Albrecht Adam, who was chiefly responsible for the foundation of the Munich Union, has himself spoken clearly in his autobiography of the advantages and disadvantages of this step. "Often," he writes, "often have I asked myself whether I have done good or not by this scheme, and to this hour I have not been able to make up my mind. The cultivation of art clearly received an entirely different bias from that which it had in earlier days. What was formerly done by artistic and judicious connoisseurs was now placed for the most part in the hands of the people. Like so much else in the world, that had its advantages, but in practice the shady side of the matter became very obvious." The disadvantages were specially these: "the people" for a long time could only understand such paintings as represented a story in a broad and easy fashion; paintings which in the narrative cohesion of the subject represented might be read off at a glance, since the mere art of reading had been learnt at school, rather than those which deserved and required careful study. The demand for anecdotic subject was only waived in the case of ethnographical painting, in Italian and Oriental _genre_; for here the singular types, pictorial costumes, and peculiar customs of foreign countries were in themselves enough to provoke curiosity. What was prized in the picture was merely something external, the subject of representation, not the representation itself, the matter and not the manner, that which concerned the theme, that which fell entirely beyond the province of art. The illustrated periodicals which had been making their appearance since the forties gave a further impetus to this phase of taste. The more inducement there was to guess charades, the more injury was done to the sensuous enjoyment of art; for the accompanying text of the author merely translated the pictures back into their natural element. Painters, however, were not unwilling to reconcile themselves to the circumstances, because, as a result of their technical insufficiency, they were forced, on their side, to try to lend their pictures the adjunct of superficial interest by anecdotic additions. Literary humour had to serve the purpose of pictorial humour, and the talent of the narrator was necessary to make up for their inadequate artistic qualities. As the historical painters conveyed the knowledge of history in a popular style, the _genre_ painters set up as agreeable tattlers, excellent anecdotists: they were in turn droll, meditative, sentimental, and pathetic, but they were not painters. [Illustration: _L'Art._ BRETON. THE GLEANER.]