calls _naivete_. And these various execution she is never more than
superficially acquainted with; he does not practise any one long
enough to extract what good there may be in it.

To set before the reader the full story of the French decadence, I
should have to relate the story of the great schism of some few years
ago, when the pedants remained at the _Salon_ under the headship of
Mr. Bouguereau, and the experimentalists followed Meissonier to the
Champs de Mars.[Footnote: See "Impressions and Opinions."]The
authoritative name of Meissonier, the genius of Puvis de Chavannes,
and the interest of the exhibition of Stevens' early work, sufficed
for some years to disguise the progress and the tendency of the
declension of French art; and it was not until last year (1892) that
it was impossible to doubt any longer that the great French
renaissance of the beginning of the century had worn itself out, that
the last leaves were falling, and that probably a long period of
winter rest was preparing. French art has resolved itself into pedants
and experimentalists! The _Salon_ is now like to a library of Latin
verses composed by the Eton and Harrow masters and their pupils; the
Champs de Mars like a costume ball at Elysee Montmartre.

In England it is customary for art to enter by a side door, and the
enormous subvention to the Kensington Schools would never have been
voted by Parliament if the bill had not been gilt with the usual
utility gilding. It was represented that the schools were intended for
something much more serious than the mere painting of pictures, which
only rich people could buy: the schools were primarily intended as
schools of design, wherein the sons and daughters of the people would
be taught how to design wall-papers, patterns for lace, curtains,
damask table-cloths, etc. The intention, like many another, was