had confiscated to national use. This was followed by a warrant, authorizing a Committee of Savants, of whom Le Noir was most active, to select and transport to Paris those relics of antiquity, and there to arrange them in one general collection, so as to afford a view of the progress of the arts during the several periods of French history. Much exertion accordingly has been made, and upon the whole with considerable success, to dispose this various and miscellaneous collection according to centuries, and at the same time to place the productions of each era in the best and fittest order. You accompany,

therefore, at once the progress of the arts and that of history, as you wander from hall to hall, and compare the rude images of Clovis and Pharamond with what the Italian chisel produced to commemorate departed greatness, in that happy epoch which the French artists call" Le Siècle de la Renaissance.' Several monuments, the size of which rendered them unfit for a cloister, are erected in the gardens; and particularly the tomb of Abelard and Heloïse, with those of Descartes, Molière, La Fontaine, Boileau, and others dear to French literature.

Yet such is the caprice of the human mind, that even from this rich mental feast we return with some degree of dissatisfaction. The inspection of the Museum inspired me at least with a feeling greater in degree, but similar in origin, to that with which I have regarded a collection of engraved English portraits

"Torn from their destined page-unworthy meed
Of knightly counsel or heroic deed,"-

and compiled to illustrate a Grainger, at the expense of many a volume defaced and rendered imperfect. Far deeper is that sensation rooted, when we consider that the stones accumulated around us have been torn from the graves which they were designed to mark out and to protect, and divided from all those associations arising from the neighbourhood of the mighty dead. It is also impossible, with the utmost care and ingenuity, that the monuments should be all displayed to advantage; and even the number of striking objects, huddled together, diminishes the effect which each, separately, is calculated to produce upon the mind. These wayward reflections will arise, and can only be checked by the recollection, that without prosecution of the plan wisely adopted and boldly followed out, the relics around us would have ceased to exist; and that the ingenious collector, far from being the plunderer of a wreck, has saved and protected its scattered fragments, which must have otherwise perished for ever.

If, in the Museum of Monumens Français, we contrast with advantage the principle and mode by which the collection is formed, with the effect produced by the present arrangement, and pardon, for

the sake of the former, the necessary imperfections attached to the latter, no such favourable result can be drawn by the reflecting traveller, who visits the inimitable collection of paintings and statues in the Louvre, called the Central Museum of the Arts. It is indeed, abstractedly, a subject of just pride to a nation, that she can exhibit to strangers this surprisingly magnificent display of the works of human genius when in its most powerful and active mood, awakened as it were from the sleep of ages, and at once bringing to the service of art such varied talent as never was nor will be equalled. But if, with these exulting considerations, it were possible for the French to weigh the sum of evil which they have suffered and inflicted to obtain this grand object of national vanity, they might well view the most magnificent saloon in Europe as a charnel-vault, and the works of Raphael, Titian, and Salvator, as no better than the sable and tattered scutcheons which cover its mouldering walls. Each picture, indeed, has its own separate history of murder, rapine, and sacrilege. It was, perhaps, the worst point in Bonaparte's character, that, with a firm and unremitting attention to his own plans and his own interest, he proceeded from battle to plunder, less like a soldier than a brigand or common highwayman, whose immediate object is to rifle the passenger whom he has subdued by violence or intimidation. But Napoleon knew well the people over whom he was called to rule, and was aware that his power was secure, despite of annihilated commerce and exhausted finances, despite of his waste of the lives of Frenchmen and treasure of France, despite of the general execration of the human race, echoed from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, providing he could prove to the Parisians that he was still the Emperor of the World, and Paris its capital. Savants, therefore, amateurs, and artists, whose skill and taste might supply the deficiency of his own, regularly attended upon his military expeditions; and when a city had surrendered, or had otherwise fallen into his power, whatever it possessed in public or private property evincing excellence in the arts, was destined to augment the Central Museum, and furnish a topic of consolation to those Parisians whose sons perhaps had fallen in battle under its walls. For this purpose every town in Italy was ransacked, and compelled by open violence, or a still more odious influence exercised under pretext of treaties, to surrender those specimens of sculpture and painting whose very names had become associated with the classical situations, from which a true admirer of the arts would have deemed it sacrilege to have torn them. The Low Countries were compelled to yield up those masterpieces of the Flemish school, which are prized by amateurs as almost equal to those of Italy. Dresden, long famous for its collection of paintings, which Frederic the Great contented himself with admiring, was plundered, and only saved in part by the submis

sion of the Elector.* Berlin and Potzdam underwent a similar fate; and while Bonaparte affected to restore to the subdued monarch of Prussia his crown and kingdom, he actually pillaged his palaces of their most precious and domestic ornaments. Vienna was severely ransacked, with every inferior town in the Emperor's dominions, and that even at the period of an alliance cemented by the conqueror's union with a daughter of the house of Austria. The ancient capital of the czars was destined to consign its old magnificence to the same accumulated heap of spoil. But there the robber's arm was shortened, and the plunder of the Kremlin was retaken ere it had crossed the Beresina. The very ornaments of the apartments were acquired by the same iniquitous means which had filled them with paintings and statues. The twelve granite pillars which supported the Hall of Sculpture were plundered from Aix-la-Chapelle, and the beautifully wrought bronze folding-doors at the upper end of the Grand Saloon were the spoils of a church at Rome. "Omnis Thaida Thais olet." The collection in all its parts, magnificent and unmatched as it is, savours of the cruelty, perfidy, and rapine, by which it was accumulated.

