“A fortnight after, I was at Plevna, which had just fallen into the hands of the Russian army, and there I saw Verestchagin again. He was staying with General Skobeleff, governor of the city. The great artist was fresh from the terrible battles, and from the scenes of misery which he had seen in the camps of the Turkish prisoners, and he was projecting another series of pictures. He was therefore, with his usual passion for accuracy, taking pains to collect arms and uniforms of the enemy as models. He showed great joy when one of the officers present offered to conduct him to the place in which the spoils of the garrison of Osman Pacha were stored. By the light of a torch carried by a grenadier he rummaged a long time in this heap of Peabody-Martini rifles, covered with mud and dust, torn uniforms stained with blood, blue vests with red lacings of the Nizams, brass-buttoned tunics and red waistbands of the Redifs, etc. Next morning we separated. Verestchagin followed the column of Skobeleff in its march to Shipka; and I went to Orkanie to rejoin the corps of General Gourko.” As a war-painter Verestchagin is a great moralist, and he is a great moralist because he is quite sincere. He paints exactly what he sees on the battle-field, and he is far in advance of the French, who are the fathers of this species of composition, in his rendering of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about this bloody sport of kings. There was a whole wide world of difference in spirit between his little military gallery and the big one at Versailles. The earlier Frenchmen give us pretty uniforms, a monarch prancing on his steed in the moment of victory, an elegantly wounded warrior or two in the foreground, obviously in the act of crying, “Vive la France!” a host in picturesque flight, a host in picturesque pursuit, waving banners, and a great curtain of smoke to hide the general scene of butchery, with supplementary puffs for every disgusting detail. Verestchagin’s manner, on the contrary, passing like a breeze of wholesome truthfulness, lifts this theatrical vapour, and shows us what is below—men writhing out their lives in every species of agony by shot and bayonet wounds, by the dry rot of fever, by the wet rot of cold and damp; and finding their last glance to heaven intercepted by the crows or the vultures, waiting for a meal. All this is very shocking, but looked at in the right way it is supremely moral.