96} ANNUAL REGISTER, 1796. 
stowed upon them by their country, 
and by a prospect of the future tri- 
umphs awaiting them. 
He was now meditating expe- 
ditions into the territories of those 
princes of whose enmity to Franee 
sufficient proofs had been given. 
A detachment of his army had al- 
ready entered the duchy of Modena, 
the sovereign of which had fled to 
Venice with his treasures. From 
this city he deputed a minister to 
the French general, with whom he 
concluded a suspension of arm» on 
much the same conditions as those 
granted to the duke of Parma. 
The spoliation of the repositories 
of art, which was now annexed to 
the conditions of treaties with the 
lialian princes, proved one of the 
Most Vexatious as well as mortifying 
circumstances of the French inva- 
sion- The monuments of painting 
and of statuary, which adorned their 
palaces, cities, and churches, were 
viewed by the natives witha mix- 
ture of delight and veneration, 
They entertained a species of affec- 
tion for them ; and, in the presence 
ef some of them, they placed not a 
litde confidence. They had be- 
come a kind of tutelary deities and 
household gods. The f{talians were 
sensible of emotions not altogether 
dissimilar to those of the Israelite 
Micah, into whose house armed 
men from Dan entered, and took 
away ‘‘ the graven image, and the 
ephod, and the seraphim, and the 
molten image.”* In one respect, 
the oppressions of the French in 
Htaly were greater than those of 
the northern hordes under Attila 
and Odoacer; for those chiefs did 
not trouble the Romans with de- 
mands of pictures, statues, and 
sculptures. It seems to be the fate 
of the gredt models of the arts, 
like the arts themselves, to travel 
from tbe east, by the west, to the 
north. Perhaps their tour in this di- 
rection is not yet terminated. To 
deprive the poor Italians of objects 
so long endeared to them, by habit 
and possession, seemed an act of ty- 
ranny exercised upon the vanquish- 
ed in the wantonness of power. 
Those objects had been respected 
by all parties, in the vicissitude of 
those events that had so frequently 
subjected the places that contained 
them to different masters. The 
French were the first who had con- 
ceived the idea of seizing them asa 
matter of mere property. Herein 
they were accused of consulting their 
vanity rather than their taste for 
the fine arts. The Romans, in their 
triumphant periods, had plundered 
the Greeks of all the master-pieces 
they could find in their country, 
This appeared to the French a pre- 
cedent fit for their imitation, and a 
sanction for robbing the Italians of 
what they esteemed the most vya- 
luable part of their property, and 
the most honourable proof they still 
retained of their former superiority 
in those departments of genius. 
The conduct of the French, in 
tearing the monuments of antiquity 
and art from Italy, and carrying 
them to Paris, was universally cone 
demned and execrated by all civi- 
lized nations. It was, in truth, in 
some measure, plucking the rosé 
from the tree. 
Motives of this nature, conspiring 
with the dissatisfaction experienced 
by multitudes, at the irreverencé 
*“Ye have taken away the gods which I made, and what have I more?”—Judges 
xVHI. 24, 
which | 
