Chapter X: Appendix: 371 (8)

I certainly admire Champagne as an historical painter, and even as a landscape painter; but he is perhaps greatest as a portrait painter. In portraits truth and nature are particularly in their place, relieved by coloring, and idealized in proper measure by expression. The portraits of Champagne are so many monuments in which his most illustrious contemporaries will live forever. Every thing about them is strikingly real, grave, and severe, with a penetrating sweetness. Should the records of Port-Royal be lost, all Port-Royal might be found in Champagne. Among those portraits we see the inflexible Saint-Cyran,[148] as well as his persecutor, the imperious Richelieu.[149] We see, too, the learned, the intrepid Antoine Arnaud, to whom the contemporaries of Bossuet decreed the name of Great;[150] and Mme. Angelique Arnaud, with her naive and strong figure.[151] Among them is mother Agnes and the humble daughter of Champagne himself, sister St. Suzanne.[152] She has just been miraculously cured, and her whole prostrated person bears still the impress of a relic of suffering. Mother Agnes, kneeling before her, regards her with a look of grateful joy. The place of the scene is a poor cell; a wooden cross hanging on the wall, and some straw chairs, are all the ornaments. On the picture is the inscription,--_Christo uni medico animarum et corporum_, etc. There is possessed the Christian stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity. Add to all these portraits that of Champagne;[153] for the painter may be put by the side of his personages.

Had France produced in the seventeenth century only these four great artists, it would be necessary to give an important place to the French school; but she counts many other painters of the greatest merit. Among these we may distinguish P. Mignard, so much admired in his times, so little known now, and so worthy of being known. How have we been able to let fall into oblivion the author of the immense fresco of _Val-de-grace_, so celebrated by Moliere, which is perhaps the greatest page of painting in the world![154] What strikes at first, in this gigantic work, is the order and harmony. Then come a thousand charming details and innumerable episodes which form themselves important compositions. Remark also the brilliant and sweet coloring which should at least obtain favor for so many other beauties of the first order. Again, it is to the pencil of Mignard that we owe that ravishing ceiling of a small apartment of the King at Versailles, a master-piece now destroyed, but of which there remains to us a magnificent translation in the beautiful engraving of Gerard Audran. What profound expression in the _Plague of AEacus_,[155] and in the _St. Charles giving the Communion to the Plague-infected of Milan_! Mignard is recognized as one of our best portrait painters: grace, sometimes a little too refined, is joined in him to sentiment. The French school can also present with pride Valentin, who died young and was so full of promise; Stella, the worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Claudine, Antoinette, and Francoise Stella; Lahyre, who has so much spirit and taste;[156] Sebastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated;[157] the Lenains, who sometimes have the _naivete_ of Lesueur and the color of Champagne; Bourguignon, full of fire and enthusiasm; Jouvenet, whose composition is so good;[158] finally, besides so many others, Lebrun, whom it is now the fashion to treat cavalierly, who received from nature, with perhaps an immoderate passion for fame, passion for the beautiful of every kind, and a talent of admirable flexibility,--the true painter of a great king by the richness and dignity of his manner, who, like Louis XIV., worthily closes the seventeenth century.[159]

Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of painting, would it not be unjust to pass in silence over engraving, its daughter, or its sister? Certainly it is not an art of ordinary importance; we have excelled in it; we have above all carried it to its perfection in portraits. Let us be equitable to ourselves. What school--and we are not unmindful of those of Marc' Antonio, Albert Durer, and Rembrandt--can present such a succession of artists of this kind? Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gautier make in some sort the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. Then come a crowd of men of the most diverse talents,--Mellan, Michel Lasne, Morin, Daret, Huret, Masson, Nanteuil, Drevet, Van Schupen, the Poillys, the Edelincks, and the Audrans. Gerard Edelinck and Nanteuil alone have a popular renown, and they merit it by the delicacy, splendor, and charm of their graver. But the connoisseurs of elevated taste find at least their rivals in engravers now less admired, because they do not flatter the eye so much, but have, perhaps, more truth and vigor. It must also be said, that the portraits of these two masters have not the historic importance of those of their predecessors. The _Conde_ of Nanteuil is justly admired; but if we wish to know the great Conde, the conqueror of Rocroy and Lens, we must not demand him from Nanteuil, but from Huret, Michel Lasne, and Daret,[160] who designed and engraved him in all his force and heroic beauty. Edelinck and Nanteuil himself scarcely knew and retraced the seventeenth century, except at the approach of its decline.[161] Morin and Mellan were able to see it, and transmit it in its glorious youth. Morin is the Champagne of engraving: he does not engrave, he paints. It is he who represents and transmits to posterity the illustrious men of the first half of the great century--Henry IV., Louis XIII., the de Thous, Berulle, Jansenius, Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, Richelieu, Mazarin, still young, and Retz, when he was only a coadjutor.[162] Mellan had the same advantage. He is the first in date of all the engravers of the seventeenth century, and perhaps is also the most expressive. With a single line, it seems that from his hands only shades can spring; he does not strike at first sight; but the more we regard him, the more he seizes, penetrates, and touches, like Lesueur.[163]

