Leslie returned to this country in 1833 to accept the professorship
of drawing at the West Point Military Academy, but remained only a
few months. After returning to London, he enjoyed a successful
career until his death, May 5, 1859. He was one of the first and most
consistent admirers of Constable's work, and wrote his life. He also
published lectures on painting, delivered at the Royal Academy, where
he had been appointed lecturer in 1848.

The consideration of the two men whose portraits face each other here,
and who stood thus opposed, during their lives, as the leaders of
all that constituted art in their time and country, takes us back to
France. Frequent returns of this character will be necessary in the
course of these papers; for, without undue prejudice in favor of
the French, it must be said that they alone have through the century
maintained a consistent attitude in regard to art. Other countries
have from time to time encouraged painting, with as frequent lapses
of interest or lack of men who could legitimately inspire interest.
Although transplanted bodily from Italy to France, in the time of
Francis the First, art had taken so firm a root by the commencement
of this century that, as we have seen, it grew and flourished though
watered by the red blood of revolution. As a national institution,
following the prescribed rules of the Academy, it has, of course,
met with frequent assaults at the hands of men for whom prescribed
academic law was as naught in comparison with the higher law of
genius. In 1819 such a man appeared, with a picture which violated the
unwritten law formulated by David: "Look in your Plutarch and paint!"

[Illustration: THE RAFT OF THE "MEDUSA." FROM A PAINTING BY GÉRICAULT
IN THE LOUVRE.