236 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



with the Creator, deduces from that connection men's obliga- 

 tions : first, to God, from whom they are ; and next, to each 

 other, whom for God's will, and God's sake, they are to love 

 and serve. 



Delusion and illusion, though much alike both in derivation 

 and import, yet differ somewhat. The common idea is that of 

 misleading. By delusions others mislead and cheat us; by 

 illusions we mislead and cheat ourselves. Delusions are sub- 

 stantial shows, presented in order to mislead; illusions are 

 dreams and fancies which arise in an ill-regulated mind; the 

 former are mostly dishonest, the latter are always weak ; the 

 former are preconcerted, the latter are spontaneous. 

 PABSING AND COMPOSITION. 



For your exercise in parsing and composition take the ensu- 

 ing letter of Mrs. Barbauld. Give an account of every part 

 of it as well as you can. Convert it into simple sentences; 

 and having studied it carefully, close the book and write down 

 from memory all you recollect of it. Then correct your copy 

 by the original. Having done so, write a letter to a friend, if 

 possible, on similar topics. July 2g ( J803. 



" I am glad to find that you have spent the spring so pleasantly. 

 But when you say you made the excursion instead of coming to Lon- 

 don, you forget that you might have passed the latter end of a London 

 winter in town after enjoying the natural spring in the country. We 

 have been spending a week at Richmond, in the delightful shades of 

 Ham walks and Twickenham meadows. I never saw so many flower- 

 ing limes and weeping willows as in that neighbourhood. They say, 

 you know, that Pope's famous willow was the first in the country ; 

 and it seems to corroborate it, that there are so many in the vicinity. 

 Under the shade of the trees we read Sou they 's 'Amadis,' which I 

 suppose you are also reading. As all Englishmen are now to turn 

 knights-errant, and fight against the great giant and monster, Buona- 

 parte, the publication seems very reasonable. Pray are you an 

 alarmist ? One hardly knows whether to be frightened or diverted 

 on seeing people assembled at a dinner-table, appearing to enjoy ex- 

 tremely the fare and the company, and saying all the while, with a 

 most smiling and placid countenance, that the French are to land in a 

 fortnight, and that London is to be sacked and plundered for three 

 days and then they talk of going to watering-places. I am sure we 

 do not believe in the danger we pretend to believe in ; and I am sure 

 that none of us can even form an idea how we should feel if we were 

 forced to believe it. I wish I could lose, in the quiet walks of litera- 

 ture, all thoughts of the present state of the political horizon. My 

 brother is going to publish ' Letters to a Young Lady on English 

 Poetry.' He is indefatigable. ' I wish you were half as diligent,' 

 say you. ' Amen ! ' say I. Love to Eliza and Laura, and thank the 

 former for her note. I shall always be glad to hear from either of 

 them. How delightful must be the soft beatings of a heart entering 

 into the world for the first time, every surrounding object new, fresh, 

 and fair all smiling within and without ! Long may every sweet 

 illusion continue that promotes happiness, and ill befall the rough hand 

 that would destroy them ! " 



THE HISTORY OF ART. 



XV.-THE FRENCH SCHOOLS. 



WITH the westward march of culture and civilisation, art at 

 last began to fix its chief home in France. The early Bourbon 

 kings had encouraged Flemish and Italian painters, and the 

 native French artists soon learnt to follow in the steps of the 

 foreign workers who came to them from beyond the borders. 

 In France, art has always taken a more light and popular turn 

 than elsewhere. Celtic fancy, and a certain meretricious love of 

 passing subjects and small motives, has characterised most of 

 the French schools. Devotional art is rarer there than in Italy 

 and Flanders, domestic art than in England and Holland. 

 Painting has rather gone in the general direction of the French 

 temperament, towards light and gay subjects, or towards the 

 glorification of the national heroes and the national arms. 

 Instead of religion we get France; instead of home we get 

 society and life. These are the key-notes of all French art, 

 from the earliest to the latest times. 



One of the first French painters to gain a European reputa- 

 tion was Nicolas Poussin, a Norman, born at the close of the 

 sixteenth century. He studied at Home, and came back to be 

 appointed a court painter by Louis XIII. After a short time 

 however, he returned to Rome, where he spent the remainder oi 

 his life. Poussin had a great taste for a revived form of classi- 

 cal antiquity, and did much towards bringing about that love 

 for a spurious classicalism which marku the seventeenth anc 



ighteenth centuries. His subjects are chiefly mythological, 

 and he delighted in such forms as nymphs, satyrs, fauns, and 

 other sylvan deities. It is worth remarking, too, that in him 

 ;he taste for landscape is clearly seen ; he abandoned pure 

 figure-painting, and made most of his backgrounds more or less 

 distinctly rural. Many of his pieces are Bacchanalian, and strike 

 thus early the characteristically French note. Poussin died in 

 1665. 



