From the engraving it is hard to suspect the mediocrity of Callet's picture. This, now at Versailles, is insipidly coloured and loosely and clumsily drawn; the print, on the contrary, is to be admired for its solid appearance, and its easy yet unostentatious handling. Lace, satin, velvet, all accessories, indeed, are treated with a largeness of touch by no means at variance with delicacy, and the general tone is harmoniously luminous. Here and there, however, is already visible a certain artifice of manner which threatens to degenerate into an unwise cultivation of fine line, and end in an abuse of skill. This, indeed, is what happened. Bervic, henceforth, thought of little else but dexterity, and ended in his "Laocoon," perhaps the best known of all his works, by a display of common technical fireworks, to a certain extent surprising, but by no means to be unreservedly admired. The care with which he set himself to imitate the grain of marble by minute workmanship is only trifling with his subject; and though a group of statues cannot be treated in the same way as figures painted on canvas, it was more important, and more desirable in every respect, to reproduce the character and style of the original than to imitate the substance in which it was wrought. Moreover, in the attempt so to interpret his model, Bervic has defeated his own purpose. By a multitude of details, and an abuse of half-lights intended to bring out the slightest accidents of form and modelling, he has only succeeded in depriving the general aspect of brilliancy and unity. Far removed, indeed, was such a method from that of the Old Masters, and Bervic lived long enough to change his mind. "I have missed the truth," he declared in his old age, "and if I could begin life again, I should do nothing I have done." There he wronged himself. As happens often in tardy repentances, he remembered past errors only to exaggerate them; but we must be juster to the engraver of the "Louis XVI." and "L'Éducation d'Achille" than he was to himself, and not forget that much of his work should be excluded from the sweeping condemnation which he launched upon the whole.