The first of the brilliant pleiad who did not come from Paris itself is _Diaz_, who in his youth worked with Dupré in the china manufactory of Sèvres. Of noble Spanish origin--Narciso Virgilio Diaz de la Peña ran his high-sounding name in full--he was born in Bordeaux in 1807, after his parents had taken refuge from the Revolution across the Pyrenees, and in his landscapes, too, perhaps, his Spanish blood betrays him now and then. Diaz has in him a little of Fortuny. Beside the great genius wrestling for truth and the virile seriousness of Rousseau, beside the gloomy, powerful landscapes of Dupré with their deep, impassioned poetry, the sparkling and flattering pictures of Diaz seem to be rather light wares. For him nature is a keyboard on which to play capricious fantasies. His pictures have the effect of sparkling diamonds, and one must surrender one's self to this charm without asking its cause; otherwise it evaporates. Diaz has perhaps rather too much of the talent of a juggler, the sparkle of a magic kaleidoscope. "You paint stinging nettles, and I prefer roses," is the characteristic expression which he used to Millet. His painting is piquant and as iridescent as a peacock's tail, but in this very iridescence there is often an unspeakable charm. It has the rocket-like brilliancy and the glancing chivalry which were part of the man himself, and made him the best of good company, the _enfant terrible_, the centre of all that was witty and spirited in the circle of Fontainebleau.