Christianity, that is to say, the reign of the spirit, is favorable to painting, is particularly expressive. Sculpture seems to be a pagan art; for, if it must also contain moral expression, it is always under the imperative condition of beauty of form. This is the reason why sculpture is as it were natural to antiquity, and appeared there with an incomparable splendor, before which painting somewhat paled,[164] whilst among the moderns it has been eclipsed by painting, and has remained very inferior to it, by reason of the extreme difficulty of bringing stone and marble to express Christian sentiment, without which, material beauty suffers; so that our sculpture is too insignificant to be beautiful, too mannered to be expressive. Since antiquity, there have scarcely been two schools of sculpture:[165]--one at Florence, before Michael Angelo, and especially with Michael Angelo; the other in France, at the _Renaissance_, with Jean Cousin, Goujon, Germain Pilon. We may say that these three artists have, as it were, shared among themselves grandeur and grace: to the first belong nobility and force, with profound knowledge;[166] to the other two, an elegance full of charm. Sculpture changes its character in the seventeenth century as well as every thing else: it no longer has the same attraction, but it finds moral and religious inspiration, which the skilful masters of the _Renaissance_ too much lacked. Jean Cousin excepted, is there one of them that is superior to Jacques Sarazin? That great artist, now almost forgotten, is at once a disciple of the French school and the Italian school, and to the qualities that he borrows from his predecessors, he adds a moral expression, touching and elevated, which he owes to the spirit of the new school. He is, in sculpture, the worthy contemporary of Lesueur and Poussin, of Corneille, Descartes, and Pascal. He belongs entirely to the reign of Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Mazarin; he did not even see that of Louis XIV.[167] Called into France by Richelieu, who had also called there Poussin and Champagne, Jacques Sarazin in a few years produced a multitude of works of rare elegance and great character. What has become of them? The eighteenth century passed over them without regarding them. The barbarians that destroyed or scattered them, were arrested before the paintings of Lesueur and Poussin, protected by a remnant of admiration: while breaking the master-pieces of the French chisel, they had no suspicion of the sacrilege they were committing against art as well as their country. I was at least able to see, some years ago, at the Museum of French Monuments, collected by the piety of a friend of the arts, beautiful parts of a superb mausoleum erected to the memory of Henri de Bourbon, second of the name, Prince of Conde, father of the great Conde, the worthy support, the skilful fellow-laborer of Richelieu and Mazarin. This monument was supported by four figures of natural grandeur,--_Faith, Prudence, Justice, Charity_. There were four bas-reliefs in bronze, representing the _Triumphs of Renown, Time, Death_, and _Eternity_. In the _Triumph of Death_, the artist had represented a certain number of illustrious moderns, among whom he had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo.[168] We can still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the pavilion of the Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at once so majestic and so graceful, which are detached with admirable relief and lightness. Have Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon done any thing more elegant and lifelike? Those females breathe, and are about to move. Take the pains to go a short distance[169] to visit the humble chapel that now occupies the place of that magnificent church of the Carmelites, once filled with the paintings of Champagne, Stella, Lahire, and Lebrun; where the voice of Bossuet was heard, where Mlle. de Lavalliere and Mme. de Longueville were so often seen prostrated, their long hair shorn, and their faces bathed in tears. Among the relics that are preserved of the past splendor of the holy monastery, consider the noble statue of the kneeling Cardinal de Berulle. On those meditative and penetrating features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes the soul of that great servant of God, who died at the altar like a warrior on the field of honor. He prays God for his dear Carmelites. That head is perfectly natural, as Champagne might have painted it, and has a severe grace that reminds one of Lesueur and Poussin.[170]

Below Sarazin, the Anguiers are still artists that Italy would admire, and to whom there is wanting, since the great century, nothing but judges worthy of them. These two brothers covered Paris and France with the most precious monuments. Look at the tomb of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, by Francois Anguier: the face of the great historian is reflective and melancholy, like that of a man weary of the spectacle of human things; and nothing is more amiable than the statues of his two wives, Marie Barbancon de Cany, and Gasparde de la Chatre.[171] The mausoleum of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632, which is still seen at Moulins, in the church of the ancient convent of the daughters of Sainte-Marie, is an important work of the same artist, in which force is manifest, with a little heaviness.[172] To Michel Anguier are attributed the statues of the duke and duchess of Tresmes, and that of their illustrious son, Potier, Marquis of Gevres.[173] Behold in him the intrepid companion of Conde, arrested in his course at thirty-two years of age before Thionville, after the battle of Rocroy, already lieutenant-general, and when Conde was demanding for him the baton of a marshal of France, deposited on his tomb; behold him young, beautiful, brave, like his comrades cut down also in the flower of life, Laval, Chatillon, La Moussaye. One of the best works of Michel Anguier is the monument of Henri de Chabot, that other companion, that faithful friend of Conde, who by the splendor of his valor, especially by the graces of his person, knew how to gain the heart, the fortune, and the name of the beautiful Marguerite, the daughter of the great Duke of Rohan. The new duke died, still young, in 1655, at thirty-nine years of age. He is represented lying down, the head inclined and supported by an angel; another angel is at his feet. The whole is striking, and the details are exquisite. The face of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to its reputation, but the beauty is that of one dying. The body has already the languor of death, _longuescit moriens_, with I know not what antique grace. This morsel, if the drawing were more severe, would rival the _Dying Gladiator_, of which it reminds one, which it perhaps even imitates.[174]