Many have therefore been tempted to think, that there was less wisdom or justice than magnanimity in the conduct of the allies during the preceding year, who, to save the feelings of the French, which in this case had no title to a moment's consideration, sacrificed the justice due to their own despoiled countries, and let pass the opportunity of giving a great moral lesson, without inflicting on France a single hardship, excepting what might flow from her wounded vanity. But Prussia, it seems, was satisfied with a promise (ill kept by the restored family) that her property should be redelivered when affairs were settled in France; and for the other nations no stipulation seems to have been made. If the allies on this occasion neglected to reclaim by force their own property when in their power, it would nevertheless have been just, and perhaps prudent, in the Bourbon family, to have of their own accord relinquished spoils which could only remind them of their own misfortunes. But they were too anxious to establish themselves in the opinion of their new subjects as good Frenchmen, to recollect that justice, open and even-handed, is the first duty of a monarch. They were afraid to face the clamour which would have stigmatized an act of honest restitution as the concession of cowardice. As Bonaparte had been the heir of the Revolution, they were willing to be the heirs of Bonaparte, and appear to have been as little disposed to the doctrine of restitution as the worthy corregidor of Leon, who succeeded to the treasures of Captain Rolando's subterranean mansion. At least they were not unwilling, like the sons of a

*

[It is believed that this is a mistake-that in fact no picture was ever carried to Paris from the gallery at Dresden. ED.]

usurer, to possess treasures of such value, without sharing the guilt of the original acquisition. They did not reflect that every token which carried back the Frenchman's recollection to the Emperor, must excite comparisons, among the thoughtless and unprincipled, highly unfavourable to the legitimate possessor of the crown.

The day of reckoning is at length arrived. The Museum, when I first arrived in Paris, was still entire. But Blucher, who was not, it seems, to be foiled a second time, has since made several visits, attended by a German artist, for the purpose of ascertaining and removing the pictures which belong to Prussia, or to the German states now united with her. The French guardians of the Museum also attended, no longer to decide upon the point of view in which the spoils of nations should be disposed, but to plead, occasionally and timidly, that such a picture formed no part of the cabinet of Potzdam, but had been stolen from some other collections. These demurrers were generally silenced by a "Tais toi, "or" Halt maul,"* from the veteran of Laon and Waterloo, who is no friend to prolonged discussions. If you ask, whether Prussia has recovered all the pictures which had been carried off at different times, I fancy I may return the same emphatic answer given by an old Scotch serving man, when his master asked him if he had been careful to pack up all his wardrobe at leaving a friend's house,-"At least, your honour." Not that I suppose the Prince-Marshal has got a single article to which the French had any just title, but the late enlargement of the dominions of Prussia has greatly extended her claims of restitution in right of states and cities newly annexed to her dominions; and I fancy she did not permit them to be over minutely scrutinized. Still, however, though nearly a hundred pictures have in this manner gradually disappeared, I have not missed one of those masterpieces to which the attention of the visitor is earliest directed and longest riveted. It is when the claims of Italy and the Netherlands shall be enforced that the principal disgorging of spoil will take place; and when that day comes, I believe it will drive some of the French amateurs to actual distraction. Their attachment to these paintings and statues, or rather to the national glory which they conceive them to illustrate, is as excessive as if the Apollo and Venus were still objects of actual adoration; and on the day of their departure I anticipate them exclaiming with Micah, "Ye have taken away my gods, and ye are gone away, and what have I more? How then say ye unto me, what aileth me?"

It is, however, understood to be definitively settled by the allied sovereigns, that the French must undergo this mortification; as is evident by the generals, at the capitulation of Paris, having refused to

Hold your tongue."]

sanction an article of the treaty proposed by the French, for securing the possession of these monuments. It is a severe mortification, doubtless; but independent of the undeniable justice of the measure, it is wholesome that the French should have in future no trophies to appeal to as memorials that they had exercised a power over other states which their victors never had courage to retaliate; or to exhibit as emblems of past conquest, and as the incentive to new wars. The contents of the Museum have been found by bitter experience to perpetuate recollections, which, for the peace of France and of Europe, ought to be effaced as speedily and absolutely as possible. Such associations render the removal of the objects which excite them as necessary a precaution, as the burning of Don Quixote's library to prevent the recurrence of his frenzy.

With respect to the arts, you know I pretend to no skill in the province of the amateur; but the best judges seem to allow that the dispersion of this immense collection is by no means unfavourable to their progress and improvement. We readily admit, and each spectator has felt, that nothing can be more magnificent, more august, more deeply impressive, taken as a whole, than that noble gallery, prolonged to an extent which the eye can hardly distinctly trace, and crowded on every side with the noblest productions of the most inspired artists. Fourteen hundred paintings, each claiming rank as a masterpiece, disposed upon walls which extend for more than twelve hundred feet in length, form, united, a collection unparalleled in extent and splendour. But a part of this charm vanishes when we have become familiar with the coup d'œil; and the emotions of surprise and pleasure which the transient visitor receives, are gained in some degree at the expense of the student, or studious amateur. In a saloon of such length and height, lighted too from both sides, it is impossible that all the pictures can be seen to advantage; and, in truth, many cannot be seen at all. In a selection where all is excellent, and worthy of studious and heedful attention, this is a disadvantage of no common kind. But it is not the only one. Each of these paintings, almost without exception, has in it something excellent; but, independent of the loss which they sustain in common, by being so much crowded together, and by making part rather of one grand and brilliant whole, than subjects important enough for detached and separate consideration, the merit of some of these chefs-d'œuvre so far exceeds that of others, as altogether to divert the attention from objects of inferior, though still of exquisite skill. Few possessing even the most eager love for the art, though they have consumed hours, days, weeks, and months, in the Museum, have been able to escape that fascination which draws them to the Transfiguration of Raphael, the Communion by Domenichino, the Martyrdom of the Enquisitor, and some other masterpieces. About fifty pictures at most,