French. No, Sir.

English. Then we cannot enter into the com

parison.

French.-That is true.

Yours flou

English. We never had a school of painting till the present day. Whether we have one at present, will be seen in the course of the winter. rished one hundred and fifty years ago. For, not to include Nicholas Poussin and Claude Lorraine in it, (names that belong to time and nature,) there were Philip Champagne, Jouvenet, Le Sueur, whose works are surely unequalled by the present race of artists, in colouring, in conception of the subject, in the imitation of nature, and in picturesque effect. As a proof of it, they become their places, and look well in the Louvre. A picture of David's would be an eye-sore there. You are familiar with their works?

French. I have seen those masters, but there is an objection to passing into that part of the Louvre. English.The air is, I own, different.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LUXEMBOURG GALLERY.

RACINE'S poetry, and Shakspeare's, however wide apart, do not absolutely prove that the French and English are a distinct race of beings, who can never properly understand one another. But the Luxembourg Gallery, I think, settles this point forevernot in our favour, for we have nothing (thank God) to oppose to it, but decidedly against them, as a people incapable of any thing but the little, the affected, and extravagant in works of imagination and the FINE ARTS. Poetry is but the language of feeling, and we may convey the same meaning in a different form of words. But in the language of painting, words become things; and we cannot be mistaken in the character of a nation, that, in thus expressing themselves, uniformly leave out certain elements of feeling, and greedily and ostentatiously insert others that they should not. The English have properly no school of art, (though they have one painter at least equal to Molière,)-we have here either done nothing worth speaking of, compared with our progress in

other things, or our faults are those of negligence and rusticity. But the French have done their utmost to attain perfection, and they boast of having attained it. What they have done is, therefore, a fair specimen of what they can do. Their works contain undoubted proofs of labour, learning, power; yet they are only the worse for all these, since, without a thorough knowledge of the scientific and mechanical part of their profession, as well as profound study, they never could have immortalized their want of taste and genius in the manner they have done. Their pictures at the Luxembourg are "those faultless monsters which the art ne'er saw" till now-the "hand-writing on the wall," which nothing can reverse. It has been said, that "Vice to be hated needs but to be seen," and the same rule holds good in natural as in moral deformity. It is a pity that some kind hand does not take an opportunity of giving to ashes this monument of their glory and their shame, but that it is important to preserve the proofs of such an anomaly in the history of the human mind as a generation of artists painting in this manner, and looking down upon the rest of the world as not even able to appreciate their paramount superiority in refinement and elegance. It is true, strangers know not what to make of them. The ignorant look at them with wonder-the more judicious, with pain and astonishment at the perversion of talents and industry. Still, they themselves go on, quoting one another's works, and parcelling

out the excellences of the several pictures under different heads-pour les coloris, pour le dessein, pour la composition, pour l'expression, as if all the world were of accord on this subject, and Raphael had never been heard of. It is enough to stagger a nation, as well as an individual, in their admiration of their own accomplishments, when they find they have it all to themselves; but the French are blind, insensible, incorrigible to the least hint of any thing like imperfection or absurdity. It is this want of selfknowledge, and incapacity to conceive of any thing beyond a certain conventional circle, that is the original sin-the incurable error of all their works of imagination. If Nature were a French courtezan or Opera-dancer, their poetry and painting would be the finest in the world*.

The fault, then, that I should find with this Collection of Pictures is, that it is equally defective in the imitation of nature, which belongs to painting in general; or in giving the soul of nature-expression, which belongs more particularly to history-painting. Their style of art is false from beginning to end, nor is it redeemed even by the vices of genius, originality,

* It is the same idle, inveterate self-complacency, the same limited comprehension, that has been their ruin in every thing. Parisian exquisites could not conceive that it snowed in Russia, nor how it was possible for barbarians to bivouac in the Champs Elysées. But they have forgotten the circumstance altogether. Why should I remind them of it?

G

and splendour of appearance. It is at once tame and extravagant, laboured and without effect, repulsive to the senses and cold to the heart. Nor can it well be otherwise. It sets out on a wrong principle, and the farther it goes, nay, the more completely it succeeds in what it undertakes, the more inanimate, abortive, and unsatisfactory must be the performance. French painting, in a word, is not to be considered as an independent art, or original language, coming immediately from nature, and appealing to it-it is a bad translation of sculpture into a language essentially incompatible with it. The French artists take plastercasts from the antique, and colour them by a receipt; they take plaster-casts and put them into action, and give expression to the features according to the traditional rules for composition and expression. This is the invariable process: we see the infallible results, which differ only according to the patience, the boldness, and ingenuity of the painter in departing from nature, and caricaturing his subject.

For instance, let us take the Endymion of Girodet, No. 57. It is a well-drawn, though somewhat effeminate Academy-figure. All the rest is what I have said. It is a waste of labour, an abuse of power. There is no repose in the attitude; but the body, instead of being dissolved in an immortal sleep, seems half lifted up, so as to produce a balance of form, and to make a display of the symmetry of the proportions. Vanity here presides even over sleep.