the Prodigal Son, is among the earliest and most familiar in the
memories of a nation of Bible readers like our own. Every one
of us, perhaps unconsciously, carries in mind a simple,
straight-forward conception of this subject, formed in early
childhood--a time when the imagination rarely goes beyond an
attempt to realize the unlooked for forgiveness of the once
deserted parent, or the captivating visions of adventure
suggested by the changing fortunes of the wanderer during his
absence in a "far country."

With the painter the picture is his vision, and the panels are
the realities. As a man of a different order of thought would
have chosen another incident of the story for illustration, so
also would a painter of a less independent school have permitted
himself to be bound down by the historical facts of the
architectural and costume fashions of the time of narration.
Dubufe has so far discarded the unities of time and place, if
any can _really_ be said to exist--as no date was fixed in
the relation of the parable by Christ--that he has adopted the
mingled costumes of Europe and the East, which obtained in the
fifteenth century, and has placed his figures in a Corinthian
porch under the light of Italian skies. Apart from the conception
and the "telling of the story," about which there will be various
opinions, this picture may be justly regarded as a magnificent
work of art.

The great David, a pupil of whose pupil Edouard Dubufe was, and
Horace Vernet, appear to have been the guides selected by him,
rather than the greatest of his masters--Paul Delaroche. The
influence of both is to be traced in this work, although it may