Now, regard the _Muses_,--other scenes, other beauties, the same genius. Those are Pagan pictures, but Christianity is in them also, by reason of the adorable chastity with which Lesueur has clothed them. All critics have emulously shown the mythological errors into which poor Lesueur fell, and they have not wanted occasion to deplore that he had not made the journey to Italy and studied antiquity more. But who can have the strange idea of searching in Lesueur for an archeology? I seek and find in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terpsichore, well or ill named, with a harp a little too strong, it is said, as if the Muse had no particular gift, in her modest attitude the symbol of becoming grace? In that group of three Muses, to which one may give what name he pleases, is not the one that holds upon her knees a book of music, who sings or is about to sing, the most ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia that preludes just before abandoning herself to the intoxication of inspiration? And in those pictures there is brilliancy and coloring; the landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had guided the hand of his friend. Poussin! What a name I pronounce. If Lesueur is the painter of sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. He is in some sort the philosopher of painting. His pictures are religious or moral lectures that testify a great mind as well as a great heart. It is sufficient to recall the _Seven Sacraments_, the _Deluge_, the _Arcadia_, the _Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_, the _Will of Eudamidas_, and the _Dance of Human Life_. And the style is equal to the conception. Poussin draws like a Florentine, composes like a Frenchman, and often equals Lesueur in expression; coloring alone is sometimes wanting to him. As well as Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, and imitates it; but, like Racine, he always remains original. In place of the naivete and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a severe simplicity, with a correctness that never abandons him. Remember, too, that he cultivated every kind of painting. He is at once a great historical painter and a great landscape painter,--he treats religious subjects as well as profane subjects, and by turns is inspired by antiquity and the Bible. He lived much at Rome, it is true, and died there; but he also worked in France, and almost always for France. Scarcely had he become known, when Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him there, loading him with honors, and giving him the commission of first painter in ordinary to the king, with the general direction of all the works of painting, and all the ornaments of the royal houses. During that sojourn of two years in Paris, he made the _Last Supper_ (_Cene_), the _St. Francois Xavier_, the _Truth that Time frees from the Taints of Envy_. It was also to France, to his friend M. de Chantelou, that from Rome he addressed the _Inspiration of St. Paul_, as well as the second series of