MME. EMMA EAMES
Gounod an Idealist
One does not need to review the works of Charles Gounod to any great extent before discovering that above all things he was an idealist. His whole aspect of life and art was that of a man imbued with a sense of the beautiful and a longing to actualize some noble art purpose. He was of an age of idealists. Coming at the artificial period of the Second Empire, he was influenced by that artistic atmosphere, as were such masters of the brush as Jean August Ingres and Eugène Delacroix. This, however, was unconscious, and in no way affected his perfect sincerity in all he did.