VALUE OF THE STUDY OF ART. 209 



The same character of sensible reality is imparted to the frame and 

 to the surroundings of the picture, to all the theater where these ac- 

 tors played their parts. Of this truth no one of our teachers, when 

 I was a collegian, seemed to have a suspicion. There was not an 

 illustration in the cold and dry compendiums which were placed in 

 our hands. I can almost ask myself if, when I studied Greek and 

 Roman history, I was really convinced that Sparta and Athens, 

 Rome and Carthage had actually existed. I certainly did not know 

 how or where to place them in space, what idea to have of their 

 situation, or of the outlines made by the ridges of their walls, their 

 houses, and their temples. All these cities were to me vague shad- 

 ows, floating between heaven and earth. No one of them answered 

 to a distinct and defined form. 



" If this be the case with classical antiquity, in spite of the color 

 and splendor of the narratives of its writers, how much more diffi- 

 cult is it to know and understand France of the middle ages when 

 condemned to study it in its literary work alone! The literature 

 of the period is partly in debased Latin, partly in early French. 

 The French of the day was not the language of the thinkers. The 

 deep thought of the age is not to be found in minstrelsy and bal- 

 lads. It must be asked of the learned, of philosophers, of theo- 

 logians, and of sacred writers. But to follow them in the subtle 

 analyses and in the excessive complications of symbolism, in which 

 they delight, requires mental efforts which are made all the more 

 laborious by the artificial character of the church Latin, which no 

 longer continued to renew itself at the source of popular speech. 

 It is impossible to see how such works, in spite of their value to 

 erudition, can be called to take part in the education of the young. 

 It is for this reason that lately, by a judicious innovation, a discreet 

 place has been made in the curriculum for histories and poems 

 written in the common language, for the Chanson de Roland, and 

 for the works of Villehardouin and Joinville. But the student 

 can only read these in translations, or in those adaptations which 

 so modernize the language as to leave but a little of its original 

 flavor, and which therefore make but an imperfect contact between 

 the original work and the mind of the reader. But supposing the 

 scholar capable of mastering the original text : can its formless and 

 superabundant prose, or the tiresome monotone of its flowing dis- 

 sonances, give him emotions which have the vivacity of those which 

 a page of Tacitus or a song of Virgil gives to those who know 

 even a modicum of Latin? Can they have the power to excite the 

 imagination in the same degree as any strong and concise sentence 

 of the historian, any sonorous and glowing verse of the Roman 

 poet? 



TOL. LVI. lY 



