De la Roche gives me pleasure; there is in his pictures a simple and natural poesy; he is a man who has in his own heart a well of good water, whence he draws for himself when the streams are mixed with strange soil and bear offensive marks of the bloody battles of life.
The pictures of Leopold Robert I find charming.

They are full of vigor and nobleness; they express a nature where all is rich, young, and on a large scale.

Those that I have seen are so happily expressive of the thoughts and perceptions of early manhood, I can hardly regret he did not live to enter on another stage of life, the impression now received is so single.
The effort of the French school in Art, as also its main tendency in literature, seems to be to turn the mind inside out, in the coarsest acceptation of such a phrase.

Art can only be truly Art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.

But then it _is_ a symbol that Art seeks to present, and not the fact itself.
These French painters seem to have no idea of this; they have not studied the method of Nature.