The continuation of this movement is marked by that charming artist who delighted in mystery, _Eugène Carrière_, "the modern painter of Madonnas," as he has been called by Edmond de Goncourt. Probably no one before him has painted the unconscious spiritual life of children with the same tender, absorbed feeling: little hands grasping at something, stammering lips of little ones who would kiss their mother, dreamy eyes gazing into infinity. But although young children at the beginning of life, whose eyes open wide as they turn towards the future, look out of his pictures, a profound sadness rests over them. His figures move gravely and silently in a soft, mysterious dusk, as though divided from the world of realities by a veil of gauze. All forms seem to melt, and fading flowers shed a sleepy fragrance around; it is as though there were bats flitting invisible through the air. Even as a portrait painter he is still a poet dreaming in eternal haze and a twilight of mystery. In his portraits, Alphonse Daudet, Geffroy, Dolent, and Edmond de Goncourt looked as though they had been resolved into vapour, although the delineation of character was of astonishing power, and marked firmly with a penetrative insight into spiritual life such as was shared by Ribot alone. At the very opposite pole of art stands _Paul Albert Besnard_: amongst the worshippers of light he is, perhaps, the most subtle and forcible poet, a luminist who cannot find tones high enough when he would play upon the fibres of the spirit. Having issued from the École des Beaux-Arts, and gained the _Prix de Rome_ with a work which attracted much notice, he had long moved upon strictly official lines; and he only broke from his academical strait-waistcoat about a dozen years ago, to become the refined artist to whom the younger generation do honour in these days, a seeker whose works vary widely in point of merit, though they always strike one afresh from the bold confidence with which he attacks and solves the most difficult problems of light. In Puvis de Chavannes, Cazin, and Carrière a reaction towards sombre effect and pale, vaporous beauty of tone followed the brightness of Manet; but Besnard, pushing forward upon Manet's course, revels in the most subtle effects of illumination--effects not ventured upon even by the boldest Impressionists--endeavours to arrest the most unexpected and unforeseen phases of light, and the most hazardous combinations of colour. The ruddy glow of the fire glances upon faded flowers. Chandeliers and tapers outshine the soft radiance of the lamp; artificial light struggles with the sudden burst of daylight; and lanterns, standing out against the night sky like golden lights with a purple border, send their glistening rays into the blue gloom. It is only in the field of literature that a parallel may be found in Jens Pieter Jacobsen, who in his novels occasionally describes with a similar finesse of perception