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eign intercourse be obliterated and that the powers treat China as a civilized country. It may be surprising to the world in general, and to the missionaries in particular, that Sir Robert urges upon the powers a trial of the "golden rule." "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is a rule for international application that he believes would be more satisfactory than the differential rules which now shape intercourse. It may be optimistic to hope that in their dealings with China the Christian powers will adopt this most Christian rule, but all who believe in fair play will applaud Sir Robert Hart for his enunciation of the simple Christian doctrine which should, even if it does not, guide Christian nations as it is supposed to guide Christian individuals.

The last paper deals with the Boxers, and gives a very clear idea of the causes which led to the formation of this body. Sir Robert evidently believes that the Boxer movement was in part a patriotic one, and, studying the causes, he sees the danger that the idea which animated the Boxers may spread and that future trouble will ensue.

To these essays are appended a Tsung Li Yamen circular to Chinese ministers abroad, and the Inspector-General's memoranda concerning commercial relations, which illustrate and complement the views embodied in the papers.

The authority with which Sir Robert Hart writes, his experience, his knowledge, and his sanity, make his statements deserving of the most careful consideration; and it is to be hoped that Americans and Englishmen will digest well what he has to say regarding foreign intercourse with China. He will not have worked in vain if English and American sentiment can be aroused to the necessity of treating China and the Chinese as England and America treat other great powers.

CAZIN AND THE FUTURE OF FRENCH ART

THE

By C. W. DRAPER

'HE death of the painter Cazin is a great loss to French art. He was not so old that his career could be considered as terminated. He died leaving some works unfinished, with projects unachieved and some sketches still upon his easel.

Henry Fouquier, who writes appreciatively of the dead painter and his influence upon French art, thinks that the latter part of Cazin's life was saddened by the rebuff recently received from the Institute. His place there was marked and retained in advance, but the pleasure of entering was denied him. To quote M. Fouquier fully, Cazin did not disdain (and how many artists are there who can truly say they do?) the official recognition and recompense of his talent. This talent was great and in the course of his life laborious. Cazin knew how to display it under diverse aspects. Painter of landscape before all else, he was nevertheless a painter of figures as well as a painter of great mural decorations, and quite recently he had received the commission to complete the work of Puvis de Chavannes on one of the French public monuments.

It is not my duty, says M. Fouquier, to trace the career of this artist, yet the personal souvenirs and recollections of my relations with him are not without importance. In the originality of his talent he realized the union of two traditions, or, to speak more correctly, two diverse currents. He had been for quite a long time a teacher of drawing in a school in England. The liberty of English artists could not fail to make an impression on his mind which prepared him for French impressionism and the school of plein air. These

new elements, combined with a profound knowledge of classic tradition, produced a method original and characteristic even though composite, and I ask myself whether, if the French school of painting should direct its efforts toward this method, it would not find that unity which it has lost. In art, in literature, and in politics, as well, almost all things end in a compromise. The number of revolutionists is very small who, when they arrive to power, are not constrained, and even content, to accept some point, often quite essential, of the tradition of those who have preceded them; the most obstinate defenders of tradition are forced to notice the influence of progress or the attempts that prog. ress makes. As time goes on, in the domain of letters and art, the most unforeseen and the most unlikely reconciliations are accomplished at the moment of battle.

Who would have thought, half a century ago, that the quarrel between the romantic and classic schools would diminish to a point where these two designations would become words almost empty of meaning, or at least having no more value than as a historical curiosity?

"This will kill that," said one romantic device.

Nothing has been killed.

The classic and the romantic theaters have ended by perceiving that, in order to have been brotherly enemies, they have been none the less brothers. The fiery Auguste Vacquerie himself, who in order to call Shakespeare an oak had qualified Racine as a stake, finished by recognizing that, if the tree of many roots was of measured proportions, the other produced the most beautiful flowers. And in truth can one love Iago without loving Narcissus, can one weep with Ophelia without feelings of pity for Berenice?

I recognize, however, that in painting, a cessation of hostilities, in the sense that the work of Cazin seems to indicate, is far enough from declaring itself.

Our painters are still in a warlike humor. The classic tradition which has an ardent follower still in Ingres, and

which Romain and Baudry, in a moment, made to inflect toward Venetian grace, has not abdicated, especially in the art of teaching; there are still some followers of the romantic who have not turned aside from the formula of Delacroix and the "sauce" of his imitators.

The impressionists willingly exert their system to excess, making attempts more and more bold, which in themselves provoke certain railleries. The school of French painting (we were well assured of it at the last Exposition) has become very individualistic and goes to combat in dispersed order like our soldiers of to-day.

I am far from complaining of this. In spite of our unfortunate attempts the art is always gaining something. The initiative, the novelty, awaken and exercise the imagination, even if they do not always attain victory. I do not believe, however, that this multiplicity of diverse and opposing methods, which is at the present moment the characteristic of the French school of painting, will last forever. There is in the public taste, which progresses but which is still very uncertain, a current that the artists will be compelled to follow. Or, better still, among these latter will be found some man of genius, who, combining in himself all these diverse tendencies of the painters, will create a method which, for some time at least, will impose itself upon nearly all and re-establish the broken unity of the French school.

The history of painting shows us that such has always been the progress of art. Since the Renaissance Italy has seen several schools in succession, each very finely organized. These schools have been formed under the double influence of a social organization and a great master. Masaccio, Vinci, Raphael, Titian, have constituted all there was of painting in Florence, Milan, Rome, and Venice. It has been the same at Bologna with Carrache, at Naples with Salvator Rosa.

France has had her schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, perfectly adequate to the customs and liter

ature of those times. The same observations may be applied to Flanders, because painting cannot escape that general law which governs all arts, and which is to represent, each in its own particular fashion, the state of mind and that subtle thing which is called the "taste" of a definite epoch.

It is true, and it is this which explains the disorder of our painters, that in our tumultuous democracy, full of contradictions, and formed from interests and passions more than from ideas, one does not find those uniform sentiments, those conceptions true to life, which make the force of powerful and normal epochs. Thé absolute lack of intellectual discipline is translated in art. The painters of our time who consecrate themselves to historical paintings, and even the genre, are more and more rare, more and more bizarre or mediocre, because no rule comes to them from the surroundings in which they live. I have seen them in despair because they were unable to arrive at a knowledge of what would strike the public taste and at the same time conquer it. There is also in our time a fashion to paint portraits and landscapes almost exclusively. Indeed, the representation of the human figure, sometimes resembling and decorative, which is skill, and sometimes profound and giving expression of character, which is genius, is an eternal theme for the painter. As for landscape, the infinite variety of the impressions of nature lend themselves more than all other things to the daring of innovation. The essential theory of the impressionists is that color and light, the latter espe. cially, determine form in a manner sufficient to evoke the idea of truth. This is less exact for the human, the human figure, and especially for historical painting, which must express movement (which the drawing alone gives) and har mony in the ensemble, which springs from the genius of the composition. But as historical painting was abandoned one might truly say that ours was the time of landscape artists.

It will not always be thus, because the historical painting

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