painted some of his finest works. Since the French occupation of Algeria, his pencil has been busily engaged in immortalising the exploits of their army, and he has crossed the Mediterranean fifteen or twenty times in order to study all the details of that eminently picturesque warfare upon the spot. His memory is marvellous; and, at the end of twenty or thirty years, he can at will recall a form, a movement, an attitude. One of his friends said of him, "His head is like a chest of drawers; he opens it, looks, and finds each memory in its proper place." One morning he ran against the Marquis de Pastoret on the quay of the Louvre. The latter uttered an exclamation of surprise"What has become of you, my dear fellow? One meets you nowhere. It is years since I have seen you. Have you just arrived from India?" "You jest, Marquis," replied Horace; "it it but six months since I have shaken hands with you." "You are surely mistaken. When might that happen?" "In the gardens of the Tuileries. A lady was hanging on your arm." "May I be hanged if you have not dreamt of that meeting, Horace. A lady?" "Yes, a lady, and a very handsome one, too! Wait a moment, and I will sketch her for you." Horace then took out his memorandum-book, and with a pencil made a rapid drawing, which he had no sooner shown to the Marquis, than the latter exclaimed, "Good heavens! yes; it is the Duchess de V. In truth I did conduct her one evening some time ago to her hotel on the Quay Voltaire, and we did cross the Tuileries. But how the deuce do you contrive to draw, at the end of six months, a face, a figure, a dress, which you only saw for a moment?" "Pooh! that is a trifle," replied Horace, smiling. "A trifle! For such a trifle, however, they would have burnt you in the fifteenth century. I take the sketch. Farewell, my dear sorcerer." 46 Vernet's favourite and almost only reading is the Bible; it is always open on his table, and he carries it with him in all his travels. From a careful study of its pages, he has convinced himself that all painters who have hitherto represented Biblical subjects have committed gross errors in the costume in which they have clothed the Jews. Their dress, according to him, was exactly that of the Arabs of the present day; and he is said to be engaged upon an elaborate work, part of which has already been read to the Institute, and which has for its object the proof of these opinions. His Biblical paintings, however, such as "Rebecca at the Fountain,' Abraham and Hagar," "The Lamentations of Jeremiah," "The Good Samaritan" are decidedly inferior to his hunting and battle-pieces. They want the life, spirit, and power, which so eminently characterise the latter. During 1834 and 1835, most of Vernet's pictures were taken from African subjects. "A View of Bona," "The Chase of the Lion," "The Hunt of the Wild Boar," and "The Taking of Bona," are among the principal. In 1836, however, he resumed the illustration of French history, and exhibited four noble battle-pieces, representing the victories of Jena, Friedland, Wagram, and Fontenoy. The last of these is one of the finest battle-pieces in the world, and is the best that Vernet has ever painted. According to Mr. E. Abont, it is the only battle which he has ever painted; his other * * See "Nos Artistes au Salon de 1857," par E. Abont. pictures being merely episodes of battles, in the depicting of which, however, Mr. Abont admits that he reigns without a rival. Louis Philippe wished that Vernet should paint by himself a whole gallery at Versailles; and the painter, after some hesitation, undertook the gigantic enterprise. He was six years engaged upon the Gallery of Constantine, which was completed in 1842. It was so called from the ancient Numidian town and fortress, whose siege and storm, by the French army, Vernet was employed to commemorate. The King often came to watch him while painting, and to converse with him during the progress of this undertaking; and, on one of these occasions, offered to make him a peer of France, an honour which was declined by the artist, with the remark :-" La noblesse est morte, le bourgeois descend, et l'artiste monte: laissez moi dans les arts." Vernet was proud of his position as a painter of history, and refused to paint a lie even to gratify a king, and that king his kindest patron. Louis Philippe wished him to paint Louis XIV. mounting to the assault of Valenciennes. On consulting the best historians of the siege, the painter found that the Grand Monarque, so far from having led the assault, was three leagues from the town at the time when it took place. He, therefore, respectfully represented to the King that it was impossible for him to paint the subject as he wished; and, upon the monarch persisting in his desire, he declined the commission altogether, packed up his trunks, and started for St. Petersburgh, to which the Czar Nicholas had frequently urged him to pay a visit. At St. Petersburgh, he was received with open arms, and overwhelmed with favours and commissions. On one occasion the Autocrat, who knew his sympathy with the Poles, asked him whether he would refuse to paint the "Taking of Varsovia," a town in Poland. "No, sire," replied the artist, every day painters represent Christ on the Cross." After the lamented death of the Duke of Orleans, he left Russia, charged with the condolences of the Czar to the King of France, resumed his atelier in the tennis-court at Versailles, and painted "The Taking of the Smala of Abd-el-Kadr," the largest canvas in the world, larger even than the famous "Paradiso" of Tintoretto at Venice, which is seventy feet in length. This enormous picture was painted by Vernet in less than eight months. When the chiefs of the Bedouin tribes came to Paris, in 1845, Vernet gave them a splendid entertainment in his vast atelier at Versailles, which was hung round, for the occasion, with the skins of lions, tigers, and panthers, and decorated with yataghans, cimeters, inlaid carabines, and a perfect museum of African weapons. Couscoussous, their national dish, and lambs roasted whole, after the fashion of the Atlas, were served to the chieftains, after which the fragrant nargileh was presented to them by their host, his wife, and his beautiful daughter. This was the lady for love of whom poor Leopold Robert destroyed himself, and who became the wife of the celebrated painter, Paul Delaroche, and died six months after the entertainment