In truth, I wonder that men now dare speak so lightly of Puget and Girardon. To Puget qualities of the first order cannot be refused. He has the fire, the enthusiasm, the fecundity of genius. The caryatides of the Hotel de Ville of Toulon, which have been brought to the Museum of Paris, attest a powerful chisel. The _Milon_ reminds one of the manner of Michael Angelo; it is a little overstrained, but it cannot be denied that the effect is striking. Do you want a talent more natural, and still having force and elevation? Take the trouble to search in the Tuileries, in the gardens of Versailles, in several churches of Paris, for the scattered works of Girardon, here for the mausoleum of the Gondis,[175] there for that of the Castellans,[176] that of Louvois,[177] etc.; especially go to see in the church of the Sorbonne the mausoleum of Richelieu. The formidable minister is there represented in his last moments, sustained by religion and wept by his country. The whole person is of a perfect nobility, and the figure has the fineness, the severity, the superior distinction given to it by the pencil of Champagne, and the gravers of Morin, Michel Lasne, and Mellan.

Finally, I do not regard as a vulgar sculptor Coysevox, who, under the influence of Lebrun, unfortunately begins the theatrical style, who still has the facility, movement, and elegance of Lebrun himself. He reared worthy monuments to Mazarin, Colbert, and Lebrun,[178] and thus to speak, sowed busts of the illustrious men of his time. For, remark it well, artists then took scarcely any arbitrary and fanciful subjects. They worked upon contemporaneous subjects, which, while giving them proper liberty, inspired and guided them, and communicated a public interest to their works. The French sculpture of the seventeenth century, like that of antiquity, is profoundly natural. The churches and the monasteries were filled with the statues of those who loved them during life, and wished to rest in them after death. Each church of Paris was a popular museum. The sumptuous residences of the aristocracy--for at that period, there was one in France, like that of England at the present time--possessed their secular tombs, statues, busts, and portraits of eminent men whose glory belonged to the country as well as their own family. On its side, the state did not encourage the arts in detail, and, thus to speak, in a small way; it gave them a powerful impulse by demanding of them important works, by confiding to them vast enterprises. All great things were thus mingled together, reciprocally inspired and sustained each other.

One man alone in Europe has left a name in the beautiful art that surrounds a chateau or a palace with graceful gardens or magnificent parks,--that man is a Frenchman of the seventeenth century, is Le Notre. Le Notre may be reproached with a regularity that is perhaps excessive, and a little mannerism in details; but he has two qualities that compensate for many defects, grandeur and sentiment. He who designed the park of Versailles, who to the proper arrangement of parterres, to the movement of fountains, to the harmonious sound of waterfalls, to the mysterious shades of groves, has known how to add the magic of infinite perspective by means of that spacious walk where the view is extended over an immense sheet of water to be lost in the limitless distances,--he is a landscape-painter worthy of having a place by the side of Poussin and Lorrain.

We had in the middle age our Gothic architecture, like all the nations of northern Europe. In the sixteenth century what architects were Pierre Lescot, Jean Bullant, and Philibert Delorme! What charming palaces, what graceful edifices, the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville of Paris, Chambord, and Ecouen! The seventeenth century also had its original architecture, different from that of the middle age and that of the _Renaissance_, simple, austere, noble, like the poetry of Corneille and the prose of Descartes. Study without scholastic prejudice the Luxembourg of de Brosses,[179] the portal of Saint-Gervais, and the great hall of the Palais de Justice, by the same architect; the Palais Cardinal and the Sorbonne of Lemercier;[180] the cupola of Val-de-Grace by Lemuet;[181] the triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis by Francois Blondel; Versailles, and especially the Invalides, of Mansart.[182] Consider with attention the last edifice, let it make its impression on your mind and soul, and you will easily succeed in recognizing in it a particular beauty. It is not a Gothic monument, neither is it an almost Pagan monument of the sixteenth century,--it is modern, and also Christian; it is vast with measure, elegant with gravity. Contemplate at sunset that cupola reflecting the last rays of day, elevating itself gently towards the heavens in a slight and graceful curve; cross that imposing esplanade, enter that court admirably lighted in spite of its covered galleries, bow beneath the dome of that church where Vauban and Turenne sleep,--you will not be able to guard yourself from an emotion at once religious and military; you will say to yourself that this is indeed the asylum of warriors who have reached the evening of life and are prepared for eternity!

