commented on the humanity of the pier. But Manet just painted it
without circumlocutions of any kind. The subject was void of pictorial
relief. There was not even a blue space in the sky, nor yet a dark
cloud. He took it as it was--a white sky, full of an inner radiance,
two sailing-boats floating in mist of heat, one in shadow, the other
in light. Vandervelde would seem trivial and precious beside painting
so firm, so manly, so free from trick, so beautifully logical, and so
unerring.

Manet did not often paint sea-pieces. He is best known and is most
admired as a portrait-painter, but from time to time he ventured to
trust his painting to every kind of subject-I know even a cattle-piece
by Manet--and his Christ watched over by angels in the tomb is one of
his finest works. His Christ is merely a rather fat model sitting with
his back against a wall, and two women with wings on either side of
him. There is no attempt to suggest a Divine death or to express the
Kingdom of Heaven on the angels' faces. But the legs of the man are as
fine a piece of painting as has ever been accomplished.

In an exhibition of portraits now open in Paris, entitled _Cent
Chefs-d'Oeuvre_, Manet has been paid the highest honour; he himself
would not demand a greater honour--his "Bon Bock" has been hung next
to a celebrated portrait by Hals....

Without seeing it, I know that the Hals is nobler, grander; I know,
supposing the Hals to be a good one, that its flight is that of an
eagle as compared with the flight of a hawk. The comparison is
exaggerated; but, then, so are all comparisons. I also know that Hals
does not tell us more about his old woman than Manet tells us about
the man who sits so gravely by his glass of foaming ale, so clearly