If you advance, we embrace; if you turn back, we part.

And behold, the blood boils in the men's veins; the fleeing man wheels and charges again, and the beaten man is victorious.

Do you not see her rocking her child in the cradle, breathing greatness into him as she sings to him:

You shall be glorious and noble when the north wind blows by night

She makes him understand his mission in life before he has opened his eyes to the light — the mission of glory and nobility...

Do you not see her sending him out to herd the camels at eight years of age, and he walks along repeating to the rhythm of their steps:

The camels — sweet is their milk, the camels — behind the camels stand their people

Raiders may surprise him and drive off the camels as easy spoils, the little one able to do nothing. He hurries to the encampment — but he does not go in to his mother weeping and saying: they have taken the camels from me. No — he stands at the edge of the encampment crying out: "The camels, O gallant men!" And the gallant men, the young men of the tribe, rise as one man and march behind the little one as he shows them the place where the raiders surprised him and the direction in which they went. An hour or two, no more, and the camels are brought back, the aggressor gets his due, and the tribe returns, the camels before it, and the little one once more chanting to the rhythm of their steps — his chant full of resolve and self-confidence, the chant his mother taught him: behind the camels stand their people.

Yes, singing has its inspiration. It may inspire the purest of thoughts, and it may inspire the foulest... It inspires boldness or holding back, pride or humiliation, dignity or servility. So what have we inspired in our children?

In the schools they teach the rising generation to sing the splendid national anthems. But what has the home, the first school, done? Have we, I wonder, repeated in our children's hearing the flabby, insipid songs, so that they repeated them after us, and we made of them a generation whose spirits are limp and whose ambitions are lukewarm? A generation of no use to its homeland, its society, or itself?... Do you suppose we have made of our homes cabarets where corrupt songs are repeated — or have we begun, from the cradle, to plant greatness in souls?

his thoughts dispersed. He was doubtless overbold in his complacency in exhibiting such a painting — and others besides!

And yet, in spite of that, he can — if the model draws all his interest and all his feelings, and he believes in himself and knows his own power — produce paintings that hold truth of expression, sincerity of workmanship, and depth of feeling, as appears plainly in painting no. 36, "The Maiden in Furs," and "The Parisienne" (no. 38), and "Reading" (no. 45) — though in this last there is some weakness of composition (such as the presence of a number of huge books, clashing in color, shape, and size, beside the little reader).

It is as though art, for Gemayel, were a kind of luxury, not a principle to work by and to work for, sacrificing everything in its cause!

The time has doubtless come to speak of the summit of Lebanese art in the painting of landscape and in watercolor. Omar Onsi is one of those in whom Lebanon may rightly take pride among the artists of the world: he is a blend of the gentle feeling of Corot with the taste of Cézanne, his practical force, and his power of composition.

Onsi possesses the feeling of an inspired poet — perhaps he inherited it from his forefathers — and a true knowledge of the art of composition and of the choice of subjects which he does not fail to execute. The first thing that strikes one in him is his complete faith in what he does: he paints everything in the same manner, making no difference between a flower, a landscape, or a person; everything gives truthful expression to the fineness of his senses and his fidelity to his own feeling.

His painting rests upon color more than upon form. He is an idealist who raises

his subject above reality, refining and purifying it, and makes its effect and its beauty values of color, composition, and harmony. He concentrates his strength in the general artistic form, not in partial forms and exactness of transcription, nor in dramatic subjects and choice sentimental titles — such as "Speak to Me," "Lamartine's Cedar," and "Telephone" (Coup de Téléphone).

Among Onsi's exhibited paintings are works worthy of attention and of absolute appreciation, in which he soared, in the art of landscape painting, to heights far beyond the reach of the other Lebanese artists — in the same subjects — living and dead alike.

It is enough to look at paintings nos. 1, 2, 6, 11, 14, 17, and 23, among others, where the colors are harmonious and the composition firm and coherent, and where each painting has its own atmosphere that makes you feel the air — its coolness in some, its heat and dryness in others.

I advise the reader, if he wishes to understand Onsi's works with a true understanding, to look at them with his feeling and his emotions, not with his mind and his eyes, and to strip away from them the reality of the outward form; otherwise he loses what is valuable in them.

I have doubtless wearied the reader with this survey, long in his opinion and very short in mine, for it is a subject rarely broached — rarely broached with sincerity and detachment. Finally: all the judgments in this article rest solely upon the paintings that were exhibited, for there may well be other paintings better and greater than these; but I am excused, and the reader is excused too, if we have not concerned ourselves with them and taken account of what is in them.