power of harmony;" that even in his sorrow he had found "the deep power of joy," and seen beneath a ruffled surface an inner life of peace. And even now, for us, when

"The fretful stir

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of the heart

How oft, in spirit,"

may we turn to pictures such as these by Scheffer, and find a blessed retreat.

We learn that in 1842, after twelve years' trial of the Orleans dynasty, Scheffer's political ardour had at length been effectually damped. He had reached his fifty-second year"an age when a full experience of men and things usually brings its fruit, in the form of what the French term desillusionnement." He had by this time given the world a fair trial, and it was found wanting. Nothing, indeed, can more forcibly impress the truth of our preceding reflections than the following passage from Mrs Grote's Memoirs :

"Disgusted by the vulgar politics 'buzzing around him-further depressed in spirits by the disastrous death (in 1842) of the heir to the throne, on whom he had placed his last fond hope of future better days for France-Scheffer drew closer and closer to his art, ceasing to connect himself with public affairs, otherwise than as a member of the National Guard (in which he held the rank of captain), performing its duties and obligations like other men. In the comparative seclusion of the Rue Chap tal, and with a taste and judgment ripened by long practice and thoughtful meditation-seeing little company beyond a few privileged friends and amateurs of art-Scheffer's imagination had more ample leisure than heretofore for attentive and sustained concentration on lofty and sacred subjects. I believe (in spite of what Diderot says) that in order to excite profound emotion in others, in any walk of art-painting, acting, or singing-you must either experience such in your own person, or arrive at a strong belief in its presence by a previous effort of fancy.

Such

effort is, however, only fruitful when pursued in solitude, and under perfect abstraction from disturbing forces. The secret of Scheffer's advance in the power of investing his compositions with a deeply sentimental charm, lay, as I con

ceive, partly in his strict devotion to his art, partly in a greater abstinence from the external commerce of society."

An English critic has justly observed that an artist should be fitted for the best society, but yet keep out of it. "The external commerce of society" dissipates an artist's powers, and takes from the depth and the truth of his feelings. The multitude to whom he is introduced just desire acquaintance with his countenance, wish to hear the tone of his voice, and to scan his manner and his bearing. This done, they, with some threadbare compliment, depart under the self-complacent satisfaction, it may be, that they too have part and lot with genius-can comprehend a great man, and even detect his lurking weakness. Scheffer, we are glad to know, used abstinence in this often too seductive dissipation. We hope, indeed, that he possessed that assurance of greatness within his own breast, which makes mere ordinary adulation in no way needful. He cherished, we are persuaded, that finer part in his humanity, and cultivated those higher faculties, which bring their own reward. His works sufficiently manifest a taste which had been educated by converse with the purest minds, and the loftiest products of the human intellect. His life was one long mental labour of no ordinary assiduity. We find that he read in the original tongues the standard works in the literatures of France, England, Italy, and Germany. His translations of the poems of Goethe, Byron, and Dante, into his own sister art, prove how intimately and profoundly he had entered into the spirit of these master creations, and how thoroughly the thoughts and the word-painted characters of these and kindred writers had taken possession of his imagination. We see with what critical skill-with what fine insight-he could perceive the light and the shade, the form and the colour, of an author's meaning, as it played across the page, and ere he fixed it upon canvass. We can well understand that, with a taste so highly cultured, he could endure only the best writers-that he could read

only the choicest books. But of all books, we are told, the Bible was most frequently in his hand, especially during the later years of his life. The New Testament, as many of his most spiritual compositions testify, was to him not only the guide in life, but the inspirer of his art. Again and again would he read of the mission of the Saviour, for again and again would he essay to make the Divine Word dwell in the region of his art. A mind so gentle found itself in perfect accord with the benign genius of Christianity. And that book which tells of the conflict of earth and the sorrow of life, yet leads to a haven of rest, was to him of all books the most conformable to his experience and his need, and the most consonant with the spirit of that art for which he laboured and lived.

