The children look innocent enough,
though they too are rather dimly and clumsily painted; but one feels
that they are somehow in the net, that they are growing up in a
pestilential and corrupting atmosphere, and that the flowers of evil
will soon burst into premature bloom in their tender souls. The whole
scene is overhung with a close and enervating gloom; one apprehends
somehow that the air swims with a heavy fragrance; and though one feels
that the artist's hand failed to represent his thought, he was painting
with a desperate intentness, and the dark quality of the conception
contrives to struggle out. The art of it is great rather than good; it
is the art of a man who realises the scene with a terrible insight, and
in spite of a clumsy and smudgy handling, manages to bring it home
perhaps even more impressively than if he had been fully master of his
medium. There is a mingling of horror and pathos over it all, and the
pretty, innocent gaiety of the children seems obscured as by a
gathering thunder-cloud; as when the air grows close and still over
some scene of rustic merriment, and the blitheness of the revellers
sinks into torpor and faintness, not knowing what ails them. One feels
that the performers of the dance will be rewarded with kisses and
sweetmeats, and that they will draw the poison into their souls.
It is surely very difficult to analyse what this shadow of sin upon the
world may be, because there is so large an element of subjectivity
mingled with it.
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