[Sidenote: MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE]
When the French Republicans first took up arms, they protested to the
world that they fought not for conquest, but to spread their beneficent
doctrines of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, and that wherever their
victorious standards were spread, the liberty and property of nations
should be respected. Their first campaigns were directed against their
warlike neighbours who hovered round their frontiers; and when they
succeeded in repelling the veteran troops of the continental Powers,
they began a career of robbery, pillage, rapine and destruction, which
has no parallel in the history of disciplined nations, nor even in that
of predatory hordes of barbarians.
The principle on which the robberies of the French have been conducted
has been to _aggrandise_ France by the utter _impoverishment_
of other countries.
After having demolished the monuments of the genius and industry of
their own countrymen, they went forth to ransack other countries,
and destroyed all they could not carry away with them. Whatever had
been raised by the talents, the piety or the care of the lovers of
science, arts and literature, became the object of their vandalism or
their peculation. Their policy had no element but to divide in order to
conquer, and so arrive at universal domination by universal confusion.
Occupied constantly on the destruction of Europe in detail, they
trampled under their feet Monarchies and Republics alike.
Every time I have paced along the galleries of the Louvre sentiments
of hatred and indignation took possession of my breast. Amidst all the
blaze of artistic beauty I never entered nor left without feelings of
disgust.
I confess I received no gratification from all the Raphaels, Titians,
and Correggios I saw there.
In their _proper places_ I could have gazed with transport upon
these masterpieces, but I cannot look with pleasure on productions thus
violently torn from their lawful owners.
Of all the countries which have been undone by French havock Italy has
suffered the most, and its miseries are least known to the world. The
French have literally exhausted upon that country the fecundity of
rapine, cheating and fury. They have rendered themselves masters of its
correspondence, and all we know now of the existence of that desolated
country is through the frequent eruptions of a tyranny without remorse,
of a powerless despair and of the accumulations of spoil which
decorates the public exhibitions of Paris. The contributions of the
French were nothing less than a general sack, the encyclopædia of their
thefts forms a monument of curiosity.
[Sidenote: STOLEN PICTURES]
The barbarians who formerly overran Italy despised art, and neglected
to take possession of such treasures. The fanatical Mussulman destroyed
them as monuments of idolatry. But in our times Academicians, poets,
orators, philosophers, members of the National Institute, have crossed
the Alps to strip Italy of her talents, to force from her the labours
of her children, the most sacred illustration of a people, a property
which the laws of war among civilised nations has hitherto held to be
inviolable until the present epoch, when a gang of savage sophists have
replunged Italy into a darkness worse than any of the early ages of
Europe.
Those who are ignorant of the methods by which a thief has realised an
immense fortune may be forgiven for their admiration of his wealth and
treasures, but the man who is acquainted with the villainy employed in
such an accumulation is inexcusable should he lavish praises on objects
in that thief’s possession. Therefore, with the knowledge that none of
these pictures belong to France, and that they are all stolen goods
acquired by fraud, injustice and murder, I could not coolly fix my eyes
upon them nor repeat ecstacies of vulgar adulation.
No sooner have you entered the Gallery than you are presented with a
catalogue of these paintings, in which the robbers do not blush to avow
their robberies. The facetious rascals of the National Institute talk
and write of the knavery with as much _sangfroid_ as they take a
pinch of snuff.
The paintings are styled “Tableaux conquis en Italie, recueillis dans
la Lombardie, à Bologne, Cento, Modêne, Parme, Plaisance, Rome, Venise,
Vérone, Florence, Turin.”
With this register of pillage in your hand, you enter the Gallery
containing the spoils of nations, and nearly every picture bears at the
bottom an inscription declaring it to be a stolen article. Scarcely
a page of the catalogue but contains such proclamations of theft as
these: “Ces deux tableaux viennent de la Cathédrale de Plaisance, où
ils pendoient aux deux coins du Sanctuaire. Ce tableau est tiré de la
galerie de Turin. Ce tableau vient du Palais Pitti. Ce tableau est
tiré du Palais Pontifical de Monte Cavallo à Rome. Ce tableau vient
du Cabinet du ci-devant Roi de Sardaigne à Turin. Ce tableau, un
des meilleurs qu’a produit Paolo Veronese, est tiré de l’église des
Réligieuses de St. Zacharin à Venise. Ce tableau vient du maître autel
de l’église de San Giorgio à Venise. Ce tableau est tiré de l’église
de Santa Maria del Orto à Venise. Ce précieux et magnifique tableau
que les artistes regardent comme un des chefs d’œuvres de Titian, le
martyre de St. Pierre, vient de l’église San Giovanni e Paolo à Venise.
Ce portrait vient du Palais du Prince Breschi à Rome.”