Since then, what has French architecture become? Once having left tradition and national character, it wanders from imitation to imitation, and without comprehending the genius of antiquity, it unskilfully reproduces its forms. This bastard architecture, at once heavy and mannered, is, little by little, substituted for the beautiful architecture of the preceding century, and everywhere effaces the vestiges of the French spirit. Do you wish a striking example of it? In Paris, near the Luxembourg, the Condes had their _hotel_,[183] magnificent and severe, with a military aspect, as it was fitting for the dwelling-place of a family of warriors, and within of almost royal splendor. Beneath those lofty ceilings had been some time suspended the Spanish flags taken at Rocroy. In those vast saloons had been assembled the _elite_ of the grandest society that ever existed. In those beautiful gardens had been seen promenading Corneille and Madame de Sevigne, Moliere, Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the great Conde. The oratory had been painted by the hand of Lesueur.[184] It had been easy to repair and preserve the noble habitation. At the end of the eighteenth century, a descendant of the Condes sold it to a dismal company to build that palace without character and taste which is called the Palais-Bourbon. Almost at the same epoch there was a movement made to construct a church to the patroness of Paris, to that Genevieve, whose legend is so touching and so popular. Was there ever a better chance for a national and Christian monument? It was possible to return to the Gothic style and even to the Byzantine style. Instead of that there was made for us an immense Roman basilica of the Decline. What a dwelling for the modest and holy virgin, so dear to the fields that bordered upon Lutece, whose name is still venerated by the poor people who inhabit these quarters! Behold the church which has been placed by the side of that of Saint-Etienne du Mont, as if to make felt all the differences between Christianity and Paganism! For here, in spite of a mixture of the most different styles, it is evident that the Pagan style predominates. Christian worship cannot be naturalized in this profane edifice, which has so many times changed its destination. It is in vain to call it anew Saint-Genevieve,--the revolutionary name of Pantheon will stick to it.[185] The eighteenth century treated the Madeleine no better than Saint-Genevieve. In vain the beautiful sinner wished to renounce the joys of the world and attach herself to the poverty of Jesus Christ. She has been brought back to the pomp and luxury that she repudiated; she has been put in a rich palace, all shining with gold, which might very well be a temple of Venus, for certainly it has not the severe grace of the Pantheon, of which it is the most vulgar copy. How far we are from the Invalides, from Val-de-Grace, and the Sorbonne, so admirably appropriated to their object, wherein appears so well the hand of the century and the country which reared them!

While architecture thus strays, it is natural that painting should seek above every thing color and brilliancy, that sculpture should apply itself to become Pagan again, that poetry itself, receding for two centuries, should abjure the worship of thought for that of fancy, that it should everywhere go borrowing images from Spain, Italy, and Germany, that it should run after subaltern and foreign qualities which it will not attain, and abandon the grand qualities of the French genius.

It will be said that the Christian sentiment which animated Lesueur and the artists of the seventeenth century is wanting to those of ours; it is extinguished, and cannot be rekindled. In the first place, is that very certain? Native faith is dead, but cannot reflective faith take its place? Christianity is exhaustless; it has infinite resources, and admirable flexibility; there are a thousand ways of arriving at it and returning to it, because it has itself a thousand phases that answer to the most different dispositions, to all the wants, to all the mobility of the heart. What it loses on one side, it gains on another; and as it has produced our civilization, it is called to follow it in all its vicissitudes. Either every religion will perish in this world, or Christianity will endure, for it is not in the power of thought to conceive a more perfect religion. Artists of the nineteenth century, do not despair of God and yourselves. A superficial philosophy has thrown you far from Christianity considered in a strict sense; another philosophy can bring you near it again by making you see it with another eye. And then, if the religious sentiment is weakened, are there not other sentiments that can make the heart of man beat, and fecundate genius? Plato has said, that beauty is always old and always new. It is superior to all its forms, it belongs to all countries and all times; it belongs to all beliefs, provided these beliefs be serious and profound, and the need be felt of expressing and spreading them. If, then, we have not arrived at the boundary assigned to the grandeur of France, if we are not beginning to descend into the shade of death, if we still truly live, if there remain to us convictions, of whatever kind they may be, thereby even remains to us, or at least may remain to us, what made the glory of our fathers, what they did not carry with them to the tomb, what had already survived all revolutions, Greece, Rome, the Middle Age, what does not belong to any temporary or ephemeral accident, what subsists and is continually found in the focus of consciousness--I mean moral inspiration, immortal as the soul.

