riety be invited to execute a great national work in this
country, namely, in default of our having any artist at all competent to
such an undertaking, or for the purpose of introducing a superior style
of art, to correct a vicious taste prevalent in the nation. The
consideration of the first parts of this statement I leave to those who
have witnessed with what ability Mr. Flaxman, Mr. Westmacott, and the
other candidates have designed their models, and with respect to the
style and good taste of the English school. I dare, and am proud, to
assert its superiority over any that has appeared in Europe since the
age of the Caracci.

_Hoppner._

CCXXVII

(Watts is) the only man who understands great art.

_Alfred Stevens._

CCXXVIII

There is only Puvis de Chavannes who holds his place; as for all the
others, one must gild their monuments.

_Meissonier._

CCXXIX

PRUDHON

In short, he has his own manner; he is the Boucher, the Watteau of our
day. We must let him do as he will; it can do no harm at the present
time, and in the state the school is in. He deceives himself, but it is
not given to every one to deceive themselves like him; his talent has a
sure foundation. What I cannot forgive him is that he always draws the
same heads, the same arms, and the same hands. All his faces have the
same expression, and this expression is always the same grimace. It is
not thus we should envisage nature, we who are disciples and admirers of
the ancients.

_L. David._

CCXXX

ON DELACROIX

Delacroix (except in two pictures, which show a kind of savage genius)
is a perfect beast, though almost worshipped here.

_Rossetti (1849)._

CCXXXI

Delacroix is one of the mighty ones of the earth, and Ingres misses
being so creditably.

_Rossetti (1856)._

CCXXXII

ON DELACROIX

Must I say that I prefer Delacroix with his exaggerations, his mistakes,
his obvious falls, because he belongs to no one but himself, because he
represents the spirit, the time, and the idiom of his time? Sickly, too
highly strung, perhaps, since his art has the melodies of our
generation, since in the strained note of his lamentations as in his
resounding triumphs, there is always a gasp of the breath, a cry, a
fever that are alike our own and his.

We are no longer in the Olympian Age, like Raphael, Veronese, and
Rubens; and Delacroix's art is powerful, as a voice from Dante's
Inferno.

_Rousseau._

CCXXXIII

A DELA