The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1897-05-16


increasing, is the Memories of Marshal
Oudinot, Due de Reggie" Cd. Appleton
& Co., New York;, which NJ. CASTOR
Steigler has compiled from the unpub-
lished souvenirs of his second wife, and
which NJ Alexander Teixeiro de MattOS
has translated into fluent and readable
English, and it is the one above all
others that we have seen which can be
read with a thorough respect for the
character and the memory of the man
who is its subject. To say that he was
brave is no more than can be said with
equal justice of many, if not most, of
his fellows, followers of the great Cor
sican Captain, whose personality was
more potent in inspiring courage than
in creating principle, but his having diff
fered from theirs, in kind, if not in de-
gree, in that it was less an impulse of
the heated blood, the fury of the
Strife than the determination of the
cool, reasoning brain, which directed it
at the right moment and to the ulti-
mate end.
He was a hard fighter personally, as
his many wounds testified, but he was
more than that-he was a skillful one,
safe one, one upon whom his superior
his commander. when he was a Mar
shall, could always trust, he was so well
Instructed in the profession of arms,
and had SO perfected himself by con-
slant practice therin. He could be de-
pended upon because he could depend
or himself Entering the Medoc Regi-
ment as a private in his eighteenth
year, he was Second Lieutenant in the
L.
fourth year, Colonel, with the rank of
Brigadier, in his twenty-sixth year;
General of brigade in his twenty-eighth
year; General of division in his forty
second year; Marshal of the empire in
the same year, and in his forty-seventh
year Marshal of France which he con-
finued to his death in 1917, in his
eighty-first year. His career as a sol
der was a long one, and from beginning
TO end was an honorable one, winning
and commanding the respect of his enc
mics by his tact and his humanity when
they, through the shifting fortunes of
war, were under his military control, as
in Switzerland and Germany. He had
what men of his stamp too often lack
great civil capacity. The interest of
these Memoirs depends largely upon
episodes in the tumultuous career Of
Napoleon, but somewhat upon their
knowledge. or want of knowledge, of
later and more pacific episodes of which
the Duchesse de Reggie is here the
womanly historian. Her account of the
death of the Due de Berry, which she
witnessed, is very pathetic. She lacks
one quality that most writer's of per-
,a-.,4 FILL
supplied with. and that is a disposition
to tattle and scandalize the people
about whom she writes. to repeat idle
stories, and to make the worst Of every
body and everything. Her editor notices
this happy, womanly deficiency of hers,
and asks, WAS it that the eccentrici-
ties and weaknesses of men escaped the
penetration of the Duchesse de Reggie,
and are we to believe that so many peo-
pie can have passed for so long a pc
riod before her eyes without her raising
their mask, and discerning the hidden
sides of their nature? Surely no, but
at the risk of having it believed that
her perspicacity was not always
aroused, she would never consent to re-
veal secrets which did not belong to
her, and she expressed herself concern
knows whether this scrupulous discre-
ton did not constitute her principal
merit at court, and the secret of her
success? Lovers of scandal close this
book, It's charm is not that of malice"
No, but 1t has other and better charms,
and speaking in the best interests of
biography and history, and the best in
terests of humanity We wish they were
toy
New York Times: Eleven years later
than Raphael, in the last decade Of the
fifteenth century, Antonio Allegri, called
Correggio, was born. He was a home
keeping youth and little is known of his
life except that it afforded a striking
contrast to Raphael's brilliant existence.
In his genius Correggio was amodern Of
the moderns. breaking through the art
istic traditions that surrounded him in
order to carry out his individual concep-
tions. which were holder than his man
ner of execution. The story goes that
when he beheld for the first time one of
Raphaers pictures he exclaimed: 4, too,
am a painter" And so he was-a great
painter. if we take into consideration his
7riumphs over chiaroscuro and fore
shortening, but he was not altogether a
great artist. Robbed of the luminous
color Of the originals, Correggios pict-
ures in reproduction show his weakness
more plainly than his strength. The
charm of his suave flowing lines is left,
however, and the "Noh me tangere, -
which we reproduce, show his feeling
for delicate modelling in the young figure
of the Christ and in the upturned head
of Mary Magdalen; although it displays
as well the fatal facility which served
him in the place of sterner artistic Writ
ues Correggio's influence. dangerous
to a second-rate mind, shows plainly
enough in the work of Annibale Car
racci, who was a jealous, disagreeable
PAINTER of the latter half of the sixteenth
century, and whose chief distinction lies
in his connection with the famous &C.
lectic school which aimed at the COM
bination of all the virtues possessed by
the great painters gone before. To this
school Guido REM went, and neither
master nor pupil did anything to ele-
waite his profession. In the smooth in
sipidity of their work, in its total lack
of distinction and significance, one sees
the dark side of their brilliant period
and understands how the galleries be-
came flooded with inferior pictures that
sadly misreprestned the true artistic
spirit of their time. one cannot SC
much blame Carracci, who was dragged
away from his proper business of tailor
Guido REM deliberately debased art foI
III