Royal Academy, where
he had been appointed lecturer in 1848.

The consideration of the two men whose portraits face each other here,
and who stood thus opposed, during their lives, as the leaders of
all that constituted art in their time and country, takes us back to
France. Frequent returns of this character will be necessary in the
course of these papers; for, without undue prejudice in favor of
the French, it must be said that they alone have through the century
maintained a consistent attitude in regard to art. Other countries
have from time to time encouraged painting, with as frequent lapses
of interest or lack of men who could legitimately inspire interest.
Although transplanted bodily from Italy to France, in the time of
Francis the First, art had taken so firm a root by the commencement
of this century that, as we have seen, it grew and flourished though
watered by the red blood of revolution. As a national institution,
following the prescribed rules of the Academy, it has, of course,
met with frequent assaults at the hands of men for whom prescribed
academic law was as naught in comparison with the higher law of
genius. In 1819 such a man appeared, with a picture which violated the
unwritten law formulated by David: "Look in your Plutarch and paint!"

[Illustration: THE RAFT OF THE "MEDUSA." FROM A PAINTING BY GERICAULT
IN THE LOUVRE.

The frigate "Medusa," accompanied by three other vessels, left France
June 17, 1816, heading for Saint-Louis (Senegal), with the governor
and principal officers of the colony as passengers. On July 2 the
vessel stranded on a reef, and after five days of ineffectual effort
to float her, was abandoned. A raft was constructed and one hundred
and forty-nine men embarked on it, the remainder of the crew and
passengers, four hundred all told, taking to the boats. For twelve
days, the raft floated at the will of the waves and winds; then it
was sighted by one of the convoys, the brig Argus. Only fifteen men
survived. The picture represents the moment of their deliverance.]

Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault, born at Rouen, September 26,
1791, came to Paris in 1808, and entered the studio of Guerin, where
his method of painting displeased his master to such a degree that he
advised him to abandon the study of art. Guerin had thoroughly imbibed
the defects of the David method; and the spectacle of a youth who
obstinately persisted in trying to paint the model as he really
appeare