One does not need to review the works of Charles Gounod to any great
extent before discovering that above all things he was an idealist. His
whole aspect of life and art was that of a man imbued with a sense of
the beautiful and a longing to actualize some noble art purpose. He was
of an age of idealists. Coming at the artificial period of the Second
Empire, he was influenced by that artistic atmosphere, as were such
masters of the brush as Jean August Ingres and Eugene Delacroix. This,
however, was unconscious, and in no way affected his perfect sincerity
in all he did.