e inviting, and flowers--I had almost said more fragrant,
so perfect is the illusion of reality.

But we must tear ourselves from these fascinating galleries, for should
we write for ever we shall always be sure to forget some celebrity who
deserves to be mentioned. We have said nothing of the scenes from
fashionable life; nor of the dogs and horses which MM. Claude and J.
Lewis Brown render so capitally; nor of the portraits of Perignon,
Edouard Dubufe and Cot; nor of the flowers of Mademoiselle Escallier.
Three great names, Jules Dupre, Rosa Bonheur and Puvis de Chavannes, are
absent--one knows not why.

Belgium is next in order--thrifty Belgium, where painting is a
commercial industry and its products an important article of
exportation. The Belgian display in the Champ de Mars is certainly a
considerable one in point of numbers, which will not surprise us when we
remember that there are at least twelve art-schools in the country--to
say nothing of the great academies of Brussels and Antwerp--where
hundreds of young men are daily drilled in the grammar and technique of
art. But genius is the gift of Nature, not of schools. All that the
latter can bestow is probably here, but we miss the imagination, the
variety, the sentiment of the born artist, and it needs no very critical
examination of these paintings to show us that the acquired dexterity of
the academy, the mere _business_ of the painter, is almost the only
characteristic of the Belgian school.

There are some examples of "high art," such as _The Pope and the Emperor
of Germany at Canossa in 1077_, by M. Cluysenaar, a composition as cold
as it is vast; some illustrations of the national history by M. Wauters,
who reminds us, in some respects, of the great French painter Laurens,
though lacking his power; and there are the historico-religious
pictures of M. Verlat. But much the best things in the Belgian
collection are the numerous works of a painter whose aims are not so
high, and who in Brussels seems like an exile from Paris. M. Alfred
Stevens draws his inspiration from fashionable life; and no Parisian
could surpass the execution of his velvets and laces and the thousand
new stuffs which Fashion invents every year--_gants de Suede_, and faces
too of a certain type, the pretty _chiffonnees_ faces of girls of every
rank in life. But the pretty faces are, after all, mere accessories in a
picture where the principals are the hat and the dress and the parasol,