Cazin possessed a strongly developed decorative sense. His contemporaries appreciated it when they gave him the supervision of the hanging of pictures at the different exhibitions and made him conservateur of the Musée du Luxembourg itself. This special sense is evident in his work, as, for example, the grouping in “L’Ours et l’Amateur des Jardins,” “La Parole de Socrate,” in the drawings and studies for his various pictures, designs which in many instances strongly suggest fresco and are Italian in their _genre_. Until 1888 his subjects had been chiefly symbolic, chosen from Biblical scenes; figures predominated in these canvases. After this period the character of his work changed, and he devoted himself to landscape painting, and as a landscapist he will pass down to fame. For Cazin chose to surround his conception of figure-painting with the very acme of his art; with the fruit of years of patience, the mystery of labour and all that his poetic soul knew of the seasons and of changing nights and days. For even in the most important canvases, where figures fill the foreground, the value of the paintings is in their backgrounds and surroundings. Take, for example, “Agar and Ismaël in the Desert.” In the picture the eye leaves the group of desolate mother and child for the country’s desolation, the arid sand world, dangerous, sinister--the parching sky, the pitiful scrub growth. The thought of the narrative is lost in Cazin’s delineation of the landscape, in the atmosphere and painting of the picture, and in its subtle composition. As a rule, for the human drama the scene is the setting, whereas with Cazin humanity _illustrates_ the text of his creation. His landscapes, his fields, meadows, dunes, deserts, are the picture, and the figures become subordinate, suggestive, taking their character from the character of the soil and country. The streets of the rustic villages have spoken to Cazin, and told him their secrets at evening time. His studies of the little town near his native village are especially lovely. These French parishes have whispered their mysteries, as twilight, slipping from gold to grey, steals down the twisting lanes. Cazin has caught [Illustration: THE VILLAGE STREET]