"A curious work has been compiled, by a number of the most popular authors of our period, in honour of the chaotic landscape beauties of the forest [of Barbizon], and of Monsieur Dènecourt, its Columbus and their over-wrought enthusiasm in their praises of the place, and the volcanic irregularity of the forest itself, are quite in harmony with their retarded adulation of the painters living there and the eruption brought about by those painters in the classical world of art that preceded them. The book is entitled a Hommage to M. Dènecourt, a retired politician of the Reds, who was a sort of 'Old Mortality' to the forest"