Let us note, however, one exception to this statement. I refer to certain painters of military scenes who have chosen to call up the spectre of the Franco-German war--Édouard Detaille, Neuville, Boulanger. These have ventured to depict one side of modern life--and an important one, alas!--modern warfare, not by showing us those episodes of classical combat where half a dozen cavaliers, mounted upon their heavy historical horses, fight hand to hand for the possession of a flag, and trample under foot a wounded wretch whose very _pose_ is traditional, but by giving us actual scenes witnessed during the autumn of 1870 and the winter of 1871--scenes often frightful, but always grandly effective and worthy of art. A sentiment of diplomatic propriety, with which the Germans were but little troubled at Philadelphia, has naturally kept these paintings out of the Champ de Mars, and banished them to Goupil's in the Rue Chaptal. We certainly do not complain of this, but we cannot help regretting that modern life should be so slightly represented in the art of an epoch indued with a life so intense. There are laurels yet to be won in the field of serious painting--triumphs such as Balzac, Thackeray and Tourgueneff have achieved in literature, and Gavarni in caricature, by the faithful representation of phases of modern life. Since so many Frenchmen are converted by their early classical training not only into citizens of Rome or of Athens, but into veritable pagans, we naturally find the Exhibition full of gods and goddesses, of demigods and nymphs--the _Truth_ of M. Jules Lefebvre, for instance, and his _Vision_, losing itself in the mists of morning; the _Sarpedon_ of M. Lévy; M. Bouguereau's _Flora and Zephyr_ and _Meeting of Nymphs_; the _Naiads_ of Henner, etc. Amongst all these mythological tableaux one's attention is arrested by the striking productions of M. Gustave Moreau, a remarkable union of technical ability and poetical fancy--hallucinations of an opium-smoker who should be able to paint his visions with all the confidence and knowledge of a master. Paul de Saint-Victor, the eminent critic, has called these canvases "painted dreams;" and they cannot be better described. _Hercules fighting the Hydra of Lerna_, _Salome_, _Jacob and the Angel_, _Moses exposed upon the Nile_, are dazzling phantoms, which, eluding the literal text of history, recede to the depths of an unknown past. We do not think of discussing their accuracy: we are absorbed in admiration of this wondrous art, at once subtle and splendid, which makes us dream of lost civilizations and buried empires. Gustave Moreau is more than a painter: he is a magician and his pencil is an enchanter's wand.