The Italian Pictures Are
Of Small Value; But There Is A Work By Sir Joshua Rey-
Nolds, Said To Be
The only one in France, - an infant
Samuel in prayer, apparently a repetition of the pic-
ture in England which
Inspired the little plaster im-
age, disseminated in Protestant lands, that we used to
admire in our childhood. Sir Joshua, somehow, was
an eminently Protestant painter; no one can forget
that, who in the National Gallery in London has looked
at the picture in which he represents several young
ladies as nymphs, voluminously draped, hanging gar-
lands over a statue, - a picture suffused indefinably
with the Anglican spirit, and exasperating to a mem-
ber of one of the Latin races. It is an odd chance,
therefore, that has led him into that part of France
where Protestants have been least _bien vus_. This is the
country of the dragonnades of Louis XIV. and of the
pastors of the desert. From the garden of the Peyrou,
at Montpellier, you may see the hills of the Cevennes,
to which they of the religion fled for safety, and out
of which they were hunted and harried.
I have only to add, in regard to the Musee Fabre,
that it contains the portrait of its founder, - a little,
pursy, fat-faced, elderly man, whose countenance con-
tains few indications of the power that makes distin-
guished victims. He is, however, just such a personage
as the mind's eye sees walking on the terrace of the
Peyrou of an October afternoon in the early years of
the century; a plump figure in a chocolate-colored coat
and a _culotte_ that exhibits a good leg, - a culotte pro-
vided with a watch-fob from which a heavy seal is
suspended.
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