and rocks whereon climbing plants cling closely; and, besides these landscapes, a good picture here and there, executed, if not by the hand of an artist—­for the word artist possesses a higher meaning in our eyes—­at least by the hand of a man of some power, and we hate that this painter should be at the Hotel de Ville at the moment when the spring is awakening in forest and field, and when he would do so much better to go into the woods of Meudon or Fontainebleau to study the waving of the branches and the eccentric twists and turns of the oak-tree’s huge trunk, than in making answers to Monsieur Lefrancais—­iconoclast in theory only as yet—­and to Monsieur Jules Valles, who has read Homer in Madame Dacier’s translation, or has never read it at all.  That one should try a little of everything, even of polities, when one is capable of nothing else, is, if not excusable, at any rate comprehensible; but when a man can make excellent boots like Napoleon Gaillard, or good paintings like Gustave Courbet, that he should deliberately lay himself open to ridicule, and perhaps to everlasting execration, is what we cannot admit.  To this Monsieur Courbet would reply:  “It is the artists that I represent; it is the rights and claims of modern art that I uphold.  There must be a great revolution in painting as in politics; we must federate too, I tell you; we’ll decapitate those aristocrats, the Titians and Paul Veroneses; we’ll establish, instead of a jury, a revolutionary tribunal, which shall condemn to instant death any man who troubles himself about the ideal—­that king whom we have knocked off his throne; and at this tribunal I will be at once complainant, lawyer, and judge.  Yes! my brother painters, rally around me, and we will die for the Commune of Art.  As to those who are not of my opinion, I don’t care the snap of a finger about them.”  By this last expression the friends of Monsieur Gustave Courbet will perceive that we are not without some experience of his style of conversation.  Courbet, my master, you don’t know what you are talking about, and all true artists will send you to old Harry, you and your federation.  Do you know what an artistic association, such as you understand it, would result in?  In serving the puerile ambition of one man—­its chief, for there will be a chief, will there not, Monsieur Courbet?—­and the puerile rancours of a parcel of daubers, without name and without talent.  Artist in our way we assert, that no matter, what painter, even had he composed works superior in their way to Courbet’s “Combat de Cerfs” and “Femme au Perroquet,” who came and said, “Let us federate,” we would answer him plainly:  “Leave us in peace, messieurs of the federation, we are dreamers and workers; when we exhibit or publish and are happy enough to meet with a man who will buy or print a few thousand copies of our work without reducing himself to beggary, we are happy.  When that is done, we do not trouble ourselves much about our work; the indulgence of a