The route to the East was shown to the English by the glowing landscapes of _William Müller_; but the English were just as unable to find a Byron amongst their painters. _Frederick Goodall_ has studied the classical element in the East, and endeavoured to reconstruct the past from the present. Best known amongst these artists was _J. F. Lewis_, who died in 1876 and was much talked of in earlier days. For long years he wandered through Asia Minor, filling his portfolios with sketches and his trunks with Oriental robes and weapons. When he returned there was a perfect scramble for his pictures. They revealed a new world to the English then, but no one scrambles for them now. John Lewis was exceedingly diligent and conscientious; he studied the implements, the costumes, and the popular types of the East with incredible industry. In his harem pictures as in his representations of Arabian camp life everything is painted, down to the patterns of embroidery, the ornaments of turbans, and the pebbles on the sand. Even his water-colours are triumphs of endurance; but patience and endurance are not sufficient to make an interesting artist. John Lewis stands in respect of colour, too, more or less on a level with Gentz. He has seized neither the dignity of the Mussulman nor the grace of the Bedouin, but has contented himself with a faithful though somewhat glaring reproduction of accessories. _Houghton_ was the first who, moving more or less parallel with Guillaumet, succeeded in delicately interpreting the great peace and the mystic silence of the East. [Illustration: W. MÜLLER. PRAYER IN THE DESERT.] The East was in this way traversed in all directions. The first comers who beheld it with eager, excited eyes collected a mass of gigantic legends, with no decided aim or purpose and driven by no passionate impulse, merely eager to pluck here or there an exotic flower, or lightly to catch some small part of the glamour that overspread all that was Eastern, piled up dreams upon dreams, and gave it a gorgeous and fantastic life. There were deserts shining in the sun, waves lashed by the storm, the nude forms of women, and all the Asiatic splendour of the East: dark-red satin, gold, crystal, and marble were heaped in confusion and executed in terrible fantasies of colour in the midst of darkness and lightning. After this generation had passed like a thunderstorm the _chic_ of Fromentin was delicious. He profited by the taste which others had excited. Painters of all nationalities overran the East. The great dramas were transformed into elegies, pastorals, and idylls; even ethnographical representations had their turn. Guillaumet summed up the aims of that generation. His dreamy and tender painting was like a beautiful summer evening. The radiance of the blinding sky was mitigated, and a peaceful sun at the verge of the horizon covered the steppes of sand, which it had scorched a few hours before, with a network of rosy beams.