Historical painting, unfortunately, can never be adequately represented at exhibitions. Designed for the civil and religious monuments of France, whence, from the nature of the case, they cannot be removed, its most important illustrations are to be found at the Opéra, at the Palace of Justice and of the Legion of Honor, at the museums of Marseilles and of Amiens, the Hôtel de Ville of Poitiers, and in the numerous churches of Paris and throughout the country. The immense work which Baudry has executed for the foyer of the Opéra is absent from the Exhibition, and this great painter, whom some consider the first of his time, is not represented at the Champ de Mars by even a sketch. Fortunately, the Palace of Justice has parted with two principal works of Léon Bonnat, his _Christ_ and _Justice between Guilt and Innocence_. The Panthéon has permitted the exhibition of the large decorative paintings in which Cabanel has represented the principal episodes of the history of St. Louis. But the largest historical canvases on the walls of the gallery are those by J.P. Laurens, belonging to the museums of Florence, of Havre, of Nantes and of Toulouse. Laurens delights in the Middle Ages, gloomy and stately periods of ecclesiastical domination and feudal violence. He is the painter of tortures and of tombs (the _Exhumation of Pope Formosus_, _The Interdict_, _Francis Borgia before the Coffin of Isabella of Portugal_), but his vigorous and severe genius never suffers him to fall into overstrained action and theatrical artifice. He does not move us by declamatory gestures and forced attitudes. Nothing can be more simple, yet nothing more affecting, than the _Execution of the Duc d'Enghien_ and the _Death of Marceau_. Many young artists are following this new path, which has opened such success to M. Laurens. MM. Cormon, Dupain (in his _Good Samaritan_), Benjamin Constant (_Entry of Mohammed II. into Constantinople_), and Sylvestre (_Locusta and Nero trying a Poison_) have sent to the Champ de Mars the fine historical compositions that gained for them the first medals and the prize of honor at the last Salons. M. Tony Robert-Fleury has two vast canvases, the _Sack of Corinth_ and the _Reform of the Mad-house in 1795_--large and admirable compositions, which engraving has already made popular. Of course we find M. Landelle's inevitable _Eastern Dancing-Girl_, and an _Italian Woman_ by M. Hébert. There could be no exhibition without these. These two painters have talent, individuality, delicacy of feeling, but they are absolutely without imagination. M. Hébert, in particular, has learned nothing since his _Malaria_, which has been for a long time at the Museum of the Luxembourg. He has not discovered, nor even sought for, anything beyond this; and this eternal repetition of the same subject is a malady which afflicts too many of the artists of our day. One no longer distinguishes between the pictures of certain of our popular painters. Even M.