one of the first of the men of the Revolution to come beneath the spell of the Little Corporal. One day, while he was working in his studio at the Louvre, a pupil rushed in breathlessly: "General Bonaparte is outside the door!" Napoleon entered in a dark-blue coat "that made his lean yellow face look leaner and yellower than ever." David dismissed his pupils, and drew, in a sitting of barely two hours, the stern head of the Corsican. Thus he passed into the service of Napoleon. This man, who viewed himself only as the coping-stone of the Republic--after the example of Augustus when he transformed the Roman Republic into the Empire--was unwilling to show any opposition to the republican tastes. The first painter of the Republic was appointed to be the Imperial Court painter. What he had been under Robespierre he was under Napoleon: the dictator of his age, who maintained a supremacy over the whole of art similar to that which Lebrun held beneath Louis XIV. The "Marat" was the great work of his revolutionary, the "Coronation" of his monarchical period,--that colossal picture which, completed between 1806 and 1807, has handed down to posterity a true representation of the ceremonial pageants that took place in Notre Dame on 2nd December 1804. The moment selected is when Napoleon places the crown, which is carried on a velvet cushion by the Duc de Berg, upon the head of the Empress, who kneels before him in a white robe and a crimson mantle. The picture contains portraits of all the personages present at the ceremony, amongst them being David himself, as he stands on a platform and sketches at a small table. The whole composition of this picture and the grouping of the figures is full of stately gravity. Real energy and patience must have been required to paint this immense picture, though it shows not the least sign of fatigue. With the exception of Menzel's "Coronation of William I," I know of no historical picture of the century of as high an artistic value, with the like noble sublimity of colour, with so tender, quivering a light. There are certain portions of the "Coronation" in which the white robes, the deep-red velvet of the mantles, and gold embroideries affect us like a symphony in colours. When the picture was completed Napoleon visited David's studio, accompanied by the Empress, his ministers, and his staff. The Court drew up, and the Emperor moved up and down in front of the picture, hat in hand, for more than half an hour, examining it in all its details. Finally, with one of those dramatic effects of which he was so fond, he lightly raised his hat: "_C'est bien, très bien; David, je vous salue_." [Illustration: DAVID. BELISARIUS ASKING ALMS.]