armies--wraiths born of the sleepers' dreams. That we are in touch with.
No one would object to it except under penalty of being scouted as
pitiably literal. Yet the scheme is as thoroughly conventional--that is
to say, it is as closely based on hypothesis universally assumed for the
moment--as Lebrun's "Triumph of Alexander." The latter is as much a true
expression of an ideal as Detaille's picture. It is an ideal now become
more conventional, undoubtedly, but it is as clearly an ideal and as
clearly genuine. The only point I wish to make is, that Lebrun's
painting--Louis Quatorze painting--is not the perfunctory thing we are
apt to assume it to be. That is not the same thing, I hope, as
maintaining that M. Bouguereau is significant rather than insipid.
Lebrun was assuredly not a strikingly original painter. His crowds of
warriors bear a much closer resemblance to Raphael's "Battle of
Constantine and Maxentius" than the "Transfiguration" of the Vatican
does to Giotto's, aside from the important circumstance that the
difference in the latter instance shows development, while the former
illustrates mainly an enfeebled variation. But there is unquestionably
something of Lebrun in Lebrun's work--something typical of the age whose
artistic spirit he so completely expressed.

To perceive that Louis Quatorze art is not all convention it is only
necessary to remember that Lesueur is to be bracketed with Lebrun. All
the sympathy which the Anglo-Saxon temperament withholds from the
histrionism of Lebrun is instinctively accorded to his gentle and
graceful contemporary, who has been called--_faute de mieux_, of
course--the French Raphael. Really Lesueur is as nearly conventional as
Lebrun. He has at any rate far less force; and even if we may maintain
that he had a more individual point of view, his works are assuredly
more monotonous to the scrutinizing sense. It is impossible to recall
any one of the famous San Bruno series with any particularity, or,