Delaroche approached somewhat nearer to the present, for he advanced from antiquity and the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century; and the historical picture, invented by him, virtually dominated French art under Napoleon III, in union with the dying Classicism. Even then there was no painter who yet ventured to portray the manners and types of his age with the fresh insight and merciless observation of Balzac. All those scenes from the life of great cities, their fashion and their misery, which then began to form the substance of drama and romance, had as yet no counterpart in painting. [Illustration: ROWLANDSON. HARMONY.] [Illustration: BUNBURY. RICHMOND HILL.] The Belgians preserved the same silence. During the whole maturity of Classicism, from 1800 to 1830, François, Paelinck, van Hanselaere, Odevaere, de Roi, Duvivier, etc., with their coloured Greek statues, ruled the realm of figure painting as unmitigated dictators; and amongst the historical painters who followed them, Wappers, in his "Episode," was the only one who drew on modern life for a subject. There was a desire to revive Rubens. Decaisne, Wappers, de Keyzer, Bièfve, and Gallait lit their candle at his sun, and were hailed as the holy band who were to lead Belgian art to a glorious victory. But their original national tendency deviated from real life instead of leading towards it. For the sake of painting cuirasses and helmets they dragged the most obscure national heroes to the light of day, just as the Classicists had done with Greeks and Romans. German painting wandered through the past with even less method, taking its material, not from native, but from French, English, and Flemish history. From Carstens down to Makart, German painters of influence carefully shut their eyes to reality, and drew down the blinds so as to see nothing of the life that surged below them in the street, with its filth and splendour, its laughter and misery, its baseness and noble humanity. And from an historical point of view this alienation from the world is susceptible of an easy explanation. [Illustration: LEECH. THE CHILDREN OF MR. AND MRS. BLENKINSOP.] [Illustration: LEECH. LITTLE SPICEY AND TATER SAM.]