for their murdered man back again, longed to look once more on the features of their truest friend. They cried to me: 'David, take up your brush, avenge Marat, so that the enemy may blanch when they perceive the distorted countenance of the man who became the victim of his love for freedom.' I heard the voice of the people, and obeyed." Thus David spoke in the Assembly when he presented the Republic with the picture of the murdered man--one of the most thrilling representations of that awful age. The body is lying in the bath. Only the naked upper part of the body, and the head, with a dirty cloth tied round it, and fallen back upon the right shoulder, are visible; one hand, resting back on the side of the bath, still holds a paper in a convulsive grip; the other hangs down limp and dead to the ground. Over this head, with the half-closed eyelids, and the mouth distorted from the death-throes, Caravaggio would have rejoiced, there is such keen naturalism in every stroke of the brush. Like Géricault, in later times, David was then a regular visitor at the Morgue, attended at executions, and took an interest in the convulsive muscular movements of the guillotined. And the colour, too, like the drawing, is of a naturalistic strength to which he never again attained. The light falls slantingly on the corpse from above and throws the head, shoulder, and one arm into strong relief, while all the rest is left in obscurity. In this awful _still-life_ of uncompromising reality and tragical grandeur he has created a work in the midst of an age of storm which will survive all storms and all changes of taste. [Illustration: _Seemann, Leipzig._ DAVID. THE RAPE OF THE SABINES.] [Illustration: DAVID. HELEN AND PARIS.]