Alfred Sisley was one of the most renowned amongst that group of realists to which I alluded in my foregoing appreciation of the Caillebotte room in the Luxembourg Museum. He, too, like his companions—Manet and Monet, Pissarro and Renouard—was a rebel against traditions, and a preacher of new gospels. He also denied old idols with fine disdain, and preached doctrines that seemed to him to embrace in themselves the whole truth. He managed, indeed, to collect a few convinced disciples, but, on the other hand, hardly any congregation about his altar or pulpit; and this was due simply to the sobriety and uncongeniality of his dogmas, which failed to satisfy the cravings for æsthetic devotion of the faithful. Sisley was a landscape painter. He was purely this, to the exclusion of every admixture. He never introduced a human figure, and, so far as I remember, only one of an animal, into his paintings. The only life that moved and stirred in them was that of atmosphere: the play of lights, of their refractions, of their coloured dust, of their vanishing in shadows and darkness of various depths. Even the vegetable world, though one of the most important elements in academical landscape painting, he treated slightingly. He had no respect for the attractive individuality of a tree. It interested him at most as an object in his field of view, which catches and diverts the beams of the sun in a particular way. He saw nothing of the marvels of colour and form of the minute life, that is displayed in a piece of turf, a bush, or underwood, and reveals to the thoughtful and experienced eye the whole nature-tragedy of the struggle for existence: the despairing striving in the various plants for air and light, or moisture and shade; the victorious domination of one or several species; the meek supplication for mercy of single scattered flowers or plants; the defeat and flight of families unable to maintain their position against superior antagonists; the intrusion of bold strangers demanding for themselves a place among the old settlers; the confederacies of friendly groups that reside together and trust each other; the single combats of enemies seeking to throttle and uproot one another. He who has never gazed deeply into nature perhaps regards all these pictures of combat and triumph as mere phrases, corresponding to nothing real. The biologist of plants knows better, to be sure, and many a landscape painter too; so did the first English Præ-Raphaelites especially. However unbearable their vagaries and perversions may be—on these I will not enter now—this one thing must be said in their praise: they understand and love plant-life. For them every grass and herb, to say nothing of those lords, the trees, has a physiognomy, a personal mystery, which they know how to unriddle, and reveal, or, at any rate, indicate. Of all this Sisley knows nothing. For him a grassy mead is a plain of colours with gradations, starred with varied patches; always a mere study of