I have said that there are many portraits at the Exhibition, but I do not mean to complain of this. Indeed, we cannot too highly applaud the revival of this noble branch of art, to which we owe the _Joconde_ of the Louvre and the _Violin-player_ of the Sciarra Palace. Many a fair young girl unknown to fame, many a matron whose quiet life will pass unheeded by the world, will by her portrait enter into immortality. Torn, sooner or later, from the family roof and carried to a museum, there to be gazed upon by thousands of eyes, her smile or her reverie will recall for generations to come that sigh of Sénancour's: "O woman that I might have loved!" It is doubtful if this regretful tribute to genius--which may perhaps some day be heard before the portraits of Henner, of Bonnat or of Madrazzo--will ever be inspired by those of M. Carolus Duran. This artist is the painter of elegant trifles and worldly vanities, of grand and striking toilettes, of blondes in violet and yellow and brunettes in gray and rose, for, like M. Worth the man-milliner, it pleases his fancy to attempt the reconciliation of the most inimical colors. For the rest, the future will no doubt owe him a debt of gratitude for the precious evidence which his pictures will furnish of the dress of the period. Indeed, without the help of certain of our portrait-painters future investigators would find themselves sadly at a loss in reconstructing the Paris of Napoleon III. and of the Third Republic. We are so much under the influence of the past that our artists scarcely have the sentiment of the civilization which surrounds them. Our colleges send us into the world, not Frenchmen, but Greeks and Romans, knowing nothing of modern life, and inspired by our classical studies with a profound contempt for the manners and usages of the present day. Our statues, bas-reliefs, medals and pictures represent the events of all ages except our own. The attempts in the direction of realism of these latest days, the paintings of Courbet and Manet, seem, by a sort of instinctive preference, to seek out the _ugly_, rather than to give us an exact reproduction of contemporaneous Nature. Some of our genre painters--Millet, for example, and Jules Breton--have, it is true, studied the actual and the modern, but their types are all taken from the rustic class, and it is safe to say that outside of portraiture neither the men nor the women of the world will leave a trace upon the art of the period.