JOETS and painters, ever since their arts have had an existence, have been unable to resist the impulse to celebrate the calm delights of the pastoral life. The literature of all people is filled with its motives, in earlier periods more true to nature, with the simple and rude joys and cares of the owners of the flock, and the plain, hard, yet happy life of those who tend the sheep in the solitary field.

Already the Romans had refined the shepherds in literature into poets and lovers, paving the way in modern times for Arcadian idylls, in which plaintive pipes breathed the soft loves of impossible swains, decked with garlands and ribbons.

In the eighteenth century, Watteau and Pater and all the rest gave us these famous bucolic scenes, where sheep-raising was chiefly carried on in neat parks, with suitable statuary of urns and slightly draped divinities, and where the flocks could enjoy the melodious tinkling of the lute, as Strephon breathed forth in tender accents his harmless passion for the dainty Araminta.

The artists of the last century who had learned to love the animals, and to know how to paint them, relegated the shepherd and even the shepherdess to the background, as the attendant merely of the flock, giving to the sheep or cows the place of honor, and striving to reproduce for us the nature and character of the animals themselves, the solemn and solitary grandeur of the wide-ranging heaths, where sheep may feed, and the silent, lonely, yet not unhappy life of their keepers.

Portraits of Cardinal Richelieu (resh'-lyer) Philippe de Champaigne (shäm-pan'), 1602-1674

LTHOUGH Brussels was the birthplace of this painter, and his early training was received there from a landscape painter named Fouquieres, a pupil of Rubens, most of his life was spent in Paris, and his style is rather French than Flemish. He went to Paris in 1621 and remained there during his life, enjoying the best patronage, painting portraits and religious scenes and decorating the palaces of the queen and others.

His best work is in his portraits, which are marked by nobility of conception, vitality and force, with strength of color. This threefold portrait of the great Cardinal was made according to the custom of the times, to be sent to the Italian sculptor, Mocchi, that he might make from these data a portrait bust. A well-known example of this expedient is the similar portrait of Charles I of England, by Van Dyck, at Windsor Castle. An honest and unadorned likeness of the subject is to be expected from such sketches, and this sincerity gives this picture its undoubted value.

Richelieu, 1585-1642, was made bishop at the age of twenty-two, came into connection with the court, and his ability coupled with his unscrupulous ambition, after some years gave him advancement, so that from 1624 to 1642 he was the chief minister of Louis XIII. Imperious, energetic, warring with hostile factions at home, and carrying on an aggressive foreign policy, which aimed at conquest, and if little conducive to real prosperity, was flattering to the French when successful, he managed to maintain himself in power until his death. His chief importance was in the strengthening of the royal power in France, with its intermingled good and evil.

Glad Tidings of Great Joy

Bernhard Plockhorst, 1825

ELIGIOUS art will never lose its hold on popularity, and

thus artists chiefly devoted to that field, like Plockhorst, will always arise. He was born in Brunswick, and was a pupil of Piloty in Munich, and later for a year of Couture in Paris. After travel to the chief art centers, he settled in Leipsic, and in 1869 removed to Berlin. Here he painted portraits and popular delineations of Bible scenes, chiefly from the life of Christ.

His best work is said to be "The Battle of the Archangel Michael with Satan," which is in the Museum at Cologne. Many other German galleries have his pictures, among which may be named as eminent, the portraits of Emperor William I and his Queen in the National Gallery in Berlin. His better pictures have strength of color and a worthy breadth of treatment, which he too often suffered to lapse into a conventionality induced by a superficial conception of his themes.

St. Luke gives us in his Gospel the story of shepherds abiding in the field, to whom appeared the angel with the glorious announcement: "Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." The little band of shepherd folk is pleasingly grouped, though their attitude seems to express an astonished interest, rather than the sore fear followed by an exultant joy, which such a vision awoke in their hearts.

We miss more in the confined landscape, the sense of the breadth and universality of the message, and of the nearness of the heavenly host singing praises.