the ship’s pet whose queer habits and tragic death by falling overboard before Meryon’s eyes are graphically described in one of his letters quoted at length in Burty’s memoir. Long afterwards, in conversations with Burty, Meryon used to say how his thoughts dwelt on the rocky coast of New Caledonia, where “he had met a race of savages, handsome, heroic, intelligent, where he had breathed an air overladen with balm, where, if he could, he should like one day to return to finish life free and happy.” On the return of _Le Rhin_ in 1846 Meryon received six months’ leave and returned to Paris. He had scruples about his constitution being strong enough for the profession of a sailor; he neglected to ask for an extension of his leave, and in the end his resignation was accepted and he left the Service on September 17th, 1846. He was then in possession of a sum of 20,000 francs left to him by his mother. He took a studio and had lessons from a painter named Philippe. He has recorded his enthusiasm at this time for the pictures of Delacroix, Decamps and Hogarth, whose work he had seen during a short visit to England. After some experiments in allegory, inspired by the proclamation of the republic at the February revolution, he abandoned painting for engraving, and entered the studio of the etcher, Eugène Bléry, in 1848. A circumstance which affected this decision was the discovery that his eyesight suffered from the defect known as Daltonism, a partial colour-blindness. THE EARLY ETCHINGS Bléry as an etcher has little interest for us, but he was sufficiently skilled to impart in six months a sound technique to a pupil, whose interest in the art was fostered by the study of old etchings and especially those of the Dutch etcher of architecture and marine subjects, Renier Zeeman (1623-1663), which he used to pick up for a few sous in the boxes outside the printsellers’ shops. Meryon’s first etching of all was a head of Christ, founded on a miniature after Philippe de Champaigne; the only impression known of this etching is in the Howard Mansfield collection at New York. During the years 1849-50 he produced a number of copies after Loutherbourg, Salvator Rosa, Karel du Jardin and others, but Zeeman fascinated him above all in the double capacity of an etcher of marines and of views of old Paris, and it was from his style that he learnt most. While still with Bléry his mind is said to have been slightly unhinged by an unfortunate love affair with the daughter of a restaurant keeper, who would have nothing to say to him. In solitary wanderings about the old streets of Paris and meditations in his garret in the Rue St. Etienne-du-Mont, he formed plans for his series of etchings of old Paris and began to make studies for them. As early as 1850 one of these masterly plates, _Le Petit Pont_ (plate 7), was finished.