Landscape painting reached its first full development in a far 

 more famous contemporary of Poussin' s. Claude of Lorraine 

 ^1600-1682) can only perhaps be reckoned as a Frenchman by * 

 iourtesy, yet he stands in such intimate connexion with the 

 French schools, that he can hardly be omitted from considera- 

 tion here. Claude studied at Eome, where he passed the greater 

 part of his life, and his landscapes are mostly very Italian in 

 character. They are marked by a great limpidity, and an 

 exquisite clearness, which seems almost unnatural to those who 

 know nature only in her gloomier northern dress. The slow 

 development of landscape from earlier forms of art is very well 

 illustrated in Claude's work. He was almost the first painter, 

 at least in the south, who ventured to depend upon scenery 

 alone for his effects ; and even he intersperses numerous figures 

 in his landscape, apparently fearing to let it stand alone upon 

 its own merits. In fact, this style of painting grew gradually 

 out of figure pieces, by the constant dwarfing of the figures, 

 and the fixing of attention upon the background. We can thus 

 trace historically a slow change from the pure figure-painting 

 of the mediaeval Italians to the pure landscape of our own times. 

 Our illustration of " The Mill " a very characteristic Claude 

 with a foreground of figures and cattle, and a long aerial per- 

 spective of Italian scenery, admirably exemplifies the intermediate 

 stage. Most of Claude's pictures, in fact, though really painted 

 entirely for the sake of the background, are called by names 

 implying figure-painting or historical treatment, such as the 

 ' ; Embarcation of St. Ursula," " The Queen of Sheba," and so 

 forth. Landscape art was as yet afraid to trust itself wholly 

 on its own merits, and preferred to represent itself as a variety 

 of the older and more familiar style. Claude still remains in 

 many respects unrivalled for his dreamy colouring and his 

 mastery of perspective. 



During the whole of the great Bourbon period, a succession 

 of court painters lived at Paris, most of whom traced back 

 their artistic pedigree directly to Poussin and his contemporaries. 

 Philippe de Champagne (1602-1674), a Fleming settled in France, 

 has left numerous fine works at the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg 

 (now removed), and elsewhere. Charles Lebrun (1618-1690), 

 also a pupil of Poussin, was another of these court-made 

 painters, and he has handed down to us many memorials of the 

 great reign of Louis XIV., of whose Academy he was the first 

 president. During this period, when all life in France was 

 hardening down into set conventional forms, with the monarchy 

 for universal centre, art followed in the general stream, and 

 gave itself up almost entirely to representing the victories of 

 Louis, or the famous beauties of his court. There is no time 

 when it had so little of freshness or spontaneity when it fell 

 so completely into a vicious circle of artificial traditions. Hence 

 the works of this epoch, though often remarkable for technical 

 excellence, have seldom attained any general reputation ; and 

 most of them are to be found in official buildings, or in the 

 palaces of Versailles and the Louvre. Lesueur is one of the 

 few painters of this school who are now remembered outside the 

 purely artistic world ; and even he is by no means to be placed 

 in the first rank. The family of Coypel, four of whom were dis- 

 tinguished in their own day, are now almost neglected : their 

 gaudy colouring and mere glitter were in the taste of the 

 Versailles world, but are better fitted for monstrosities like 

 Sevres pottery than for genuine art. In Antoine Watteau 

 (1684 1721) this taste for a fanciful artificiality reached, per- 

 haps, its culminating point. Watteau had been originally a 

 theatrical scene-painter, and the habits he had acquired in this 

 humble branch of art stuck to him through life. He painted 

 very artificial rural scenes fetes cliampetres, with rustic 

 shepherdesses in a sort of travesty of court-dress ; little thea- 

 trical ladies, in Louis XIV. costume, holding impossible crooks 

 in their hands, and making love to courtly swains, while appa- 

 rently tending a flock of remarkably polite and white-fleeced 

 sheep. This sham rural sentiment and pretended simplicity 

 was of a piece with the prevailing taste of the Bourbon ^ourt 



