_Portrait of Maximilien Marie Isidore Robespierre_.--In John Morley's "Critical Miscellanies" {53} we are told that "In the Salon of 1791 an artist exhibited Robespierre's portrait, simply inscribing it _The Incorruptible_. Throngs passed before it every day, and ratified the honourable designation by eager murmurs of approval. The democratic journals were loud in panegyric on the unsleeping sentinel of liberty. They loved to speak of him as the modern Fabricius, and delighted to recall the words of Pyrrhus, that it is easier to turn the sun from its course than to turn Fabricius from the path of honour." Mr. A. G. Temple, F.S.A., has written recently that efforts have been made to identify the Salon portrait with this one, but unsuccessfully. Robespierre's ancestors were Irish people, but he was born at Arras. After a successful career as a lawyer he became a member of the States-General, and Mirabeau prophesied, "That young man believes what he says; he will go far." Carlyle has described him as "That anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future times; complexion of a multiplex, atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may be pale sea-green." He was small and weakly, fond of solitude, and sober in most things except in speech. Fluent and rhetorical, he soon won fame with the populace; but an analysis of his speeches reveals them "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The latest criticism has dubbed him "a phrase-making {54} charlatan." On July 28, 1794, still clad in the inevitable blue coat, white waistcoat, short yellow breeches, white stockings, and shoes with silver buckles, he himself perished on the guillotine that had removed so many of his enemies. _The Listening Girl_.--Another of Greuze's exceedingly pretty heads. This picture, like the _Girl's Head draped with a Scarf_ in the National Gallery, is an excellent representative of that numerous class of the artist's work that consists of the heads of girls. The face is exceedingly dainty, and the workmanship excellent. The picture forms one of the Wallace Collection, and is, therefore, easily accessible to the public. Although it is now called _The Listening Girl_, it is not certain that this title expresses the intention of the artist. [Illustration: THE BROKEN PITCHER. (La Cruche Cassée)]