ARTISTIC EDUCATION IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND.
Is the introduction of the subject into art the one and only cause for
the defeat of the brilliant genius which the Revolution and the
victories of Napoleoncalled into existence? Are there not other modern
and special signs which distinguish the nineteenth century French
schools from all the schools that preceded it? I think there are.
Throwing ourselves back in our chairs, let us think of this French
school in its _ensemble_. What extraordinary variety! What an absence
of fixed principle! curiosity, fever, impatience, hurry, anxiety,
desire touching on hysteria. An enormous expenditure of force, but
spent in so many different and contrary directions, that the sum-total
of the result seems a little less than we had expected. Throwing
ourselves back in our chairs, and closing our eyes a second time, let
us think of our eighteenth century English school. Is it not like
passing from the glare and vicarious holloaing of the street into a
quiet, grave assembly of well-bred men, who are not afraid to let each
other speak, and know how to make themselves heard without shouting;
men who choose their words so well that they afford to speak without
emphasis, and in whose speech you find neither neologisms, nor
inversions, nor grammatical extravagances, nor calculated brutalities,
nor affected ignorance, nor any faintest trace of pedantry? What these
men have to say is more or less interesting, but they address us in
the same language, and however arbitrarily we may place them, though
we hang a pig-stye by Morland next to a duchess by Gainsborough, we
are surprised by a pleasant air of family likeness in the execution.
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