Once again during the brief remainder of his days was Merlin to learn the lesson "noblesse oblige" by experiencing a generosity he had never shown. In 1820 his son, General Eugène Merlin, who had served with distinction under the Empire, but had made his submission to the government of the Restoration, was arrested on a charge of being implicated in a military conspiracy. The matter came before the Court of Peers. The duke de Choiseul, high in the favor of his king, sat as one of the judges. He believed the young man innocent, and took his defence upon himself, pleading his cause so warmly that General Eugène Merlin was acquitted.
Stéphanie de Choiseul married when she grew up, and became duchesse de Marmier.
E.W.L.
REALISTIC ART.
Seldom now-a-days does an "old master" appear in the catalogues of art-sales or private galleries, the genuine article having grown too scarce and the fictitious too abundant. What the buyer looks for is a picture younger than himself, as full of the fashion of his own day as his coat or his hat. The painter must have some celebrity, and that must have at least six or eight years to grow in. Allowing for that necessary age, the newer the artist the better his work. The period has every confidence in itself, and does not care to look back for guidance and instruction in the principles of beauty and taste.
Naturally, this state of things implies realism in the selection and treatment of subjects. There is no time to idealize. The pencil must seize what is at hand, and serve it up on the spot. Landscapes and figures are flat copies of what the artist sees, and are labelled with their true names. Lorettes, contadine and odalisques are presented to us as such, and not as goddesses, heroines or saints. A ravine in Algeria, Norway or the Rocky Mountains, a sugar-camp in Maine or a wreck at Long Branch, are equally undisguised in their shape and title. The successors of Wilson and Turner no longer compose or combine. They have stopped clipping Nature into bits and sewing her together again like a patchwork quilt. The scenes we meet with on the walls are real scenes, to a tree or a ripple, and the title tells us so. Some liberties are taken with the clouds, and an artificial drapery of light and shade is thrown over the solid objects. Appropriate figures, too, are injected, by way of making up some sort of story and showing that the place is inhabited. But plain, faithful copying, as of an advanced drawing-school turned out of doors, and not pretending to be anything else, is the rule.
Not yet is a representation of Ajax or Ariadne, a satyr or a nymph, labelled "Portrait of a Gentleman" or "of a Lady," as the case may be. That may come ere long, with the names, given and family, of the individuals so honored. Till then we do without the Homeric characters altogether, and get Smith and Jones, their spouses and progeny, in dresses and situations they may be readily conceived as filling.
All this implies a reign of truth. Truth is a good thing, and nowhere a better thing than in art. But literal truth is prosaic, and the Gradgrind school of art has a tendency to lower us to the hardest kind of facts. Stationary subjects are the choice of the copyist. Asses, ponds, weeds, bottles, melons, young chickens (dead), oysters and decayed trees commend themselves as capital sitters. It is disheartening to the amateur to see his gallery gradually assuming the similitude of a common or a junk-shop. However, an ultra-realistic style cannot prevail long. Human nature cannot bear it, and will insist on springing from earth into a purer, thinner and more impalpable air. A craving for the imaginative will assert itself; and when it does so art will be all the stronger for the discipline and study through which it is now passing.