Note 159 — LECTURE X. FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

The picture that is called le Silence, which represents the sleep of the infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the infant is of superhuman power. The Battles of Alexander, with their defects, are pages of history of the highest order; and in the Alexander visiting with Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius, one knows not which to admire most, the noble ordering of the whole or the just expression of the figures.