Yet, as may be well imagined, Scheffer did not reach his ideal consummation but by long and arduous steps. The demands which he made upon himself were great-the laws which he laid down for the guidance of an artist were by no means easy to be fulfilled. "To be a true artist," he writes, "one must possess within one's self a certain elevation of sentiment, with deep and powerful convictions, worthy of being expressed by one or other of the arts-by prose composition, poetry, music, sculpture, or painting." Thus ever-aspiring, his collected works, brought together in Paris in the course of last year, were specially interesting and instructive, as manifesting the struggles, the transitions, and, withal, the sure progression of his genius. We have already spoken of that period of unrest through which most earnest minds have to pass, wherein Scheffer, tossed upon the conflicting waves of life, seemed troubled as by warring elements. Materialism in his art was then contending against spiritualism-this world opposing itself to a hope beyond. There were obstinate questionings which demanded solution, yet found none; the existence of evil and the triumph of sin lying as dark, impenetrable mysteries. He felt that moral obliquity and physical deformity were marring the loveliness of creation;

he beheld innocence betrayed, truth vanquished, justice outraged, and God's likeness upon earth everyway mutilated; these indeed were stumbling-blocks lying in the path of an artist who, like Scheffer, was thirsting for beauty and perfection. And accordingly, as we have seen, Scheffer's early and middle-age creations manifest a mind of which the clear vision was darkened, and the free action oppressed. In literature, a like mental phase is by no means rare. Byron in "The Giaour," Dante in his vision of purgatory and hell, and Goethe in his "Faust" and other works, each gave expression to the soul's longing and agony. Hence can we easily understand wherefore Scheffer found in such authors a kindred sympathy. In the poem of "Faust," he loved to plunge, with his innate German predilections, into the entangled mysteries of metaphysical speculation. The antagonism between man's intellectual and sensual nature-human passion and human weakness working dire tragedy-the tender and the terrible lying side by side-the clear, cold shrewdness of calculating intellect, and the mystic mazes of a mind wandering on a dark impenetrable night; here, indeed, in this drama, was field wide enough for a man who, like Scheffer, was as yet beating about without certain restingplace. Hence the well-known series of pictures taken from "Faust," "Wilhelm Meister," and other works by Goethe. "Faust in his Study," before him lying a large folio, resting on a skull-the jeering Mephistopheles stealing into the distanceis one among many examples of that region of doubt-of dark scepticism fitfully lighted by credulity-high purpose overthrown by insidious stratagem, which the works of Scheffer at this period suggest. "The King of Thule"-the aged, venerable "harper," by whom stands the youthful yet melancholy Mignon-with other kindred works, may be taken as illustrations of a mind struggling to inform the tenement of clay of that mental abstraction and introversion, that metaphysical penetration, that bewilderment of the eye which wanders and then fixes itself

on vacancy-characteristics which signalise some phases of the genius of Scheffer in common with the creations of well-known German authors. There are eyes which seem to look through space and time, dazzled by excess of light, and then veiled in darkness; there are full-crowned brows whereon proud intellect sits enthroned, which yet in deep-knit furrows of gathering perplexity would appear to threaten ruling thought with overthrow; there is the clenched hand of strong resolve, and yet the unsteady step which cannot carry purpose to its goal: such is that metaphysical art of Scheffer, which essays the highest argument, and yet stumbles on the very threshold-which strives to reveal all, and yet, perhaps from the necessity of the case, in the end is content to elude the difficulty by hiding its face in the veil of mystery.

Passing on from these creations of stern, scrutinising intellect, we enter upon a sphere more suited to the capabilities of art in works of sympathy and emotion. Mignon is the romantic offspring of a poet's fancy. A being more sensitive, subtle, and artistic, never issued from the brain of man. And Scheffer, who had found in Faust a god of reason, seems for solace to have clung to Mignon as the child of affection. When we gaze upon the sad, forlorn, and friendless maiden-poor, wan, half-clothed, half-grown-we feel profoundly touched. In the oft-engraved figures, "Mignon regretting her Country,' and "Mignon aspiring to Heaven," compassion is moved by the deep grief of a nature too sensitive for earth a young heart that yearns for its home where the citron blooms, where soft winds descend from the blue heaven--who weeps, and then again sighs to fly away and be at rest. Scheffer was asked whether this little Mignon bore any resemblance to one who might be near or dear to him. He answered that it was the portrait of his daughter who came as the solace to her father in hours of sadness, and at length tended his bed in death. Faust's Margaret is likewise a character which, by beauty and calamity, ap

peals to tenderest sympathy. The pictures of "Margaret at the Well," Margaret in Church," and "Margaret coming from Church," are as widely known as the poem of "Faust" itself. Scheffer has here painted chastity as of unsunned snow, the budding of the blushing rose, and then comes the cankerworm, and innocence is tainted by shame.

