that fate, at least we do it with an ample knowledge of all that it involves. We have seen democracy both in its contemptible and in its terrible aspect, in the weakness of an apathetic security, and in the frenzy of an unbridled passion. In the enjoyment of a prosperity conferred by boundless natural resources, it was incapable of the self-restraint necessary for sustaining an effective system of government. Its insatiable taste for adulation degraded statesmanship into a disreputable craft; and it failed to produce rulers able either to avoid or to foresee the danger upon which its splendid promise has been shattered. When the hour of trial came, its institutions were found to be too feeble to bear the strain, until propped up by the perilous support of a military despotism. Now we see the government of the multitude under its other aspect. It is animated by a passion as thoughtless and unreasonable as its former security. All care for the prosperity which formerly was its first care, all thought of freedom, all scruples of humanity, have been swallowed up in the one longing for a colossal empire. Every right is trodden down, every sentiment of compassion is repressed, in order that this aspiration may be gratified. For this purpose it proclaims, and is straining every nerve to execute, a scheme of slaughter and devastation, upon a scale so gigantic and so ruthless that no civilized government has ever even approached to it before,-a scheme from the mere suggestion of which it is to be hoped that every other civilized government would turn away with disgust. We have a fair picture of democracy under both its conditions before us. We know what is its capacity for good government in repose; we know what is its justice or its humanity, what its regard for the rights or the freedom of a minority, in times of trouble. If with this knowledge in their possession, the classes who govern in this country, and who are in a minority, suffer themselves to be enticed into an advance towards democracy, their recompense will not be slow to reach them, and will be richly merited when it comes. ART. THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. Notice des Tableaux exposés dans les Galeries du Musée Impérial du Louvre. Par Frédéric Villot. 3e partie. Ecoles d'Italie et d'Espagne. 13e édition. Paris. 2. Histoire du Louvre. Par le Comte Clarac. 1 vol. 3. Supplementary Despatches of Field - Marshal the Duke of Wellington. Occupation of France by the Allied Armies, Surrender of Napoleon, and Restoration of the Bourbons. Vol. XI. 4. Correspondance de Napoléon I. Par ordre de l'Empereur Napoléon III. THE HE chief events of a nation's life are presented to the historian under various forms. It is not only the main stream of public affairs which reflects the character of the age. Every tiny rill and pool equally renders back an image; all alike show that the same tide has swept them, the same storm perturbed them. Each has a particular speech and language, but the story is the same, and may sometimes be deciphered with greater distinctness in the part than in the whole. More particularly do we look for the high-water marks and other signs of the social weather on those luxuries and adornments which cluster round the more exposed portions of the social structure. Obscure things, like lowly people, escape 'those tempests which fly over ditches; but the annals of a jewel will be found identical with those of an empire. And especially are these varying watermarks discernible to the philosophic eye along the walls which have witnessed the formation, growth, and fluctuations of great collections of art and virtù, the records of which are among the clearest and most copious commentaries on the pages of general history. How much, for instance, might be read of the closer details of the history of the Italian race, if the rise and fall and fall and rise of the great Medici accumulations could be now clearly traced! How much is told by a glance at the catalogue of the sale of King Charles I.'s collection by the Commonwealth ! And above all, for the grandeur and taste that formed-the Terror which devastated-the conquest which enriched-and the retriVol. 117.-No. 234. U bution bution which reduced-what may not be gathered by way comment from the chequered records of the great museums of the Louvre! Historical Paris, however present to the mind's eye, is fast disappearing from the sight. The Tuileries are not what they were. The salons of the Louvre would puzzle those who trod them last in 1814; but a retrospect of their contents, all shifted and changed as they have been, still speaks as clearly as ever to the student of history, equally in what is no longer there as in those portions which have descended safe to the present day through all the foaming cataracts of French history. Considered geographically, socially, and politically, France as a country, and the French as a race, may be said to have been predestined to the early possession and appreciation of those objects of taste which are among the most defensible idols of human worship. Most royal collections of other countries and later times owe their main formation to the policy which took advantage of the mal-government and degenerate needs of petty Italian princes. Thus, the walls of Charles I.'s palaces were clothed with the dismantlings of those of Mantua, and the Gallery of Dresden filled with the emptying of that of Modena. But the French were in the field before these ups and downs of the picture market began. It is not too much to say that the Court of France were earlier even than any secular power in Italy in patronage of artists and acquisition of works of art. Charles V. of Francereigned 1364-1380-was a collector. He decorated his residences with sculpture and painting long vanished both from sight and record. This was more especially the case with that small château, first a hunting-seat, then a prison, of which nothing more that the name 'le Louvre' remains-the name itself retained from a remote period, and forming one of those links between Past and Present which embrace the utmost possible contrast of ideas; being supposed to descend from (Silva) lupina, indicative of a neighbourhood curiously at variance with that which surrounds the present noble edifice. Charles V. first used the Louvre as a palace of residence, adding