above referred to, in the flower of her age and beauty. She was Vernet's only child. Her husband has introduced her portrait into one of his finest compositions, in which she represents the genius of Christianity. Since the days of the Cavalier Calabrese, no painter has travelled so much as Horace Vernet. He has been all over Europe, at Constanti nople, Cairo, Algeria, and in many other parts of the world; his iron. frame renders him insensible to fatigue, so much so, that, on one occasion, when travelling in the suite of the Emperor Nicholas, on a journey to the Caucasus, the Czar and Vernet were the only persons, out of 500 individuals, who returned in good health to Varsovia. The fertility and rapidity of Vernet's pencil are remarkable; he meditates his subject thoroughly in all its details, and has every part of it before his mind when he arrives in front of his canvas, and he is thus enabled to paint at once, without any preliminary sketch. In 1842, according to one French authority, he had received £80,000 for pictures which he had painted. His portraits are almost innumerable. Most of the marshals and generals of the empire, and the greater number of the kings and princes of Europe, have been painted by his hand. Then he has furnished a multitude of vignettes, lithographs, and sketches, and has illustrated the "Life of the Emperor," and a score of other works of similar importance. Though now verging upon his seventieth year, his physical and mental powers show but few symptoms of decay. In the Exhibition of 1857, he had a picture of the Battle of the Alma, and two fine portraits, one of Marshal Bosquet, and the other, an equestrian portrait of Napoleon III. He has been well termed "the Raphael of a warlike people," whose victories he has spent his life in depicting. He is the painter of modern strategy; his pictures are perfect military bulletins, historical documents, as precious to the future historian as the columns of the Moniteur. Nor has the age been ungrateful to Vernet for his unwearied efforts to illustrate it. He is a member of every academy of the Fine Arts in Europe, the only painter who was ever made Commander of the Legion of Honour, and is entitled to wear on his breast most of the orders of European knighthood. Many anecdotes are related of his kindness of heart, and generosity of disposition. Louis Philippe admired exceedingly several of the fine military physiognomies in his first sketch of the taking of the Smala, most of which were portraits; and was particularly struck with one old soldier, whose face was bronzed by the sun, and begrimed with powder. "I know him well," said the painter; "for twelve years he has fought bravely in Africa." "And see," replied the King, "he has the cross of honour." "No, truly, I have made a mistake. I must efface that cross,' murmured the artist, in a disappointed tone, and taking up his brush. "Stop!" said the King, "why spoil your picture? I have thought of a better plan-it is, to decorate that brave fellow.", "Ah, sire! thanks," replied the painter, gratified at the success of his stratagem; "I expected that." On a subsequent occasion, the Ignorantins, wishing to possess a portrait of brother Philip, their Superior General, sent a deputation to wait upon Vernet, and to offer him 500 francs, as all which the poverty of the society had enabled them to scrape together. Vernet painted the portrait, one of the finest which appeared in the Exhibition of 1845, but refused to accept a farthing from the brotherhood; and they, in testimony of their gratitude, presented him with a Christ beautifully carved in ivory, which the painter preserves among his most cherished possessions. In painting the battles of his own time, Vernet has had great difficulties to encounter. It may indeed be said, that he had only to copy faithfully, and group with skill, the materials which were ready to his hand; but then, in these very materials lay the difficulty. The stiff, regular lines of modern strategy, the exact, unvarying uniforms, are both most unfavourable to pictorial effect; and in nothing has Vernet's genius shone forth more conspicuously, than in the consummate skill which he has displayed in dealing with such unpromising materials. He has not, like too many battle-painters, shrouded them in dust or smoke, that convenient cloak for indolence or want of technical skill; he has not evaded or shrunk from the difficulty, but has boldly met and mastered it. The enforced monotony of his regular lines of troops is most happily and naturally broken up by all sorts of ingenious, but, at the same time, probable episodes, such as a fallen horse, a wounded soldier carried away, a cantinière offering spirits to the soldiers, a general inspecting the position of the enemy, an aide-de-camp bearing an order at the gallop-all most skilfully introduced, and admirably painted. Another difficulty which Vernet has had to contend with is this. He is, as we have said, emphatically the painter of his own era; but the present comes so close to us, is so real and apparent, that the distance, uncertainty, and indistinctness, which throw a veil of poetry, a mist of romantic interest, over the past, have upon it no influence whatever. The painter must grapple with the present, in all its hard and unavoidable reality, and must be prepared to meet the most rigorous and unsparing criticism; for everyone thinks himself a judge of what has happened in his own time, however distrustful he may be of his ability to judge of the past. That Vernet's talents have stood the ordeal of so severe a scrutiny, and secured for him almost universal popularity, is one of the strongest proofs of their vitality and vigour. His success has been principally owing to his perfect and minute acquaintance with every detail of modern military life, to his marvellous technical skill and power of imitation, which enable his hand to execute whatever his head conceives, and to the energy and fire of his genius, which breathe life, and spirit, and animation over all his pictures. ས. "A TRIFLING LOSS !" I. "A trifling loss!"-I heard them say- And patriots read the news awhile, Oh! 'twas a great and glorious strife!- II. A trifling loss?-oh! think of him, The life-blood rushed from a colourless cheek, A trifling loss to some-but he III. A trifling loss?-oh! think again- IV. A trifling loss?-oh! say not so- Sealed up in fellow hearts. Is it a trifling loss to tear |