For twenty-five years Greuze was the fashion in Paris. With all his faults, he was immeasurably superior to his French contemporaries, and his work was a decided step towards a new era. With the great political and social changes inaugurated in France early in the nineteenth century, an entirely new style of art, literary and graphic, was made possible, and a new school of painters arose to portray French peasant life.

No modern artist has chosen a field which exactly corresponds to that of Greuze, the tendency being rather to neglect the child element to which he devoted so much energy. One painter may be mentioned, however, who has contributed a few valuable additions to this department of art,—William Adolphe Bouguereau.

The remarkable number of works which Bouguereau has produced since his first great success in 1854 have made him distinguished for a large variety of subjects; but the pictures by which he has touched the hearts of the people are those in which he portrays the peasants of his own sunny land,—sweet, shy, dark-eyed girls, with masses of black hair pushed back loosely from their foreheads.

One is a Little Shepherdess, who stands with careless grace poising a crook across her shoulders, while her eyes meet ours with a frank yet modest gaze. Again the same girl rests from her labors, sitting on a stone, lost in revery. Another sweet child is the girl seated by a well, with a broken pitcher lying on the ground beside her. Her hands are clasped on her knee, as she bends slightly forward in a pensive attitude, her large eyes full of childish pathos. Cajolery also belongs to this set, and is so named from the caresses with which a little girl begs some favor of an older sister, whose merry eyes show that she fully understands the secrets of child diplomacy.

Younger than any of these children is the bewitching little gypsy, whose tangled curls frame a round, dimpled face, with rosebud mouth, and big black eyes looking bashfully askance. There is a peculiar charm in the child’s shyness, as if, like some wild creature of the woods, she would turn and flee before a nearer approach.

Bouguereau’s work, academic in style, and always refined and elegant in manner, has qualities of artistic excellence which place him in the foremost rank; and we are glad to believe that for many generations to come his lovely little peasant girls will be widely known and loved.

[child head.—bouguereau.]

From the dark-eyed children of sunny France to the fair-haired sons and daughters of the Saxon race is a long step, which introduces us to child-life of a totally different type. Childhood in the rural districts of Germany and Switzerland has been very completely portrayed by Johann Georg Meyer, better known as Meyer von Bremen,—the name he has taken in honor of his native city.