in the dimness of the forest, and before his "Sakuntala," painted "with refined effects of light," the cartoon painters mumbled and grumbled, and raised hue and cry over the desecration of German art; but Riedel's friends were just as loud in proclaiming the witchery of his colour, and "the Southern sunlight which he had conjured on to his palette," to be splendid beyond the powers of comprehension. It is difficult at the present day to understand the fame that he once had as "a pyrotechnist in pigments." But the results which he achieved by himself in colouring, long before the influence of the Belgians in Germany, will always give him a sure place in the history of German art. And these qualities were unconsciously inherited by his successors, who troubled their heads no further about the pioneer and founder. [Illustration: RIEDEL. THE NEAPOLITAN FISHERMAN'S FAMILY.] [Illustration: RIEDEL. JUDITH.] Those who painted the East with its clear radiance, its interesting people, and its picturesque localities, stand in opposition to the Italian enthusiasts. They are the second group of travellers. Gros had given French art a vision of that distant magic land, but he had had no direct disciples. Painters were as yet in too close bondage to their classical proclivities to receive inspiration from Napoleon's expedition into Egypt. But the travels of Chateaubriand and the verse of Byron, and then the Greek war of liberation, and, above all, the conquest of Algiers, once more aroused an interest in these regions, and, when the revolution of the Romanticists had once taken place, taught art a way into the East. Authors, journalists, and painters found their place in this army of travellers. The first view of men and women standing on the shore in splendid costume, with turbans or high sheepskin hats, and surrounded by black slaves, or mounted upon horses richly caparisoned, or listening to the roll of drums and the muezzin resounding from the minarets, was like a scene from _The Arabian Nights_. The bazaars and the harems, the quarters of the Janizaries and gloomy dungeons were visited in turn. Veiled women were seen, and mysterious houses where every sound was hushed. At first the Moors, obedient to the stern laws of the Koran, fled before the painters as if before evil spirits, but the Moorish women were all the more ready to receive these conquerors with open arms. Artists plunged with rapture into a new world; they anointed themselves with the oil of roses, and tasted all the sweets of Oriental life. The East was for the Byronic enthusiasts of 1830 what Italy had been for the Classicists. Could anything be imagined more romantic? You went on board a steamer provided with all modern comforts and all the appliances of the nineteenth century, and it carried you thousands of years back in the history of the world; you set foot on a soil where the word progress did not exist--in a land where the