Let us terminate here, and sum up this defence of the national art. There are in arts, as well as in letters and philosophy, two contrary schools. One tends to the ideal in all things,--it seeks, it tries to make appear the spirit concealed under the form, at once manifested and veiled by nature; it does not so much wish to please the senses and flatter the imagination as to enlarge the intellect and move the soul. The other, enamored of nature, stops there and devotes itself to imitation,--its principal object is to reproduce reality, movement, life, which are for it the supreme beauty. The France of the seventeenth century, the France of Descartes, Corneille, and Bossuet, highly spiritual in philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, was also highly spiritual in the arts. The artists of that great epoch participate in its general character, and represent it in their way. It is not true that they lacked imagination, more than Pascal and Bossuet lacked it. But inasmuch as they do not suffer imagination to usurp the dominion that does not belong to it, inasmuch as they subject its order, even its impetuosity, to the reign of reason and the inspirations of the heart, it seems that it is not so strong when it is only disciplined and regulated. As we have said, they excel in composition, especially in expression. They always have a thought, and a moral and elevated thought. For this reason they are dear to us, their cause interests us, is in some sort our own cause, and so this homage rendered to their misunderstood glory naturally crowns these lectures devoted to true beauty, that is to say, moral beauty.

May these lectures be able to make it known, and, above all, loved! May they be able also to inspire some one of you with the idea of devoting himself to studies so beautiful, of devoting to them his life, and attaching to them his name! The sweetest recompense of a professor who is not too unworthy of that title, is to see rapidly following in his footsteps young and noble spirits who easily pass him and leave him far behind them.[186]

FOOTNOTES:

[128] One is reminded of the expression of the great Conde: "Where then has Corneille learned politics and war?"

[129] It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the original all the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus; in them Racine would almost always be found below his model. I will give a single example. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus expresses the different effects of the crime on the spectators:

Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits;
La moitie s'epouvante et sort avec des cris;
Mais ceux qui de la cour ont un plus long usage
Sur les yeux de Cesar composent leur visage.

Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre pencil-strokes of the great Roman painter: "Trepidatur a circumsedentibus, diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus, resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."

[130] See the letter to Perrault.

[131]

En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligue,
Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrique, etc.

* * * * *

Apres qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par priere,
Pour jamais dans la tombe eut enferme Moliere, etc.

* * * * *

[132]

Aux pieds de cet autel de structure grossiere,
Git sans pompe, enferme dans une vile biere,
Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait ecrit;
Arnaud, qui sur la grace instruit par Jesus-Christ,
Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglise meme,
Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus d'un anatheme, etc.

* * * * *

Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, persecute;
Et meme par sa mort leur fureur mal eteinte
N'aurait jamais laisse ses cendres en repos,
Si Dieu lui-meme ici de son ouaille sainte
A ces loups devorants n'avait cache les os.

[133] These verses did not appear till after the death of Boileau, and they are not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in a letter to Brossette, rightly said that these are "the most beautiful verses that M. Despreaux ever made."

[134] 4th Series of our works, LITERATURE, book i., _Preface_, p. 3: "It is in prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most certain.... What modern nation reckons prose writers that approach those of our nation? The country of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess, since Bacon, a single prose writer of the first order [?]; that of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, is in vain proud of Machiavel, whose sound and manly diction, like the thought that it expresses, is destitute of grandeur. Spain, it is true, has produced Cervantes, an admirable writer, but he is alone.... France can easily show a list of more than twenty prose writers of genius: Froissard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Moliere, Retz, La Bruyere, Malebranche, Bossuet, Fenelon, Flechier, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Mme. de Sevigne, Saint-Simon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J. Rousseau; without speaking of so many more that would be in the first rank everywhere else,--Amiot, Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubigne, Charron, Balzac, Vaugelas, Pelisson, Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le Sage, Prevost, Beaumarchais, etc. It may be said with the exactest truth, that French prose is without a rival in modern Europe; and, even in antiquity, superior to the Latin prose, at least in the quantity and variety of models, it has no equal but the Greek prose, in its palmiest days, in the days of Herodotus and Demosthenes. I do not prefer Demosthenes to Pascal, and it would be difficult for me to put Plato himself above Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my opinion, are the two greatest masters of human language, with manifest differences, as well as more than one trait of resemblance; both ordinarily speak like the people, with the last degree of simplicity, and at moments ascending without effort to a poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingenious and polished to the most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic and sublime. Plato, without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme serenity, and, as it were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet, on his side, has the pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great Corneille. When such writers are possessed, is it not a religion to render them the honor that is their due, that of a regular and profound study?"

[135] See the APPENDIX, at the end of the volume.

[136] See the APPENDIX.

[137] This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St. Gervais. It formed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was the admirable Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum.

[138] Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of affranchised Greece, and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of civilized Europe.

[139] See the APPENDIX.

[140] The _Seven Sacraments_ of Poussin are now in the Bridgewater Gallery. See the APPENDIX.