our

We find in Scheffer, more perhaps than in any other modern artist, the love of ideal beauty. His antipathy to a rude world and a common nature made him fondly cling to an unearthly loveliness. The tenderness and refinement of his feelings seem naturally to have found, in the delicacy and purity of woman, their appointed sphere. Dante had his Beatrice, Tasso his Leonora, and even homely Wordsworth his "phantom of delight." But where shall we find in poet's fancy, or in painter's vision, forms more lovely, features more chastened and finely chiselled, minds more subtly wrought or highly cultured, than in the works of Scheffer? Certain spiritual moulds of grace and symmetry seem, indeed, to have early taken hold of Scheffer's imagination, by virtue, it would appear, of that law of correspondence whereby mental states seek analogous outward forms in nature or through art. The pale cast of sicklied thought found an echo to its own unsullied purity in silver tones of moonlight pallor. In like manner, on the other hand, by a law well known in the history of art, works closely allied to actual life are substantive and vigorous, rich in colour, deep in shadow, and strongly marked in individual character. In such art, female loveliness comes in a Hebe or a Venus. But the goddess of beauty did not woo Scheffer in such guise. Even when he paints a Magdalen, she is no Titian mistress, but rather an angel of light, who, stranded on this lower world of sorrow, implores, with clasped hands and bleeding heart, that heaven may in mercy receive her back again. In such works as "St Monica," we recognise the spiritual beauty which comes of an aspiration that cannot rest satisfied with earth. "The Holy Women," again,

is by some admirers deemed Scheffer's masterpiece; and certainly in celestial beauty and rapt expression, they have never been surpassed. Scheffer's women are not of earth; and it must, we think, be confessed, that they are of a temperament and bodily frame little suited for a mere mundane existence. They come as on angels' visits, lovely apparitions, with starlight wreaths around the brow, and twilight softness in their gentle eye. In the well-known figure of Dante's Beatrice, we have, as it were, the remembered vision of a romance, a being fashioned by poet's fancy, treading, it may be, the confines of earth for a season, and then caught up to starry heights, henceforth an object for our worship. Art became, indeed, for Scheffer more and more a kind of shadowy Hades, an intermediate state lying between this grosser life and the world of spirits. Hence, in looking at his works, we are not always sure whether he painted from a model of flesh and blood, or whether in the night watches heavenly visitants entered by his study door, and grouped themselves for pictures. In Les Douleurs de la Terre," an allegory intended "to teach us that mortal passions and sorrows become purified and refined in proportion as the beings subjected to them recede from this earth," the figures are robed in garments already washed and white; the faces are of beauty chastened by grief; the heaven-aspiring forms are borne upwards as a wail of sorrow, as a lambent flame issuing from earth's great sacrifice; the eyes are turned towards the open gates, and the ears are attentive to the distant song. Beauty, indeed-a heaven-born beauty-let it be known in these degenerate days of inveterate and cherished ugliness, was the idol of Scheffer's worship. His art is, in fact, analogous to the eclectic philosophy of his great contemporary Cousin, who sought to enthrone Beauty, Truth, and Goodness as the three eternal and coequal verities.

We think, by general consent, Scheffer's masterpiece is the "Francesca di Rimini ;" a work which, for conception, composition, and treatment, may take rank with the greatest

pictures of any age or country. It was first exhibited in 1835, in the Salon du Louvre. It at once commanded universal attention, and was immediately purchased by the Duke of Orleans. Like many of Scheffer's leading works, this picture has been more than once reproduced. A "replica," executed under Scheffer's eye, and receiving the last touches from his own hand, is known to all connoisseurs in the Bridgewater Gallery. Upon a second repetition, Scheffer, we are told, bestowed even more than his accustomed pains. He brought to its execution the added experience of nearly twenty years: fine living models he used throughout for all portions of the nude, and the details of drapery were carefully studied. This glorious work we well recollect as foremost among the collected pictures exhibited in 1859. All, indeed, must remember those two clasped figures in close embrace-Paolo bearing onward through shadowy realms his beloved Francesca-darkness and misery following in the train of ardent desire and fond delight-a white winding-sheet circling, as in one dire destiny, the guilty lovers, with eyes closed in anguish, with entwined arms as of unquenched love; for in death they are not divided.

