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THE FRENCH AND FLEMISH GALLERY. 
[Nature and Art, June 1, 1867. 
forgotten the pang with which we buried poor Robin under 
our cherry-trees. 
But oh, for those days of our youthful eyes and ears, 
when the copses sprang and rang around us tenfold more 
lustily than now. They are long gone by ; and so are 
many later days which we wasted in pottering about the 
neighbourhood of Gray’s Inn. Not that we disdain the 
square where we so often watched the white pigeons wheel, 
and settle, and flutter ahead of the creeping cats. Still less 
that we disdain the garden where the black rook wooes his 
“ Ethiop queen ” with a courting stick as black as them- 
selves ; and where they bear it aloft between them to patch 
his ruined castle, founded under the eyes of Sir Roger de 
Coverley. But both rook and pigeon are as town-bred as 
the tailless sparrows ; and we have often grown sick of 
them all, when our blood was seething with the May fever. 
Then the nights seemed sultry before their season ; and we 
would often toss on the pillow counting every crow of the 
filthy fowls in Fulwood’s Rents, from the hoarse Cochin at 
one end to the shrill Bantam at the other. But lo ! a bolt 
out of bed, a cab, and an early train, and we stand on the 
Surrey hills ! The atmosphere sparkles to our lips like 
champagne, and washes the soot out of our nostrils. We 
can smell the sweet white turpentine, oozing from the fresh- 
tufted branches of yonder pine-trees. We can hear the 
distant cuckoo, though a long sweep of beech wood lies 
between us, resounding with the strokes of the woodpecker. 
We can see everything : the lark like a mote in the sun- 
beam, and the quaint bee-orchis at our feet. Our senses 
have returned, — what lack they yet ? There is a white 
house down by the bridge, and there is a look of fresh eggs 
about it ; but we shall not linger there long. We know a 
glen with a mossy bank, fit for King Arthur in the isle of 
Avalon. We will sleep there till the nightingale awakes us ; 
so close, perhaps, that we can catch the glance of his eye, 
and see the feathers on his throat swelling and sinking in 
the moonlight. Such things have been, and may be again. 
But now, by the Birds of Aristophanes, what with visions of 
boyhood and visions of manhood, our wits have gone wool- 
gathering in the sky, and building a rare Cloud-cuckoo- 
town ; and the printers have, all the time, been waiting for 
our second article on the birds of Michelet and Giacomelli. 
We will descend to earth like the skylark. But first we 
will take one more turn in mid-air. There are buzzing 
sounds in an odd corner of our brain — faint echoes of the 
Greek bird choruses, with burthens of popopopopoi and 
tiotiotiotinx. But we are not about to offend our fair readers 
with the originals, nor yet with our own schoolboy versions. 
We only wish to assert, that our adjuration of Aristophanes 
was much less out of place than it might seem to be. We 
have frequently been reminded of him whilst perusing 
“ L’Oiseau.” The Frenchman, like the old Athenian, shoots 
political arrows from behind his feathered stalking-horse. 
Hence his abuse of the aristocratic eagle, and hence his 
praise of the plebeian woodpecker. He considers the latter, 
with his red cap of liberty, to be the beau ideal of the 
French workman. To complete the resemblance, continues 
Michelet, he is calumniated. He is reported dangerous to 
the State : whereas he actually deserves a pension, and the 
title of Keeper of the Woods and Forests ! The episode of 
poor Pecker in love is very amusing. In fact, Michelet is 
never dull ; and, after all, he is really earnest in behalf of 
his nominal clients. Earth cannot do without the little 
birds ; yet she treats them most ungratefully. That is the 
main drift of his argument ; and he pleads the cause with 
force and pathos. But ever and anon his solemnity 
borders upon the burlesque ; and we half expect to hear 
him cry, Remember what happened in the days of 
Aristophanes ! Remember how the John Bright of Athens 
awoke the birds to a sense of their rights ; and how they 
built Cloud-cuckoo-town between heaven and earth, so that 
no rain could fall, and no smoke of sacrifice could rise, 
until both men and gods were starved into submission. 
Our spirit is only a short-winged bird ; and its flight is 
over. You may see a fellow to it, fair reader, in the ac- 
companying design by Giacomelli. It has no great cloud- 
cuckoo-town to show you : nothing but the corner of a green 
lane. Its one humble nest is hidden there so cunningly, 
that we doubt whether you can see a stick of it. Be content 
with admiring the leaves and ferns ; and we shall be sorry 
if they have not a double charm for you, when you think 
of the happy home beneath them. 
THE FRENCH AND FLEMISH GALLERY. 
1 1HE fourteenth annual exhibition of works by French and 
Flemish painters is now open at No. 120, Pall Mall, 
and we recommend such of our readers as care for art to 
take the opportunity of again studying the merits of these 
admirable schools, and comparing their works with those so 
lately displayed on the same walls by English artists. In 
this last investigation, it is right to remember that these 
pictures take pretty nearly the same rank, with regard to 
the chef-d’ oeuvres of the two foreign schools they represent 
as those in the late Winter Exhibition did to our English 
school. For the most part they are what may be called 
the common places of the studio, the cui'rent accomplish- 
ment, the clever essay. Some indeed are replicas of larger 
pictures which have brought the artists well-earned renown, 
and some few are by men whose genius is never absent, and 
whose smallest work shows the divine quality as certainly 
as their greatest. We think the prevailing impressions 
produced by the two sets of pictures are, good method and 
want of light in these, and uncertain and often blundering 
method but superior intention of colour in the English ; and 
we think also that to the English may be awarded the 
superiority in individuality. For, although these pictures 
are various, and full of accurate imitation of things the 
most diverse, there is to be traced in most of them a 
following of one or other of the masters who are celebrated 
in the school, so that the studies of natural things are made 
from certain points of view. This is of course inevitable 
to some degree, but these points of view seem to us fewer 
in France than in England. For with all the badness and 
wilfulness of our English painters, they generally show us 
something of themselves, and, in the absence of real art, 
which is impersonal, this individuality is more interesting to 
our mind than the mere outside formula of correct style 
without the genius which it ought to embody. No school 
has ever laid itself out for great works more determinately 
than the French, and yet we would hardly say that its 
successes have been in great works. It falls short of beauty 
for want of reverence ; of heroism, because it is too 
self-conscious ; of pathos, because it is too clever ; and it 
is a curious reflection, that of this great self-glorifying 
French school the chief outcome, the thing well done, better 
done than by other men, is the representation of naivetd, 
what we may call the prettiness of gentleness and ignorance 
— of ignorance in the sense of innocence. The quick 
sympathetic French nature may be one reason for this ; the 
constant presence of children and old people in the daily 
life may be another ; the exquisite taste which is the 
national attribute may be another, pointing as it does to 
the beauty of unaffected graces (much more readily 
perceived where grace is reduced to a science). Still, the 
fact is curious and points to the limitation of human 
endeavoursby the unalterable apportionment of human faculty. 
The greater mass of mankind can but get to a certain point 
on the high hill of art; only those to whom, as the old fable 