[141] See the APPENDIX.

[142] In the midst of this scene of brutal violence, everybody has remarked this delicate trait--a Roman quite young, almost juvenile, while possessing himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the arms of her mother, asks her from her mother with an air at once passionate and restrained. In order to appreciate this picture, compare it with that of David in the _ensemble_ and in the details.

[143] In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. He governs the whole scene; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy.

[144] The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which we have just spoken, are in the Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Museum of Madrid alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England more than fifty, and those the most admirable. See the APPENDIX.

[145] The last _Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the National Museum of the Louvre_, 1852, although its author, M. Villot, is surely a man of incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing Champagne in the Flemish school. _En revanche_, a learned foreigner, M. Waagen, claims him for the French school. _Kunstwerke and Kuenstler in Paris_, Berlin, 1839, p. 651.

[146] Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his benefits. One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had only to ask freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune, Champagne responded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more skilful painter than he was, it was the only thing that he asked of his Eminence; but that being impossible, he only desired the honor of his good graces. Felibien, _Entretiens_, 1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171; and de Piles, _Abrege de la Vie des Peintres_, 2d edition, p. 500.--"As he had much love for justice and truth, provided he satisfied what they both demanded, he easily passed over all the rest."--_Necrologe de Port-Royal_, p. 336.

[147] See the APPENDIX.

[148] The original is in the Museum of Grenoble; but see the engraving of Morin; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design of Demonstier.

[149] In the Museum of the Louvre; see also the engraving of Morin.

[150] The original is now in the Chateau of Sable, belonging to the Marquis of Rouge; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The beautiful engraving of Edelinck was made after a different original, attributed to a nephew of Champagne.

[151] The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of Rouge; the admirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place.

[152] In the Museum.

[153] In the Museum, and engraved by Gerard Edelinck.

[154] _La Gloire du Val-de-Grace_, in 4to, 1669, with a frontispiece and vignettes. Moliere there enters into infinite details on all the parts of the art of painting and the genius of Mignard. He pushes eulogy perhaps to the extent of hyperbole; afterwards, hyperbole gave place to the most shameful indifference. The fresco of the dome of Val-de-grace is composed of four rows of figures, which rise in a circle from the base to the vertex of the arch. In the upper part is the Trinity, above which is raised a resplendent sky. Below the Trinity are the celestial powers. Descending a degree, we see the Virgin and the holy personages of the Old and New Testament. Finally, at the lower extremity is Anne of Austria, introduced into paradise by St. Anne and St. Louis, and these three figures are accompanied by a multitude of personages pertaining to the history of France, among whom are distinguished Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, etc.

[155] Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the _Plague of David_ (_la Peste de David_). What has become of the original?

[156] See his _Landscape at Sunset_, and the _Bathers_ (_les Baigneuses_), an agreeable scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing.

[157] It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his _Holy Family_ the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably expresses meditation and reflection. We lost some time ago the most important work of S. Bourdon, the _Sept Oeuvres de Misericorde_. See the APPENDIX.

[158] See especially his _Extreme Unction_.

[159] The picture that is called _le Silence_, which represents the sleep of the infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the infant is of superhuman power. The _Battles of Alexander_, with their defects, are pages of history of the highest order; and in the _Alexander visiting with Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius_, one knows not which to admire most, the noble ordering of the whole or the just expression of the figures.

[160] It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with designs. It is indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his _chef-d'oeuvre_, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, represented in his earliest youth, and in an abbe, sustained and surrounded by angels of different size, forming a charming composition. The drawing is completely pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings. The little angels that sport with the emblems of the future cardinal are full of spirit, and, at the same time, sweetness.

[161] Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was able to engrave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII., and the regency, and in the latter part of their life; Mazarin, in his last five or six years; Conde, growing old; Turenne, old; Fouquet and Matthieu Mole, some years before the fall of the one and the death of the other; and he was too often obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd of parliamentarians, ecclesiastics, and obscure financiers.

[162] If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most neglected portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost wholly omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin.

[163] Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of his time, he is himself the author of great and charming compositions, many of which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly call attention to that one which is at the head of a folio edition of the _Introduction a la Vie Devote_, and to the beautiful frontispieces of the writings of Richelieu, from the press of the Louvre.

[164] This was the opinion of Winkelmann at the end of the eighteenth century; it is our opinion now, even after all the discoveries that have been made during fifty years, that may be seen in great part retraced and described in the _Musio real Barbonico_.

[165] There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age: the innumerable figures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are discovered every day sufficiently testify it. The _imagers_ of that time certainly had much spirit and imagination; but, at least in everything that we have seen, beauty is absent, and taste wanting.

[166] Go and see at the Museum of Versailles the statue of Francis I., and say whether any Italian, except the author of the _Laurent de Medicis_, has made any thing like it. See also in the Museum of the Louvre, the statue of Admiral Chabot.

