human
--to use the phrase of Cornelius--Meissonier and Menzel painted things which had not appeared worth representing to the painters of 1750, blinded, as they were, by the glory of the antique. Not less striking is it that the nearer the historical subject came to the present the truer to nature did the picture become, and the more did it outwardly change in its features. It has shrivelled from the huge scale of David and Cornelius to the miniature scale of Meissonier and Menzel, and to some extent it thus leaves its further development to be guessed. At no distant time the historical picture will be overthrown, and the picture from modern life, hitherto but shyly handled and on the smallest scale, will swell to life size. History itself, serious history, clings merely to the rock-bed of old costume. One generation had used it with an abstract purpose as a substratum for philosophical ideas; others had made scenical pieces with its aid; a third generation turned it over for piquant traits and anecdotes. The last and greatest generation had finally come to handle it quite familiarly and humanly and without affected dignity. Their works protested against all idealism; and this expressed itself, in drawing, by their making use of the true instead of the