In Geneva _Alexander Calame_ brought Germany to the knowledge of what is to be seen in Switzerland. Calame was, indeed, a dry, unpoetic landscapist. He began as a young tradesman by making little coloured views of Switzerland which foreigners were glad to bring away with them as mementoes of their visits, just as they now do photographs. Even his later pictures can only lay claim to the merit of such "mementoes of Switzerland." His colour is insipid and monotonous, his atmosphere heavy, his technique laborious. By painting he understood the illumination of drawings, and his drawing was that of an engraver. An excellent drawing-master, he possessed an unusual mastery of perspective. On the other hand, all warmth and inward life are wanting in his works. Sentiment has been replaced by correct manipulation, and in the deep blue mirror of his Alpine lakes, as in the luminous red of his Alpine summits, there is always to be seen the illuminator who has first drawn the contours with a neat pencil and pedantic correctness. His pictures are grandiose scenes of nature felt in a petty way--in science too it is often the smallest spirit that seeks the greatest heroes. "The Ruins of Pæstum," like "The Thunderstorm on the Handeck" and "The Range of Monte-Rosa at Sunrise," merely attain an external, scenical effect which is not improved by crude and unnatural contrasts of light. And as, in later years, when orders accumulated, he fell a victim to an astounding fertility, many of his works give one the impression of a dexterous calligrapher incessantly repeating the same ornamental letters. "_Un Calame, deux Calame, trois Calame--que de calamités_," ran the phrase every year in the Paris Salon. [Illustration: FLAMM. A SUMMER DAY.] But if France remained cool he found the more numerous admirers in Germany. When, in 1835, he exhibited his first pictures in Berlin, a view of the Lake of Geneva, his appearance was at once hailed with the warmest sympathy. The dexterity, the rounded form, the finish of his pictures, were exactly what gave pleasure, and the distinctness of his drawing made its impression. His lithograph studies of trees and his landscape copies attained the importance of canonical value, and for whole decades remained in use as a medium of instruction in drawing. Amongst German painters _Carl Ludwig_, _Otto von Kameke_, and _Count Stanislaus Kalkreuth_ were specially incited by Calame to turn to the sublimity of Alpine nature. Desolate wastes of cliffs, still, clear blue lakes, wild, plunging torrents, and mountain summits covered with glaciers and glowing to rose colour in the reflection of the setting sun are the elements of their pictures as of those of the Genevan master.