are not deep. In the landscape his little Arab riders have the effect of flowers upon a carpet. [Illustration: _Baschet._ DECAMPS. COMING OUT FROM A TURKISH SCHOOL. (_By permission of Mme. Moreau-Nélaton, the owner of the picture._)] [Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ DECAMPS. THE WATERING PLACE.] Afterwards, when naturalism was at its zenith, Fromentin was much attacked for this wayward grace. He was accused of making a superficial appeal to the eye, and of offering everything except truth. And for its substantive fidelity Fromentin's "East" cannot certainly be taken very seriously. He was a man of fine culture, and in his youth he had studied the old Dutch masters more than nature; he even saw the light of the East through the Dutch _chiaroscuro_. His pictures are subtle works of art, nervous in drawing and dazzling in brilliancy of construction, but they are washed in rather than painted, and stained rather than coloured. In his book he speaks himself of the cool, grey shadows of the East. But in his pictures they turn to a reddish hue or to brown. An effort after beauty of tone in many ways weakened his Arab scenes. He looked at the people of the East too much with the eyes of a Parisian. And the more his recollections faded, the more did he begin to create for himself an imaginary Africa. He painted grey skies simply because he was tired of blue; he tinted white horses with rosy reflections, chestnuts with lilac, and dappled-greys with violet. The grace of his works became more and more an affair of affectation, until at last, instead of being Oriental pictures, they became Parisian fancy goods, which merely recalled the fact that Algiers had become a French town. [Illustration: MARILHAT. A HALT.]