It is the eve before the deluge, and a sunset, having no part in the morrow, most brilliant and gorgeous of aspect. To the eye of the poet or painter there is no blemish in the fair landscape. His vision rests only upon graceful palace or shining gardens. Around the fountains, over the lawns, glide the creatures of Arcadia--beautiful gentlemen in dazzling frocks and scented ruffles, toying with bejewelled sword or flicking the lid of a golden snuff-box, moving their satin limbs in obeisance to their fair partners. Sweet ladies with snowy ringlets falling upon bare shoulders, the bloom of roses in their cheeks, and the sheen of pearls on their round breasts, fluttering like butterflies amidst the flower-beds, clad in shimmering draperies, flashing in a blaze of colour. Or, in the twinkling of an eye, the picture may dissolve, to become more entrancing. My lord now trips the mead a dainty Strephon, tuning his pipes, and shaking the ribbands at his knees, while his highborn Phyllis, still wearing her powdered hair and disdainful patches, twirls her silken ankles in the graceful freedom of short frocks. What though these scenes dwell only on the canvas of the painter of Valenciennes! They are as real as were visions of angels to the dreamer Blake! In the eyes of the artist the whole of laughing France must be a fairy Arcadia such as this, for the witching Pompadour, who fulfils the thoughts of prescient Watteau, directs the dance. Then from the thicket comes the tinkle of silvery laughter, where the paths wind beneath the branches to lonely dells, through which the sunlight streams in floods of amber between the leaves. Here, amidst the gold and olive shadows, which chase each other in flickering play round some graven image of goat-faced Pan, flits a wanton lady, flying from her persistent lover, but laughing, tripping, and calling to him still, as she draws him onward. Or, in the cool grove, crowned by a wealth of ivy-tinged greenery, a sylph-like figure sweeps through the air in her velvet swing, and her shining arms, raised to grasp the ropes, throw the contours of her form into shapely pose. From the bushes beneath sounds a burst of raillery, as her swain rises to his feet, gazing with rapture as the pretty girl flies past him and returns, adoring the tiny slippers, and the silken hose that vanish in dainty curves beneath a fluttering screen of drapery. The fancy of Fragonard has painted the spirit of his age--a world full of leaves, and flowers, and sunshine, where life moves with the rhythmic cadence of the swing, where every breath is pleasure, recking naught of pain or death.