Of the pictures in this room nearly all the more important are the works of three masters--Claude and the two Poussins. It is of them, therefore, that a few general remarks will here be made. It should be noticed in the first place how very different this French School of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is from the French School of to-day. The latter school is distinguished for its technical skill, which makes Paris the chief centre of art teaching in the world, but, also, and still more markedly, for its "excessive realism and gross sensuality." "A few years ago," adds Professor Middleton, "a gold medal was won at the Paris _Salon_ by a 'naturalist' picture--a real masterpiece of technical skill. It represented Job as an emaciated old man covered with ulcers, carefully studied in the Paris hospitals for skin diseases." There could not be a greater contrast than between such art as that and the "ideal" landscapes of Claude, the Bacchanalian scenes of Poussin, or the soft girl-faces of Greuze. Confining ourselves now to Claude and the Poussins--with whom, however, the contemporary works of Salvator Rosa (in Room XIII.) should be studied, we note that in spite of considerable differences between them they agree in marking a great advance in the art of landscape painting. The old conventionalism has now altogether disappeared; there is an attempt to paint nature as she really is. There are effects of nature, too,--not shown in any earlier pictures, and here painted for the first time,--graceful effects of foliage, smooth surface of water, diffusion of yellow sunlight. In some of these effects Claude has never been surpassed; but when his pictures are more closely examined, they are often found to be untrue to the forms of nature. Trees are not branched, nor rocks formed, nor mountains grouped as Claude and Poussin represent. Their conception of landscape, and especially of its relation to human life, is governed by the "classical ideal," to which as far as possible they made their pictures approach. This "classical" landscape is "the representation of (1) perfectly trained and civilised human life; (2) associated with perfect natural scenery, and (3) with decorative spiritual powers. (1) There are no signs in it of humiliating labour or abasing misfortune. Classical persons must be trained in all the polite arts, and, because their health is to be perfect, chiefly in the open air. Hence the architecture around them must be of the most finished kind, the rough country and ground being subdued by frequent and happy humanity. (2) Such personages and buildings must be associated with natural scenery, uninjured by storms or inclemency of climate (such injury implying interruption of the open air life); and it must be scenery conducing to pleasure, not to material service; all cornfields, orchards, olive-yards, and such-like being under the management of slaves, and the superior