emotion of a battle as another picture might do that fixed our attention upon some one incident that affected our feelings.

Meissonier fitted himself in a peculiar way for painting battle scenes. Upon the outbreak of the war between Austria and Italy in 1859, he obtained permission of the emperor, Napoleon III, to accompany the French army to the seat of war, and was present at the battle of Salferino. When the Franco-Prussian War came in 1870, he was one of the first to offer his services to his country, and during the siege of Paris occupied a high position on the staff of the National Guard.

In referring to "Friedland" the artist said, “I did not intend to paint a battle. I wanted to paint Napoleon at the zenith of his glory. . . . The men and the emperor are in the presence of each other. The soldiers cry out to him that they are his, and the great chief, whose imperial will directs the masses that move around him, salutes his devoted army."

Unlike many of his "great little pictures" this one is painted on a canvas eight feet wide by four and one half feet high. It was sold by the artist to the late A. T. Stewart for $60,000, and at the sale of the Stewart collection was bought for a much larger sum and presented to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, where it now hangs.

We have seen that Meissonier strove with infinite pains to make every part of his picture just as it really was. But this very care of his has led to unfavorable criticism and most artists do not believe that this is the way to present a scene. As one writer has recently well put it,

Friedland, by Meissonier, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

the artist should not try to make everything just as he knows it really is, but as it looks to him from the place where he is.

If you take the picture of "Friedland" you will see that the details of dress and feature are carried out fully at the right and left sides of the picture as well as in the center. Ask yourself the question whether from any one point of view any one eye could really see all these details at one time. I think you will agree that it would be impossible. Then to put everything into a picture is to represent what the artist could not have seen at any one time and therefore all the tremendous labor of presenting everything as it really was, does not, after all, give a true view of the scene as viewed by the human eye.

And if it is not true, then it is not the right way to do it. If you watch a person walk down the street you will observe that as the figure goes away one thing after another, that you could see when it was near, disappears and is blended into the general mass. Near by you can see the buttons on the coat, the wrinkles in the sleeve, the band on the hat and if you were drawing the figure near at hand, those things would all be indicated. But if you wished to truly represent the figure at the next corner you would not put in those things which you knew were there, but could not see, but would draw it as it looked at that distance. If you did not, it would not appear in its true relation to the other things around it. The eye can only focus upon a limited field at a time.

While Meissonier probably made a mistake in this respect, he was so really wonderful in many others that he is accepted as a great painter, and this criticism which

we can understand should help us in estimating not only his painting but that of other artists.

ANECDOTES OF MEISSONIER.

The life of Meissonier reads like a fairy tale. He ran the gamut from extreme poverty to wealth that enabled him to have everything he ever desired in lavish profusion. His mother died when he was ten years old and between him and his father there was little sympathy or understanding. Although in prosperous circumstances, his father gave the lad but a slight education and at seventeen secured for him a position in trade.

Here Meissonier swept the shop, waited upon customers and became an unwilling but faithful clerk. He persisted in his wish to study art and finally his father agreed to give him a week in which to find a painting master and a year in which to show whether he had really any talent. At the end of that time, if you have not succeeded, you go back to the shop," was the warning.

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At first he did not find a master but was admitted finally to a studio and there worked hard for several months. During this time his father's allowance was ten cents a day for food and an invitation to eat at home the Wednesday dinner.

Many a time when Meissonier was nearly starving he would drop in at his father's after the Wednesday dinner instead of before, because he was too proud to appear to need his father's niggardly assistance.

Later Meissonier got a place in the studio of Leon Cogniet, and there he had for fellow pupils Daubigny, afterwards to become one of the world's great land

scape painters and other strong young men.

Still in the grip of poverty he painted fans and bonbon boxes for a living and is said to have painted canvas at a dollar a yard.

Although Meissonier did not complain of these hardships he refused, in after life, to talk of his early days. He was not bitter at the time, for he is quoted as saying, "Is it possible to be unhappy when one is twenty, when life is all before one, when one has a passion for art, a free pass to the Louvre and sunshine gratis? Meissonier satisfied his father that he really had talent and he was never compelled to "go back to the shop." Before he was twenty he had exhibited in the Salon. After this he made a short journey to Rome and on his return he succeeded in establishing himself as an illustrator, so as to earn his bread. As his reputation grew, his ability to make money increased and at twenty-eight he was married and the head of a household of his own, although at first a modest one.

Artists care very little for the opinion of the public but for the opinion of brother artists they care very much. It is said that Meissonier thought very highly of the opinion of Chenavard, a well-known painter from Lyons and much older than he. At one time he came to visit Meissonier's studio and examined all his canvases carefully, pausing before one of a violin player for a long time. There was the usual assortment. All except the violin player were in one way or another like many other pictures in the Louvre and elsewhere. "Do you expect," said the guest, "to do these things better