There is no end to this catalogue of iniquity, it fills at present
three volumes, but much more will be added. I question if the Newgate
Calendar for the last 100 years contains altogether a hundredth part of
the impudent dexterity in the art of filching which the rogues of the
National Institute present to us in these three little syllabuses of
Republican iniquity.
Englishmen, happily shut out from the view of the sack of the continent
by that sea which guards our honest little island, have no adequate
idea of the indignant feelings of the wretched inhabitants of the
wronged countries which the French armies have plundered. I have
visited this gallery of paintings in company with some Italians of
distinction; I perceived in their countenances a deep and fixed look of
unutterable anguish and regret. Such a look that only the artists of
Italy whose expatriated portraits hung around us could delineate.
May Heaven preserve our country from ever experiencing a similar
stroke of humiliation and abasement! How should we Britons feel if one
day in a later catalogue we read among these: “Notices sur plusieurs
précieux tableaux recueillis par les Philosophes de l’Institut pour
multiplier les jouissances du public. Ce tableau peint sur toile est
tiré de l’autel de l’église cathédrale de Westminster. Ce vitre vient
de King’s College à Cambridge. Ce tableau est tiré du Cabinet du
ci-devant Roi d’Angleterre à Windsor. Ce tableau de Shakespeare vient
de la bibliothèque de la librairie à Cambridge. Ce tableau de la mort
du General Wolfe est tiré du cabinet de la ci-devant Reine d’Angleterre
à Buckingham House. Cette statue vient du Cabinet de Milord Lansdowne.
Ce tableau peint par Claude vient du cabinet de Milord Gwydir.”
Having expressed with candour what my sentiments have ever been when I
visited the gallery of paintings in the Louvre, I now proceed to fulfil
the important duty of an historian.
[Sidenote: MRS. COSWAY]
Mrs. Cosway, whose taste and skill are well known, is now occupied in
copying all the paintings in the Gallery on a small scale, intending
to execute later an enlarged account of them, together with the
biography of their respective masters. She has already executed several
compartments; and not all the fascinations of society nor the gaieties
of the capital can allure her from the daily pursuit of the labour of
her choice. I tell her the Gallery of the Louvre is her drawing-room,
for when she is at work all the English gather around her. However, she
loses no time, for she enters in conversation and paints also, and it
is difficult to affirm in which she most excels.
The object of Mrs. Cosway is to represent, by etchings, all the
pictures precisely as they are fixed in the Gallery. The Hon. Mr. E----
is struck with the undertaking, and he has appropriated a particular
part of his house at H---- for the display of her works.
There is _one_ circumstance attached to all the public institutions of
Paris on which I must bestow the highest commendation, they are open
to the public _gratis_. I wish I could say the same of our excellent
establishments at home. With the exception of the British Museum, I do
not know of a single institution in Great Britain to which a native or
a foreigner can be admitted without a fee. And these fees are generally
exacted under so many circumstances of barefaced imposition that one
cannot help feeling ashamed that such abuses should be tolerated, and
that the officers of these establishments are permitted to exclude
travellers who do not pay them gratuities for viewing these interesting
and instructive collections.
The only qualification in Paris to visit museums or public institutions
is to have your passport in your pocket--without it the porter at the
gate will assuredly forbid your entrance.
Under the Monarchy, the Gallery of the Louvre alone was appropriated
to the public, and contained a splendid collection of paintings. Now
the whole palace is appropriated to National uses.
It is not only the repository of pictures, but also of antiquities; the
National Institute and the Polytechnic Society designed to supply the
Ancient Academy des Belles Lettres, hold their assemblies here.
The productions of living artists are exhibited here once a year, and
_appartements_ are allotted free of expense to various artists and
men of science. The museum is maintained in a high state of cleanliness
and propriety; and the orderly conduct of the spectators, who are all
admitted free of charge and without respect of persons, is greatly to
be commended.
The great Gallery of the Louvre is not well adapted for the exhibition
of pictures; it is too narrow in proportion to its length, and the
windows which look out towards the Seine defeat the effect of those
which look towards the Place du Carrousel. A great number of the
paintings thus appear to be covered with a continual mist, and others
are scarcely discernible, so that the principal effect of light and
shade is destroyed.
In addition to this misfortune a number of the noblest masterpieces
of the Italian School have been injudiciously retouched by the French
artists and been rendered quite unnatural and in many instances
ridiculous. The colouring of the parts defaced has been executed in
such a bungling manner as to resemble a piece of patchwork. They have
likewise injured a multitude of exquisite performances with a species
of varnish, by which, when I have approached them in search of the
beauties of the artists, I have been mortified by a vision of my own
homely features. Things are often more spoilt by overdoing than by
remaining stationary, and by the neglect of this maxim the French have
ruined many of the finest pictures in their stolen collection.