[167] Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes in 1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corneille did not extend beyond that epoch.

[168] Lenoir, _Musee des Monuments Francais_, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the _Musee Royale des Monuments Francais_ of 1815, p. 98, 99, 108, 122, and 140. This wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon, at the expense of his old intendant Perrault, president of the _Chambre des Comptes_, was placed in the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in bronze. It must not be confounded with the other monument that the Condes erected to the same prince in their family burial-ground at Vallery, near Montereau, in Yonne. This monument is in marble, and by the hand of Michel Anguier; see the description in Lenoir, vol. v., p. 23-25, and especially in the _Annuaire de l'Yonne pour_ 1842, p. 173, etc.

[169] Rue d'Enfer, No. 67.

[170] The Museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small number of Sarazin's works, and those of very little importance:--a bust of Pierre Seguier, strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small funeral monument of Hennequin, Abbe of Bernay, member of Parliament, who died in 1651, which is a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of elegance.

[171] These three statues were united in the Museum des _Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _Musee-royal_, etc., p. 94; we know not why they have been separated; Jacques-Auguste de Thou has been placed in the Louvre, and his two wives at Versailles.

[172] Francois Anguier had made a marble tomb of Cardinal de Berulle, which was in the oratory of _Rue St. Honore_. It would have been interesting to compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is still at the Carmelites. Francois is also the author of the monument of the Longuevilles, which, before the Revolution, was at the Celestins, and was seen in 1815 at the museum des _Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._, p. 103; it is now in the Louvre. It is an obelisk, the four sides of which are covered with allegorical bas-reliefs. The pedestal, also ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four female figures in marble, representing the cardinal virtues.

[173] Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his portrait, painted by Champagne, and engraved by Morin.

[174] Group in white marble which was at the Celestins, a church near the _hotel_ of Rohan-Chabot in the _Place Royale_; re-collected in the Museum _des Petits-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._, p. 97; it is now at Versailles. We must not pass over that beautiful production, the mausoleum of Jacques de Souvre, Grand Prior of France, the brother of the beautiful Marchioness de Sable; a mausoleum that came from Saint-Jean de Latran, passed through the Museum _des Petits-Augustins_, and is now found in the Louvre. The sculptures of the porte Saint-Denis are also owed to Michel Anguier, as well as the admirable bust of Colbert, which is in the museum.

[175] At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs of the Gondis, then at the Augustins, now at Versailles.

[176] In the Church St. Germain des Pres.

[177] At the Capuchins, then at the Augustins, then at Versailles.

[178] See, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of Mazarin is now at the Louvre; that of Colbert has been restored to the Church of St. Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, as well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little overstrained, of the mother of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of Jerome Bignon, the celebrated Councillor of State, who died in 1656.

[179] Quatremere de Quincy, _Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de plus Celebres Architectes_, vol. ii., p. 145:--"There could scarcely be found in any country an _ensemble_ so grand, which offers with so much unity and regularity an aspect at once more varied and picturesque, especially in the facade of the entrance." Unfortunately this unity has disappeared, thanks to the constructions that have since been added to the primitive work.

[180] In order to appreciate the beauty of the Sorbonne, one must stand in the lower part of the great court, and from that point consider the effect of the successive elevation, at first of the other part of the court, then of the different stories of the portico, then of the portico itself, of the church, and, finally, of the dome.

[181] Quatremere de Quincy, _Ibid._, p. 257:--"The cupola of this edifice is one of the finest in Europe."

[182] We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by Perrault, because in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline and marks the passage from the serious to the academic style, from originality to imitation, from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth.

[183] See the engraving of Perelle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and p. 131, says that the _hotel_ of Conde was _magnificently built_, that it was _the most magnificent of the time_.

[184] Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the APPENDIX):--"Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Conde, Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an oratory painted by Lesueur in the _hotel_ of Conde. The altar-piece represents a _Nativity_, that of the ceiling a _Celestial Glory_. The wainscot is enriched with several figures and with a quantity of ornaments worked with great care."

[185] The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is itself a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of the Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the hill of St. Genevieve, from which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on different sides to a considerable distance. Put in its place the Val-de-Grace of Lemercier with the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would be the effect of such an edifice!

[186] In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to the _faculte des lettres_, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated.

PART THIRD

THE GOOD.

LECTURE XI.

PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.

Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question
according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the
good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of
humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of
nature.--Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages,
in life, in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and
devotedness.--Liberty.--Esteem and
contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and
indignation.--Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret
and repentance.--Natural and necessary foundations of all
justice.--Distinction between fact and right.--Common sense,
true and false philosophy.

The idea of the true in its developments, comprises psychology, logic, and metaphysics. The idea of the beautiful begets what is called aesthetics. The idea of the good is the whole of ethics.

