Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the Luxembourg, where _bonnes_, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the _émeutes_ which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French artists whom Government thinks worthy of patronage. A very great proportion of these, as we see by the catalogue, are by the students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken rank among the professors of the art. I don’t know a more pleasing exhibition; for there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness of execution. In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up among the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases, with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in full vigour. There is Brutus, having chopped his son’s head off, with all the agony of a father; and then, calling for number two, there is Æneas carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots, and many more such choice subjects from Lemprière. But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it:-- 7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. ‘The Grand Dauphiness Dying.’ 18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, etc. ‘Zenobia found Dead.’ 36. Debay, Chevalier. ‘The Death of Lucretia.’ 38. Dejuinne. ‘The Death of Hector.’ 34. Court, Chevalier de la, etc. ‘The Death of Cæsar.’ 39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. ‘Dante and Virgil in the Infernal Lake,’ ‘The Massacre of Scio,’ and ‘Medea going to murder her Children.’ 43. Delaroche, Chevalier. ‘Joas taken from among the Dead.’ 44. ‘The Death of Queen Elizabeth.’ 45. ‘Edward V. and his Brother’ (preparing for death). 50. ‘Hecuba going to be Sacrificed.’ Drolling, Chevalier. 51. Dubois. ‘Young Clovis found Dead.’ 56. Henry, Chevalier. ‘The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.’ 75. Guérin, Chevalier. ‘Cain, after the Death of Abel.’ 83. Jacquand. ‘Death of Adelaide de Comminges.’ 88. ‘The Death of Eudamidas.’ 93. ‘The Death of Hymetto.’ 103. ‘The Death of Philip of Austria.’ And so on.