In years to come visitors to Rouen will be shown with pride the little curiosity shop “Au Caprice” on the south-west side of the “Place,” from the windows of which Claude Monet evolved these world-famous paintings of Rouen Cathedral. The attitude of the press and the public in face of this glorious manifestation of a newly-created art has been, as usual, distinctly and actively antagonistic. Animosity has been pushed so far as to include threats of personal violence to the innovator, and of injury to the offending canvases. It is difficult to believe such stories amidst the recent pæans of praise and adulation. But the contemporary press of the period will prove to be a curious study in the hands of some careful historian of a future age. Readers of the “Figaro,” it may be mentioned, discontinued their subscriptions and advertisements because the band of “lunatic visionaries” were so much as mentioned in its orthodox columns. Dealers required courage in exposing for sale the “aberrations of disordered imaginations.” History monotonously repeats itself. A genius generally goes down broken-hearted to his grave before the world awakes to the value of his creations. [Illustration: MORNING ON THE SEINE · CLAUDE MONET ] [Illustration: ARGENTEUIL · CLAUDE MONET ] Paris, “la ville luminaire,” the birthplace of so many revolutions, both artistic and political, has almost invariably been hostile to any new spirit in Art. From memory one can cite many instances. In 1833, Parisians assembled that they might jeer and throw mud at Baryes’s _Le Lion_, a masterpiece now in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Rude’s great bas-relief, _Départ des Volontaires de la République_, decorating one of the pillars of the Arc de Triomphe, met with a similar reception. In 1844, the exquisite paintings of Eugene Delacroix, now in the Louvre, were greeted with a storm of ridicule. Carpeaux’s group of sculpture _La Danse_, ornamenting the façade of the Opera, was bombarded nightly with ink-pots, and the sculptor was broken-hearted when compelled to polish the figures of his magnificent _Fontaine des Heures_ facing the Observatory. Millet and the Barbizon group had small thanks to return for their reception. The frescoes of Puvis de Chavannes in the Panthéon, the Sorbonne, and the Luxembourg had to be guarded against the risk of damage from an ignorant and exasperated public. The vituperation which assailed Rodin upon the completion of his statue of Balzac is quite recent, and cannot be forgotten. Claude Monet has passed through like storms. Edouard Manet fell a victim to the fury of the attack. His physique was not strong enough to resist the continual warfare. But Monet is of stouter calibre, and has lived to see the triumph of his principles, although he has learnt to value much of the praise, nowadays lavished upon him, at its true worth.