Of course, Meissonier did not come all at once to fame and prosperity. The rewards he gained were such as are earned only by hard and constant labor. When he came to Paris about the year 1832, from Lyons, where he was born, he was about nineteen years old. His parents were in humble circumstances, and would seem to have been able to do nothing to advance the lad, who arrived in Paris with little money in his pocket, and with no friends at hand. He had, however, the materials out of which friends and money are made: health, a generous spirit, energy, and a clear purpose, and with these he went to work. We do not hear much about his early life in Paris. When he first appears in sight, he is working in the same studio with Daubigny, the landscape-painter, the two painting pictures for a dollar the square yard, religious pictures probably, and probably also copies, to be sent into the country and hung up in the parish churches. Although this may have seemed like hardship at the time, yet there is no doubt it was good practice, for among artists we are told it is an accepted doctrine that in order to paint on a small scale really well, you must be able to paint on a larger. And it is said that Meissonier was in the habit all his life of making life-size studies in order to keep his style from falling into pettiness. So, after all, the painting of these big pictures may have been a useful ordeal for the artist who for the next sixty years was to reap fame by painting small ones. While he was earning a scanty living by this hack-work, Meissonier found time to paint two pictures which he sent to the Salon of 1836. One of these attracted the attention of a clever artist, Tony Johannot, who introduced him to Léon Cogniet, with whom he studied for a time, but from whom he learned but little. The mechanism of his art he had pretty well mastered already, as was shown by the Salon accepting his early pictures, and the chief advantage he gained from his stay in Cogniet's studio was a wider acquaintance with the world of artists; for Cogniet was a favorite teacher, and had a great many pupils, not a few of whom became distinguished painters. But his style of painting was not one to attract Meissonier, who was ambitious to paint like the old Dutch artists, Terburg, Metzu, Mieris, and others, who have the charm that their pictures are finished with the most exquisite minuteness, and yet treated in such a large way that, after awhile, we forget the microscopic wonder of the performance and think only of the skill the artist has shown in painting character. Meissonier was the first artist to bring back into favor the Dutch school of painting of the seventeenth century. Louis XIV., who set the fashion in everything in his day, had set the fashion of despising the Dutch painters, and the French people had never unlearned the lesson. It was Meissonier who brought back the taste, and taught the public to