The Romantic fever begins to seize the century. The painters hasten to hang round them the botanical box, and seek the blue flower. The first to go forth into the moon-illumined, witching night was Chassériau! Poor Chassériau! It would have better suited his bent to paint _salons_ with rich Empire-furniture, wherein respectably dressed citizens sit with their wives and daughters, and pleasantly tell each other the anecdotes of the day. His portrait of the two sisters in red shawls and yellow plaited dresses shows this—a neat, pretty, _bourgeois_ painting, which denies itself all enthusiasm, and all soaring. But now the tarantula stings him, and he occupies himself only with obsolete subjects such as Orpheus, _châtelaines_, fairy-tale princesses with black slaves, Macbeth and the three witches. The last picture is particularly characteristic of him. The three witches have their white beards and pointed noses, as prescribed by the romantic code; but they are merely grotesque, but not in the least weird. We have the impression that they have met in a peaceful country in order to gossip about their neighbours, and make coffee. They publicly proffer the knight, who should be Macbeth, a small bowl. The heath by night lacks every trace of mood; the ugly old women every touch of the demoniac. Chassériau painted, just as J. Fr. Kind—the [“Freischütz”] Kind—wrote poetry. I am afraid I must likewise be guilty of heresy in respect of another great man; but Delacroix, too, fails to justify the idolatry people have displayed and, to some extent, still display towards him. I do not misjudge his joyous coloriture, although his harmonies are rather loud than grand. I am not blind to the characteristic mobility of his composition, although it is generally far more a stagey flourish than assertion of strength in the service of a will conscious of what it is aiming at. What excites in me, however, unconquerable opposition is his phrasing. If any art demands intuition it is painting. Delacroix, however, usually has not exercised intuition, but has clothed with the cool work of his brain abstract thoughts in conventional forms. For this, look at “Greece expiring on the Ruins of Missalonghi”—a picture which was once of enormous influence and highly praised. On some disordered masonry stands a young lady in the _bal masqué_ dress of a Greek, who has no thought of giving up the ghost, but is playing a part in robust health, and will change her dress, and have supper later. At some distance behind her we catch sight of a young negro in the uniform of a Janissary, climbing a rubbish heap, brandishing a flag with a crescent on it, and a curved sabre. This slightly painted Turkish warrior appears not to see the young Greek girl; at all events he does nothing to her, and does not even threaten her. There is no association between the two figures; the action is disconnected. At most the Turk is interesting as an acrobat or banner-swinger. No murderous