It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to confine them within the inclosure of individual consciousness. There are public ethics, as well as private ethics, and public ethics embrace, with the relations of men among themselves, so far as men, their relations as citizens and as members of a state. Ethics extend wherever is found in any decree the idea of the good. Now, where does this idea manifest itself more, and where do justice and injustice, virtue and crime, heroism and weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil life? Moreover, is there any thing that has a more decisive influence over manners, even of individuals, than the institutions of peoples and the constitutions of states? If the idea of the good goes thus far, it must be followed thither, as recently the idea of the beautiful has introduced us into the domain of art.

Philosophy usurps no foreign power; but it is not disposed to relinquish its right of examination over all the great manifestations of human nature. All philosophy that does not terminate in ethics, is hardly worthy of the name, and all ethics that do not terminate at least in general views on society and government, are powerless ethics, that have neither counsels nor rules to give humanity in its most difficult trials.

It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the metaphysics and aesthetics that we have taught evidently involve such a doctrine of morality and not such another, that, accordingly, the question of the good, that question so fertile and so vast, is for us wholly solved, and that we can deduce, by way of reasoning, the moral theory that is derived from our theory of the beautiful and our theory of the true. We might do this, perhaps, but we will not. This would be abandoning the method that we have hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by observation, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experience a law to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. Let us attach ourselves faithfully to the psychological method; it has its delays; it condemns us to more than one repetition, but it places us in the beginning, and a long time retains us at the source of all reality, and all light.

The first maxim of the psychological method is this: True philosophy invents nothing, it establishes and describes what is. Now here, what is, is the natural and permanent belief of the being that we are studying, to wit, man. What is, then, in relation to the good, the natural and permanent belief of the human race? Such is, in our eyes, the first question.

With us, in fact, the human race does not take one side, and philosophy the other. Philosophy is the interpreter of the human race. What the human race thinks and believes, often unconsciously, philosophy re-collects, explains, establishes. It is the faithful and complete expression of human nature, and human nature is entire in each of us philosophers, and in every other man. Among us, it is attained by consciousness; among other men, it manifests itself in their words and actions. Let us, then, interrogate the latter and the former; let us especially interrogate our own consciousness; let us clearly recognize what the human race thinks; we shall then see what should be the office of philosophy.

Is there a human language known to us that has not different expressions for good and evil, for just and unjust? Is there any language, in which, by the side of the words pleasure, interest, utility, happiness, are not also found the words sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotedness, virtue? Do not all languages, as well as all nations, speak of liberty, duty, and right?

Here, perhaps, some disciple of Condillac and Helvetius will ask us whether, in this regard, we possess authentic dictionaries of the language of savage tribes found by voyagers in the isles of the ocean? No; but we have not made our philosophic religion out of the superstitions and prejudices of a certain school. We absolutely deny that it is necessary to study human nature in the famous savage of Aveyron, or in the like of him of the isles of the ocean, or the American continent. The savage state offers us humanity in swaddling-clothes, thus to speak, the germ of humanity, but not humanity entire. The true man is the perfect man of his kind; true human nature is human nature arrived at its development, as true society is also perfected society. We do not think it worth the while to ask a savage his opinion on the Apollo Belvidere, neither will we ask him for the principles that constitute the moral nature of man, because in him this moral nature is only sketched and not completed. Our great philosophy of the seventeenth century was sometimes a little too much pleased with hypotheses in which God plays the principal part, and crushes human liberty.[187] The philosophy of the eighteenth century threw itself into the opposite extreme; it had recourse to hypotheses of a totally different character, among others, to a pretended natural state, whence it undertook, with infinite pains, to draw society and man as we now see them. Rousseau plunged into the forests, in order to find there the model of liberty and equality. That is the commencement of his politics. But wait a little, and soon you will see the apostle of the natural state, driven, by a necessary inconsequence, from one excess to an opposite excess, instead of the sweets of savage liberty, proposing to us the _Contrat Social and Lacedemone_. Condillac[188] studies the human mind in a statue whose senses enter into exercise under the magic wand of a systematic analysis, and are developed in the measure and progress that are convenient to him. The statue successively acquires our five senses, but there is one thing that it does not acquire, that is, a mind like the human mind, and a soul like ours. And this was what was then called the experimental method! Let us leave there all those hypotheses. In order to understand reality, let us study it, and not imagine it. Let us take humanity as it is incontestably shown to us in its actual characters, and not as it may have been in a primitive, purely hypothetical state, in those unformed lineaments or that degradation which is called the savage state. In that, without doubt, may be found signs or _souvenirs_ of humanity, and, if this were the plea, we might, in our turn, examine the recitals of voyages, and find, even in that darkness of infancy or decrepitude, admirable flashes of light, noble instincts, which already appear, or still subsist, presaging or recalling humanity. But, for the sake of exactness of method and true analysis, we turn our eyes from infancy and the savage state, in order to direct them towards the being who is the sole object of our studies, the actual man, the real and completed man.