Horace Vernet had a “Mazeppa,” of course a big modern battle, and several likenesses. He is as popular as on the first day, and will always remain so as long as children play with tin soldiers and the picture sheets of Epinal—the French Neu-Ruppin—find a ready sale. How he dazzles! He does so to a degree which deserves admiration. From a distance his pictures appear to be something; one must look at them quite closely to see that they are nothing, absolutely nothing. The colossal canvas is apparently full of men: thousands of soldiers march, encamp, storm, fight; but, as a matter of fact, not a single figure is painted; the whole pomp of war and victory is composed of little stencilled gingerbread men, without any bones in their bodies, and with scarcely the remotest resemblance to human beings. Could Horace Vernet draw? Had he really any other conception of the human form than that of an inflated india-rubber figure? In Paris and Versailles I have seen many paintings by him, but I cannot yet answer these questions. Horace Vernet is the fourth of a dynasty of painters: the first, Antoine, was great at little figures on sedan-chair panels; the second, Joseph, painted the well-known series of French harbours; the third, Carle, is a master in depicting horses; Horace, the fourth, is the weakest of them all, incomparably inferior in ability to his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He alone, however, has attained fame, and his renown throws his ancestors into the shade. The wheel of fortune now and then plays immoral jokes of this sort, perhaps in order to teach its own futility.