_Gros’s_ Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa, also indicates in another way a marked modernising tendency. The school of blood and wounds, of the morbid and the ghastly, has here its forerunner. All the works in this room (which modernity forbids me to treat at adequate length) should be carefully studied in detail and comparison by those who wish to understand the various steps which led to the evolution of modern French painting. _Guérin’s_ Return of Marcus Sextus, and _Girodet’s_ Burial of Atala, in particular, mark special phases of transition from the coldly classical to the romantic tendency. This room, in one word, begins with the =severe=; it ends with the =melodramatic=. The room beyond, known as the =Salle Henri II=, is so nearly modern in tone that the reader may be safely trusted to inspect it on his own knowledge. _Giraud’s_ Slave-dealer and _Chassériau’s_ Tepidarium are its most popular pictures. It lies outside the scope of the present handbook. The =Salle La Caze=, however, still beyond, contains a collection kept separately apart by the express desire of the donor, and includes many works both of earlier schools and of the French 17th and 18th century, worthy of the greatest attention. It is especially rich in works of the =rococo= painters, better exemplified here than in the main collection. Beginning on the L, I will merely enumerate a few of the most important works. An excellent _Hondekoeter_, skied. A noble portrait by _Tintoretto_ of a Venetian magnate. A most characteristic _Fragonard_, full of the morganatic sentiment of the 18th century. Portraits by _Nattier_, affording more pleasing examples of the early 18th century style than those we have hitherto examined. Above it, a mediocre _Tintoretto_ of Susanna at the Bath, not good in colour. Centre of the hall, =*=_Watteau’s_ Gilles, an excellent embodiment of the innocent fool of traditional French comedy. =*=_Frans Hals’s_ sly figure of a Gipsy Woman is a fine piece of vulgar character-painting. A good _Greuze_, etc. Examine more particularly the works by _Watteau_, _Fragonard_, and other boudoir painters, whose pictures on this wall give a more pleasing and fuller idea of the temperament of their school than that which we obtained in other parts of the collection. R wall returning—several good _Watteaus_, _Bouchers_, _Greuzes_, etc. Excellent small Dutch pictures. Fine portrait by _Rembrandt_. Rembrandt’s Woman at the Bath is a characteristic example of his strikingly original conception of the nude. _Ribera’s_ Club-footed Boy is a Spanish pendant to Frans Hals’s Gipsy. This room, containing as it does very mixed examples of all the schools, should only be visited after the spectator has obtained some idea of each in other parts of the collection. Its Dutch works, in particular, are admirable. I do not enumerate them, as enumeration is useless, but leave it to the reader to pick out for himself several fine examples.