painting of his in a collection belonging to one of the French princes,
and exhibited at the Art Museum. It was that of a man performing upon
himself the operation known to the Japanese as hararkiri. Many persons
who looked upon this revolting picture will never get rid of its
remembrance, and will regret the day when their eyes fell upon it. I
should share the offence of the painter if I ventured to describe it.
Ribera was fond of depicting just such odious and frightful subjects.
"Saint Lawrence writhing on his gridiron, Saint Sebastian full of arrows,
were equally a source of delight to him. Even in subjects which had no
such elements of horror he finds the materials for the delectation of his
ferocious pencil; he makes up for the defect by rendering with a brutal
realism deformity and ugliness."

The first great mistake made by the ultra-realists; like Flaubert and
Zola, is, as I have said, their ignoring the line of distinction between
imaginative art and science. We can find realism enough in books of
anatomy, surgery, and medicine. In studying the human figure, we want to
see it clothed with its natural integuments. It is well for the artist
to study the ecorche in the dissecting-room, but we do not want the
Apollo or the Venus to leave their skins behind them when they go into
the gallery for exhibition. Lancisi's figures show us how the great
statues look when divested of their natural covering. It is instructive,
but useful chiefly as a means to aid in the true artistic reproduction of
nature. When the, hospitals are invaded by the novelist, he should learn
something from the physician as well as from the patients. Science
delineates in monochrome. She never uses high tints and strontian lights
to astonish lookers-on. Such scenes as Flaubert and Zola describe would
be reproduced in their essential characters, but not dressed up in
picturesque phrases. That is the first stumbling-block in the way of the
reader of such realistic stories as those to which I have referred.