greatly to its extent, and enclosing it within the walls of Paris. He first also associated its name with the conservation of rare and precious works; for there he placed the Royal Library, rich with those galleries on a small scale which adorn the vellum pages of ancient manuscripts. These, too, in great portion followed the tide of particular history, surging backwards and forwards with it across the Channel; for many of these manuscripts were carried off to England in 1429, by the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France; and many were brought back in 1440 by the Princes of Angoulême, on the termination of their long captivity in England. The The foundations, however, properly speaking, of the collections 'de la maison du Roi' belong to a later monarch. If the story so pertinaciously repeated of the letter of Francis I. to his mother, after the battle of Pavia, reporting the loss of all, 'fors l'honneur,' has been proved by the evidence of the letter itself to be totally untrue, it is, at all events, clear that he acquired and carried off from his Italian campaigns that respect for art which was an honour to his taste, and a dowry to his country. Nor would it be far-fetched to attribute to the personal impression produced by Leonardo da Vinci upon the young French monarch the germinating idea of what has since expanded into the magnificent museums of the Louvre. There have been as pertinaciously untrue tales told of Francis I. and the painter of the Cena,' as of the King's letter to his mother. But there can be no doubt that the enthusiasm for the varied gifts of the great master kindled in the breast of the King, when the two first met at Milan in 1515, was the stepping-stone to his admiration for Italian art. As a sure means of securing their works, he transplanted the painters themselves to his own dominions. Seldom has a monarch been so ungratefully requited. Leonardo did him little more than the compliment of dying in France, rather prematurely, to our present view, distinguished, or excused, by his biographers by the title of Venerable, for he was only sixty-seven years of age; while Andrea del Sarto, having undertaken to purchase antique marbles in Italy on behalf of the King, embezzled the money and returned no more. Other painters of secondary note, such as Primaticcio, and Niccolo dell' Abbate, constituted the so-called School of Fontainebleau. They decorated the walls of that palace with frescoes of great magnificence and extent, the execution of which, continued by their scholars, placed Fontainebleau, in point of adornment, almost on a par with the cotemporary glories of the Vatican, and probably far above the questionable merits of the Palazzo del Té, at Mantua. Benvenuto Cellini added the éclat of his work and exaggerated artistic character to this period, and was one of the few faithful Italians in the King's pay. He decorated the royal banqueting tables with objects precious in workmanship and material. French artists also, responding to the encouragement given by a monarch so enlightened in these respects, added their contributions in sculpture, painting, enamels, porcelain, &c.; so that Fontainebleau obtained the name of the little Rome.' Undeterred also by the failure of his first attempt, Francis I. employed agents, honester than Andrea, to procure examples of antique sculpture-figures and busts-from the then teeming soil of Rome. Or, when the object he coveted, such as the Apollo Belvedere, the Venus, &c., was beyond purchase, casts were taken for the King, and the work was executed in bronze under a French sky. Some of these may still be identified in the Tuileries gardens. Smaller objects too, such as incised gems, medals, and coins, were sought for by this accomplished Prince. His immediate successors, especially Catherine de' Medici, continued these researches, till such became the rage for the acquisition_more especially of coins, that a numismatist, travelling in France during the time of Catherine, enumerates no less than two hundred collections, of which hers was the chief, among the princes and nobility. But above all, Francis I. formed a collection of those enchanting objects which only began to be portable and plentiful at the beginning of the sixteenth century, namely, easel pictures. Many came to him doubtless in an honest way, by direct commission and purchase from the painter. Presents, or bribes, also in this fascinating form, were the order of the day; but more numerous still were the presents, so-called, levied, as Vasari states, upon the fears and necessities of the citizens of Florence, after the siege of that city in 1529. Unfortunately, no catalogue exists of a collection which, fresh as it was from the hands of the greatest painters who ever flourished, must have offered a series such as the world has scarcely seen. It makes us doubt, however, whether pictures ever were seen in the state in which the painter left them; for it is owing to the record of some kind of restoration that we know that the Raphaels, which still constitute the strength of the Louvre, are the legacy of Francis I. As early as 1530, Primaticcio, then engaged on the works at Fontainebleau, where these pictures occupied a particular saloon, is known to have performed some cleaning operation on the four large Raphaels. These were the large Holy Family, with the angel strewing flowers, the St. Michael overcoming Satan, the_portrait of Joanna of Arragon, and the St. Margaret and the Dragon; not one of them being then at the most more than thirteen years old. Of these the portrait of Joanna of Arragon was a gift from the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici. The manner in which Francis acquired the others is not now traceable; but there is presumptive evidence in the choice of the subjects of two of them -assisted by other testimony-that they were executed by Raphael for him. The St. Michael,* namely, is believed to have been The further interpretation given to this picture, and repeated in all catalogues, viz., that it was symbolical of Francis I., as the eldest son of the Church, under the form of the Archangel, overcoming Luther, under the form of Satan, is another of the many baseless stories which spring from the atmosphere of Courts. Raphael had painted this picture before Luther wrote his theses. painted |