his early education; but these show her to have been a true woman,—­brave, loving, and always loyal to the highest.  The three sons all lived to middle age, and all became distinguished men.  Ary, the eldest, very early gave unequivocal signs of his future destiny.  His countrymen still remember a large picture painted by him at Amsterdam when only twelve years old, indicating extraordinary talent, even at that early age.  His mother did not, however, overrate this boyish success, as stamping him a prodigy, but regarded it only as a motive for giving him a thorough artistic education.  He went, accordingly, to Paris, and entered the atelier of Guerin, the teacher then most in vogue.

It was in the latter days of the Empire that Ary Scheffer commenced his studies,—­a period of great stagnation in Art.  The whole force of the popular mind had for many years been turned to politics and war; and if French Art had striven to emancipate itself from slavish dependence on the Greek, it still clung to the Roman models, which are far less inspiring.  “The autocrat David, with his correct, but soulless compositions, was more absolute than his master, the Emperor.”  Only in the Saloon of 1819 did the Revolution, which had already affected every other department of thought and life, reach the ateliers.  It commenced in that of Guerin.  The very weakness of the master, who himself halted between two opinions, left the pupils in freedom to pursue their own course.  Scheffer did not esteem this a fortunate circumstance for himself.  His own nature was too strong and living to be crushed by a severe master or exact study, and he felt the want of that thorough early training which would have saved him much struggle in after life.  He used to speak of Ingres as such a teacher as he would have chosen for himself.  From the pupil of David, the admirer of Michel Angelo, the conservator of the sacred traditions of Art, the student might learn all the treasured wisdom of antiquity,—­while the influences around him, and his own genius, would impel him towards prophesying the hope of the future.  His favorite companions of the atelier at this time were Eugene Delacroix and Gericault.  Delacroix ranks among the greatest living French artists; and if death early closed the brilliant career of Gericault, it has not yet shrouded his name in oblivion.  The trio made their first appearance together in the Saloon of 1819.  Gericault sent his “Wreck of the Medusa,” Delacroix “The Barque of Dante,” and Ary Scheffer “The Citizens of Calais."[1]

The works of these friends may be considered as the commencement of the modern French school of Art, still so little known, and so ill appreciated by us, but which is really an expression of the new ideas of Art and Humanity which have agitated France to its centre for half a century.  Their hour of triumph has not yet come; but as the poet sings most touchingly of his love, neither when he rejoices in its happy