Scheffer had long in his art bovered on the shadowy confines of existence. He had for years, as we have said, been a denizen of Hades, and figures were accustomed to come to him from the dreamlike land of spirits. We have seen that during the later years of his life the New Testament was his constant study, and accordingly we naturally find that Scripture narrative, and subjects taken from the Christian's hope, were, after all, his most cherished themes. In his "Christ Consolateur" and "Christ Remuneratcur," we see the highest types of a spiritual ideal; the peace too, and the blessedness, which come as the gifts of hope and faith. Christ is seated in the midst of imploring suppliants, and gives freedom to the captive and consolation to the afflicted. This is the noble theme. It would seem, indeed, that Scheffer had now, after sore conflict-after a life racked on the rude world-after, even in his

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chosen art, much painful struggling for a perfection which ever eluded his grasp it would seem, we say, that at length in his later works he realised high spiritual longings, and entered in a newly created world upon a final repose and bliss. It was touching to see, in the exhibition to which we have already made frequent reference, pictures which, bearing as their date the very year of his death, seemed, as by anticipation of only a few short days, to hold converse with those serene heavens into which he himself was soon to enter. He appears, indeed, in imagination to have already passed through the gates of death, and to have seen the portals of that city whence so oft had issued pure and beauteous beings, the ministers of his art. "The Angel announcing the Resurrection to attendant and awakening mortals, still left unfinished when the grave opened at his feet, shows with solemn emphasis the ruling passion strong even in death. But he had lived long enough to give to his art that perfected body which waits on immortality.

All honour is due to the memory of Scheffer. He was a true artist and an honest patriot. In the service of his country he refused to be bought by favour, and was never subdued by the tyranny of power. A high-souled man, he was conscious of having strenuously laboured for his country's weal; and when he felt that her liberties had been violated, it was hard for him to bear. The government of Louis Philippe had disappointed his hopes. During the later years of the Orleans reign he wholly severed himself, as we have said, from public affairs, raising his voice only in occasional protest, warning his royal master against the danger of the course adopted, foretelling the catastrophe which inevitably must come. But words of calm forethought were uttered in vain. In January of the memorable 1848, Scheffer, in common with all clear sighted politicians, became alarmed by ominous signs of danger. He repaired to the Tuileries, on the Sunday which preceded the Revolution of February, to give the usual lesson to the youthful Count de Paris.

It was only two days prior to the great "Banquet." Whilst engaged with the Count de Paris, the Duchess of Orleans, looking in at the door, said, "Scheffer, when you have done with Paris, come to my private room; I want to speak to you." The lesson ended, Scheffer went to the Duchess. "What do you think," said she, "about this banquet affair? Do you entertain any apprehensions as to the consequences which may ensue from its being held?" Scheffer replied, "Madame, I think that the precautions which have been taken are sufficient to warrant the belief that no danger is to be anticipated, and that the affair will pass off without any serious results, for this time. But your Royal Highness must allow me to add, that, unless concessions are made to the reasonable demands of the nation, some fresh manifestation will not fail to arise, which may not, perhaps, be quite so effectually resisted." The Duchess coloured.

Scheffer!" exclaimed her Royal Highness, "it is a highly improper proceeding on your part to glance even at the possibility of any danger to the monarchy." Scheffer bowed respectfully, was silent, and withdrew. The next day a friend brought him a letter, just received from M. Odillon Barrot, stating that the

Banquet" had been abandoned, from the dislike to provoke a conflict with the authorities. "Give me the letter," exclaimed Scheffer, "I will carry it to the Duchess." He went. Her eyes filled with tears as she perused it. "How good of you to bring me this welcome news, Scheffer; but I must have you come with me into the King's cabinet, to communicate it to his Majesty." "Your Royal Highness must excuse me," replied Scheffer; "the King and I were never very partial to each other; would rather that your Royal Highness carried in the news alone." After a few minutes, we are told, the Duchess returned. "The King," said she, "is delighted. But do you know that he could not help observing, in his jocular way, 'Only look at these people! no sooner do they catch sight of even the tip of the horn, but they take to their heels."" The very next morning, Scheffer, having been

I