"'The Vasari Gallery is situated in the Rue de Sèvres, and admission is obtained by the payment of two francs. What the visitor first sees on entering the apartment devoted to this masterpiece is a wide doorway at the farther end draped on each side with curtains between which can be seen a court apparently open to the sky, since glimpses of a heavenly blue are visible between lofty columns. By one of these columns rises the statue of a warrior mounted on a pedestal, and at the base, with arrowy beams of sunlight streaming over it, lies a prostrate form, which requires no second glance to certify that it is a dead body, especially as the bloodstained weapons that have accomplished the deed are scattered on the pavement around. "'The spectator (not in the secret) hurries forward, and on arriving at the end of the apartment can hardly be persuaded that no doorway exists, and that the whole scene is simply a picture painted on canvas. Yet so it is. The picture is draped on each side with curtains so disposed as to give it the appearance of a doorway. The light entering the apartment from above strikes the picture at a certain angle, and, aided by the marvellous perspective skill of the artist's brush, the picture has every appearance of being an actual scene beyond the room in which the spectator stands, and in which some terrible tragedy has taken place. The illusion is perfect. "'We have indicated the principal features of the picture; the fallen Cæsar with his toga wrapped partly round him, the statue of Pompey rising above, a tesselated pavement stained with blood, here and there a discarded dagger, columnar architecture in the background: such are the simple elements presented by this work of art. The fidelity to archæological details displayed in all parts of the picture has satisfied the judgment of every antiquary who has examined the work. "'The picture, as we have intimated, contains but two figures--a disappointing number, one might think; and yet it is no paradox to say that had the picture contained more it would have revealed less. Had the artist, for example, represented Marc Antony mourning over the dead body, and drawing eloquence from its pitiable aspect, the eloquence that was to excite the Forum, or had he given us the conspirators waving their swords aloft, their faces radiant with the enthusiasm of liberty, he would have drawn off the spectator's attention from the point which most deserves praise. In the multiplicity of details we should perhaps have lost sight of the marvellous manner in which the painter has triumphed over the difficulty of his subject in regard to the face of the dead Cæsar, expressing therein all the varying emotions that must have agitated the great Dictator's mind at the moment of his death. "'How often the painter, desirous of depicting the human countenance lit up by some sublime feeling, has had to lament the impotence of his art!