"The Massacre of the Innocents."

M. Dore does not flinch from delineating the horrors attending the command of Herod (St. Matt. II., 16--18), in the "Massacre of the Innocents." The real merit of the work lies in its energetic but not exaggerated design. The scene is laid in the interior of a lofty gallery or spacious room, where soldiers have come upon a company of women, gathered there for a combined effort to save their babes.

The principal group presents the desperate, frantic struggles of a noble-looking woman with three soldiers, one of whom holds her infant aloft until he can gain a moment's respite from the human tigress--for womanhood seems lost in the strong passion of maternity. The general posing of the group in standing and sidelong attitudes enhances the sense of effort and confused struggle.

A still more violent contest takes place in the next group, where the arm of a strong man seems unable to wrest an infant from the clutches of its mother. In the mid-distance a mother is seen whispering some bribe in the ear of a trooper, as she holds in her arms her babe, concealed in the linen of its cradle.

On the right a beautiful woman on her knees holds up her darling child to the soldiers, who seem for the moment to listen to her appeal.

On the floor in the foreground lie a mother and babe clasped in each other's arms, the mother apparently as lifeless as the blood-stained child.

The treatment of this subject has called forth the efforts of several of the most powerful geniuses, but M. Dore has surpassed them all in the posing of his groups and in the dramatic intensity of passion and of action for which he is so justly celebrated.