere the
spectre of Death mocks and threatens and triumphs. From a single picture
only, is it absent. It is that one in which Lazarus, the poor man, lying
on a dunghill at the rich man's door, declares that he does not fear
Death, doubtless because he has nothing to lose and his life is
premature death.

Is that stoicist idea of the half-pagan Christianity of the Renaissance
very comforting, and do devout souls find consolation therein? The
ambitious man, the rascal, the tyrant, the rake, all those haughty
sinners who abuse life, and whom Death holds by the hair, are destined
to be punished, without doubt; but are the blind man, the beggar, the
madman, the poor peasant, recompensed for their long life of misery by
the single reflection that death is not an evil for them? No! An
implacable melancholy, a ghastly fatality, overshadows the artist's
work. It resembles a bitter imprecation upon the fate of mankind.

There truly do we find the grievous satire, the truthful picture of the
society Holbein had under his eyes. Crime and misfortune, those are what
impressed him; but what shall we depict, we artists of another age?
Shall we seek in the thought of death the reward of mankind in the
present day? Shall we invoke it as the punishment of injustice and the
guerdon of suffering?

No, we have no longer to deal with Death, but with Life. We no longer
believe either in the nothingness of the tomb or in salvation purchased
by obligatory renunciation; we want life to be good because we want it
to be fruitful. Lazarus must leave his dunghill, so that the poor may no
longer rejoice at the death of the rich. All must be happy, so that the
happiness of some may not be a crime and accursed of God. The husbandman
as he sows his grain must know that he is working at the work of life,
and not rejoice because Death is walking beside him. In a word, death
must no longer be the punishment of prosperity or the consolation of
adversity. God did not destine death as a punishment or a compensation
for life; for he blessed life, and the grave should not be a refuge to
which it is permitted to send those who cannot be made happy.

Certain artists of our time, casting a serious glance upon their
surroundings, strive to depict grief, the abjectness of poverty,
Lazarus's dunghill. That may be within the domain of art and philosophy;
but, by representing poverty as so ugly, so base, and at times so
vicious and criminal a