_Alexandre Cabanel_, the incarnation of the academician, was, under Napoleon III, the head of the École des Beaux Arts. He was a fortunate man. Born at Montpellier, the city of professors, nourished from his earliest youth on academic milk, winner of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1845, awarded the first medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, he went on his way, laden with orders and offices, amid the tumultuous applause of the public. Among the artists of the nineteenth century none attained in so high a degree all those honours which lie open to a painter in our days. Yet, as an artist, he remained all his life on the plane of the school of Ingres. Even his "Death of Moses," the first picture which he sent from Rome to the Salon, was entirely pieced together out of Raphael and Michael Angelo. After that he laid himself out to provide England and America with those women, more or less fully attired, who bore sometimes biblical, sometimes literary names: Delilah, the Shulamite woman, Jephthah's daughter, Ruth, Tamar, Flora, Echo, Psyche, Hero, Lucretia, Cleopatra, Penelope, Phædra, Desdemona, Fiammetta, Francesca da Rimini, Pia dei Tolomei--an endless procession. But the only variety in this poetical seraglio lay in the inscriptions on the labels; the way in which the figures were represented was always the same. His works are pictures blamelessly drawn, moderately well painted, which leave one cold and untouched at heart. They possess that unusual polish and that dexterity of exposition which, like good manners in society, create a favourable impression, but are insufficient in themselves to make a man a pleasant companion. Nowhere is there anything that takes hold upon the soul, nowhere any touch to prove that the artist has felt anything in his painting, or force the beholder to feel for himself. The unvarying faces of his figures, with their eternal dark-rimmed eyes, resemble not living human beings but painted plaster casts. One would take his "Cleopatra," apathetically observing the operation of the poison, to be stuffed, like the panther at her feet. One seeks in vain for a figure that is sincere or interesting, for a face alluring in its truth to nature. His "Venus" of 1862 made him the favourite painter of the Tuileries, and the insipid, rosy tints of that picture became more and more feeble in the course of years, until his works resembled wearisome cartoons, coloured by no matter what process. He was Picot's pupil, it is true, but in reality Ingres was his grandfather, a grandfather far, far greater than himself, whose portraits alone show the entire littleness of Cabanel. All his life long Ingres was in his portraits a fresh, animated, and admirable realist. Cabanel indeed also painted in his earliest days likenesses of ladies which were full of serious grace, uniting a powerful fidelity to nature with considerable elegance. But his success was fatal to him. Moreover,