money flowed in from all sides.

The Vernets had originated in Avignon, and in 1826, when the museum there
was opened, Horace and his father were invited to be present. Every honor
was shown them; poems were read in their praise; they were conducted to
the home of their ancestors, which they piously saluted, and inscribed
their names upon the door-posts. After they returned to Paris they
received rich gifts in return for the pictures they had given to Avignon.
The Gallery Vernet, which contains works by Antoine, Francois, Joseph,
Carle, and Horace Vernet, is regarded as a sacred place by the people of
that region.

When Horace Vernet was Director of the Academy in Rome he held _salons_
weekly; they were very gay, and all people of distinction who lived in
Rome or visited that city were seen at these receptions, dancing and
amusing themselves in the lively French manner. But after 1830 he felt
that the Villa Medici was a prison. He wished to follow the French army in
the East, and three years later did go to Algiers. In the same year the
king decided to convert the palace at Versailles into an historical
museum, and from this time Vernet had but two ideas, the East and
Versailles. Almost every work he did was connected with these two
thoughts.

Louis Philippe now desired him to paint four battle-pieces; but Vernet
objected that no room was large enough to please him: for this reason a
floor was removed, two stories turned into one, and the grand Gallery of
Battles made. At length he had a difficulty with the king and went to
Russia; but hearing that his father was dying he returned to Paris, and
was made welcome back to Versailles, where he was really necessary.

We cannot stay to recount the honors which were showered upon him, and
which he always received with great modesty of demeanor. He went from one
triumph to another until 1848, when the Revolution almost broke his heart;
he worked on, but his happiness was over. In the great Exposition of 1855
he had a whole _salon_ devoted to his works, and men from all the world
came to see and to praise. He lived still eight years; he made pictures of
incidents in the Crimean War; he painted a portrait of Napoleon III., but
he wrote of himself: "When time has worn out a portion of our faculties we
are not entirely destroyed; but it is necessary to know how to leave the
first rank and content one's self with the fourth."

His industry and the amount of work he did are simp