His contributions to _Harper’s Weekly_, though somewhat tamely precise in drawing, gave with much spirit the character as well as the episodes of camp life. Subsequently, on his own behalf, he paid two more visits to the Army of the Potomac, during which he put in practice what he had learned of painting, finally producing “Prisoners from the Front.” This picture, shown at the exhibition of the National Academy in 1864, made a profound impression. Popular excitement was at fever heat, so the picture fitted the hour; but it would not have enlisted such an enthusiastic reception if it had not approximated in intensity to the pitch of the people’s feeling. It has, in fact, the elements of a great picture, quite apart from its association with the circumstances of the time: a subject admirably adapted to pictorial representation, explaining itself at once, offering abundant opportunity for characterization, and in its treatment free from any triviality. On the contrary, the painter has felt beyond the limits of the episode itself the profound significance of the struggle in which this was but an eddy, and in the generalization of his theme has imparted to it the character of a type. It is at this point that the true artist parts company with the mere practitioner, however accomplished. His work is more than of local and temporary interest; it has a savour, at least, of the universal, which keeps its significance from perishing. The savour need not necessarily be serious; it may be, as in Watteau’s case, a distillation of the elegance of life; but with Homer its seriousness was inevitable, his temperament seeming to require a ground-bass of motive, grand and solemn. So when he occupies himself with character pictures, drawn from country life, they are comparatively trivial. He cannot, like Millet or Israels, discover the fundamental note of humanity beneath the individual. That note may be solemn enough, but it is not big enough in a forceful way to awake his imagination. His pictures of this genre are shrewdly studied and reasonably good in characterization; but, being detached from any background of big intention, their interest is merely local, and they are not done with that ease and style which might secure them technical distinction. But while waiting for the fountain of his motive to be again moved, how commendable it is that he did not set to work to repeat his success of the “Prisoners from the Front,” as a smaller man would have been tempted to do!