Beyond this inexhaustible correctness I can really see nothing that can be said for Meissonier's fame as an artist. He, whose name is honoured in both hemispheres, was most peculiarly the son of his own work. The genius for the infinitesimal has never been carried further. He knew everything that a man can learn. The movements in his pictures are correct, the physiognomies interesting, the delicacy of execution indescribable, and his horses have been so exactly studied that they stand the test of instantaneous photography. But painter, in the proper sense, he never was. Precisely through their marvellous minuteness of execution--a minuteness which is merely attractive as a trial of patience and as an example of what the brush can do--his pictures are wanting in unity of conception, and they leave one cold by the hardness of their contours, the aridness of their colour, and the absence of all vibrating, nervous feeling. In a cavalry charge, with the whirling dust and the snorting horses, who thinks of costume? And who thinks of anything else when Meissonier paints a charge? Here are life and movement, and there a museum of military uniforms. When Manet saw Meissonier's "Cuirassiers" he said, "Everything is iron here except the cuirasses." His _rococo_ pictures are probably his best performances; they even express a certain amount of temperament. His military pictures make one chilly. Reproduced in woodcuts they are good illustrations for historical works, but as pictures they repel the eye, because they lack air and light and spirit. They rouse nothing except astonishment at the patience and incredible industry that went to the making of them. One sees everything in them--everything that the painter can have seen--to the slightest detail; only one does not rightly come into contact with the artist himself. His battle-pieces stand high above the scenic pictures of Horace Vernet and Hippolyte Bellangé, but they have nothing of the warmth of Raffet or the vibrating life of Neuville. There is nothing in them that is contagious and carries one away, or that appeals to the heart. Patience is a virtue: genius is a gift. Precious without originality, intelligent without imagination, dexterous without verve, elegant without charm, refined and subtile without delicacy, Meissonier has all the qualities that interest, and none of those which lay hold of one. He was a painter of a distinctness which causes astonishment, but not admiration; an artist for epicures, but for those of the second order, who pay the more highly for works of art in proportion as they value their artifice. His pictures recall the unseasonable compliment which Charles Blanc made to Ingres: "_Cher maître, vous avez deviné la photographie trente ans avant qu'il y eut des photographes._" Or else one thinks of that malicious story of which Jules Dupré is well known as the author. "Suppose," said he, "that you are a great personage who has just bought a Meissonier.