Has built himself a livelong monument,"
has this charm and power. You never before saw anything like it, you will never see anything like it again, and you will never forget it. It is no easy matter to describe what passes through one's mind on looking at such a bit of intense and deep genius. One feels more inclined in such a case to look, and recollect, to feel, and be grateful, than to speak.
Napoleon is represented as alone—seated hurriedly and sideways upon a chair—one leg of which has trod upon a magnificent curtain, and is trailing it down to ruin. He is dressed in his immortal grey coat, his leather breeches, and his big riding boots, soiled with travel; the shapely little feet, of which he was so proud, are drawn comfortlessly in; his hat is thrown on the ground. His attitude is that of the deepest dejection and abstraction; his body is sunk, and his head seems to bear it down, with its burden of trouble. This is finely indicated by the deep transverse fold of his waistcoat; one arm is across the back of the chair, the other on his knee, his plump hands lying idle; his hair, that thin, black straight hair, looks wet, and lies wildly across his immense forehead. But the face is where the artist has set his highest impress, and the eyes are the wonder of his face. The mouth is firm as ever—beautiful and unimpassioned as an infant's; the cheeks plump, the features expressive of weariness, but not distressed; the brow looming out from the dark hair, like something oppressively and supernaturally capacious; and then the eyes! his whole mind looking through them, —bodily distress, want of sleep, fear, doubt, shame, astonishment, anger, speculation, seeking rest but as yet finding it not; going overall possibilities, calm, confounded, but not confused. There is all this in the grey, serious, perplexed eyes; we don't know that we ever saw anything, at once so subtle, awful, and touching, as their dreary look. Your eyes begin soon to move your heart; you pity and sympathize with him, and yet you know all he has done, the havoc he has made of everything man holds sacred, or God holds just; you know how merciless he was and will be, how eaten up with ambition, how mischievous; you know that after setting at defiance all mankind, and running riot in victory, he had two years before this set his face against the heavens, and, defying the elements, had found to his own, and to his country's tremendous cost, that none can "stand before His cold." We know that he is fresh from the terrible three days at Leipsic, where he never was so amazing in his resources, and all that constitutes military genius; we know that he has been driven from his place by the might and the wrath of the great German nation, and that he is as faithless and dangerous as ever; but we still feel for him. Our soul is "purged by terror and pity," which is the end of tragic art as well as of tragic writing, and will be found like it one of the "gravest, moralest, and most profitable" of all human works. This is the touch "that makes the whole world kin."
This trouble in the eye—this looking into vacancy, and yet not being vacant—this irresolute and helpless look in one so resolute, so self-sustained, is to us one of the very highest results of that art which affects the mind through the eye.
The picture, as a work of art, is remarkable for its simplicity of idea and treatment, the severity of its manner, and the gloomy awfulness everywhere breathing from it. It seems to gather darkness as you gaze at it; the imperial eagles emblazoned on the wall are struggling through a sort of ruddy darkness produced by the deep shadow on the rich-coloured curtain. His sword is lying on a table, its hilt towards us.
But what impressed us most, and what still impresses us is, that we have seen the man as he then was, as he then was looking, and thinking, feeling, and suffering. We started at first as if we were before him, rather than he before us, and that we would not like to have that beautiful but dread countenance, and those unsearchable, penetrating cold eyes lifted up upon us.
No man need ask himself after this, if Delaroche is a great artist; but some of his other works display, if not more intensity, more variety of idea and expression. Their prevailing spirit is that of severe truthfulness, simplicity, and a kind of gloomy power—a certain awfulness, in its strict sense, not going up to sublimity perhaps, or forward into beauty, but lingering near them both. They are full of humanity, in its true sense; what he feels he feels deeply, and it asserts its energy in every bit of his handiwork.
It is remarkable how many of his best pictures are from English history, and how many are possessed by Englishmen. The following short sketch of his chief pictures may be interesting. His earliest works were on religious subjects; they are now forgotten. The first which attracted attention was the picture of Joan of Arc in prison, examined by Cardinal Winchester; this has been engraved, and is very great—full of his peculiar gloom. Then followed Flora Macdonald succouring the Pretender; the death of Queen Elizabeth, almost too intense and painful for pleasurable regard; a scene at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; Death of the English Princes in the Tower; Richelieu on the Rhone, with Cinq Mars and De Thou as prisoners; Death of Cardinal Mazarin; Cromwell regarding the dead body of Charles I. This last is a truly great and impressive picture—we hardly know one more so, or more exactly suited for Art. The great Protector, with his well-known face, in which ugliness and affection and power kept such strange company, is by himself in a dark room. And yet not by himself. The coffin in which Charles, his king, is lying at rest, having ceased from troubling, is before him, and he has lifted up the lid and is gazing on the dead king—calm, with the paleness and dignity of death—of such a death, upon that fine face. You look into the face of the living man; you know what he is thinking of. Awe, regret, resolution. He knows the full extent of what has been done—of what he has done. He thinks, if the dead had not been false, anything else might have been forgiven; if he had but done this, and not done that; and his great human affections take their course, and he may wish it had been otherwise. But you know that having taken this gaze, and having let his mind go forth in its large issues, as was his way, he would again shut that lid, and shut his mind, and go away certain that it was right, that it was the only thing, and that he will abide by it to the end. It is no mean art that can put this into a few square inches of paper, or that can raise this out of any ordinary looker-on's brain. What a contrast to Napoleon's smooth, placid face and cold eyes, that rough visage, furrowed with sorrow and internal convulsions, and yet how much better, greater, worthier, the one than the other! We have often wondered, if they had met a Lutzen, or at some of the wild work of that time, what they would have made of each other. We would lay the odds upon the Brewer's Son. The intellect might not be so immense, the self-possession not so absolute, but the nature, the whole man, would be more powerful, because more in the right and more in sympathy with mankind. He would never try an impossible thing; he would seldom do a wrong thing, an outrage to human nature or its Author; and for all that makes true greatness and true courage, we would not compare the one with the other. But to return to our artist. There is St. Amelia praying, very beautiful; Death of Duke of Guise at Blois; Charles I. in the Guard-room, mocked by the soldiers; Lord Strafford going to execution, kneeling as he passes under the window of Laud's cell, whose outstretched hands bless him. This is a great picture; nothing is seen of Laud but the thin, passionate, imploring hands, and yet you know what they express, you know what sort of a face there will be in the darkness within. Strafford is very fine.
There is a charming portrait of his wife as the angel Gabriel; a St. Cecilia playing; and a beautiful Holy Family, the Virgin, a portrait of his wife, and the child, a beautiful rosy creature, full of favour, with those deep, unfathomable, clear eyes, filled with infinity, such as you see in Raphael's Sistine Jesus.