FINE ARTS—THE LOUVRE
‘If Blücher, if the Cossacks, get to Paris,—to Paris, the seat of Bonaparte’s pride and insolence,—what mercy will they shew to it, or why should they shew it any mercy? Will they spare the precious works of art, to decorate the palace of a monster whom they justly detest? Will they treat the Thuileries more tenderly than the French Officers, only eight months ago, openly threatened to treat Berlin? Is Paris, Bonaparte’s Paris, more sacred than Moscow? or are the slaves of the Corsican more inviolable than the brave and virtuous citizens of Hamburgh? No, no; the indignant warriors will cry,—
“Away to Heav’n respective Lenity,And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now.”
“Away to Heav’n respective Lenity,And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now.”
“Away to Heav’n respective Lenity,And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now.”
“Away to Heav’n respective Lenity,
And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now.”
‘There is no other mode by which the Parisians can disarm the vengeance which now so closely impends over them, than by disclaiming for ever him whose crimes have been the just cause of that vengeance. Paris under the white standard, returning to loyalty and virtue, may be spared by a generous conqueror;—but Paris, identified with Bonaparte, must partake all the vindictive sentiments which are attached to that hateful name.
[Yet some time ago this writer assured us that if the French people identified themselves with Bonaparte, they ought not to be separated from him.]
‘In what momentous times do we live! Perhaps, the famous city of which we speak may even now be laid in ashes! Perhaps and more welcome be the omen, it may have returned to its allegiance, and proclaimed its native Sovereign, and set a price on the head of that wicked rebel who still dares to call himself the Emperor of France.’—Times, March 17.
‘Nay, if you mouth, I’ll rant as well as you!’
‘Nay, if you mouth, I’ll rant as well as you!’
‘Nay, if you mouth, I’ll rant as well as you!’
‘Nay, if you mouth, I’ll rant as well as you!’
It is a pity to spoil this morsel of Asiatic eloquence, so worthy of the subject and the sentiments; but the evident meaning of it is, thatthe French must expect to do penance in sack-cloth and ashes, or consent to put on the old livery jackets, made up for them by our army-agents long ago, and which have unfortunately lain on hand ever since. If so, they must needs be ‘pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall.’ Yet we hardly know what to say to the chivalrous and classical politicians of the Stock Exchange. They are not driven to the extremity of Gothic rage by the ranking inveteracy, and old unsatisfied grudge of the Pitt-school. Yet surely no pitiable enthusiast that
‘ScrawlsWith desperate charcoal on his darken’d walls,’
‘ScrawlsWith desperate charcoal on his darken’d walls,’
‘ScrawlsWith desperate charcoal on his darken’d walls,’
‘Scrawls
With desperate charcoal on his darken’d walls,’
can be more incorrigible to reason. They are always setting out on their way to Paris from Moscow, while the Pitt-school studiously return to join Lord Hawkesbury in the year 1793, or they think the whole ceremony incomplete! The treaty of Pilnitz does not stand between our modern popular incendiaries and their just revenge! They live only in ‘this present ignorant time!’ They see the white standard of the Bourbons waving over the walls of Paris, unspotted with the blood of millions of Frenchmen! They do not seem ever to have known, or (with our poet-laureat) they forget, that the same standard to which our milky politicians advise the French people, sick of destruction, and panting for freedom, to fly for deliverance and repose, is that very standard, which, for twenty years, hovering round them, now seen like a cloudy speck in the distance—now spreading out its drooping lilies wide, has been the cause of that destruction—has robbed them at once of liberty and of repose!
Moscow is, however, the watch-word of the renegados ofThe Times. It seems to them just that Paris should be sacrificed to revenge the setting fire to Moscow by the Russians, and that the monuments of art in the Louvre ought to be destroyed because they are Bonaparte’s. No; they are ours as well as his;—they belong to the human race; he cannot monopolize all genius and all art. But these madmen would, if they could, blot the Sun out of heaven, because it shines upon France. They verify the old proverb, ‘Tell me your company, and I’ll tell you your manners!’ They, no more than their friends the Cossacks, can perceive any difference between the Kremlin and the Louvre. There is at least one difference, that the one may be built up again, and the other cannot. For there, in the Louvre, in Bonaparte’s Louvre, are the precious monuments of art—the sacred pledges which human genius has given to time and nature;—there ‘stands the statue that enchants the world;’ there is theApollo, theLaocoon, theDyingGladiator, theHead of the Antinous,Diana with her Fawn, and all the glories of the antique world;—
‘There is old Proteus coming from the sea,And wreathed Triton blows his winding horn.’
‘There is old Proteus coming from the sea,And wreathed Triton blows his winding horn.’
‘There is old Proteus coming from the sea,And wreathed Triton blows his winding horn.’
‘There is old Proteus coming from the sea,
And wreathed Triton blows his winding horn.’
There, too, are the twoSt. Jeromes, Correggio’s and Dominichino’s; there is Raphael’sTransfiguration, theSt. Markof Tintoret, Paul Veronese’sMarriage of Cana, theDelugeof Nicholas Poussin, and Titian’sSt. Peter Martyr;—all these, and more than these, of which the world is scarce worthy. Yet all these amount to nothing in the eyes of those virtuosos the Cossacks, and their fellow-students ofThe Times! ‘What’s Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba?’ But we must be allowed to see with our own eyes, and to have certain feelings of our own. We will not be brayed by these quackslike fools in a mortar. We too, as Mr. Burke expresses it, have ‘real feelings of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms.’ ‘We look up with awe to Kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility.’ But all this is a machine that goes on of itself, and may be repaired if out of order. We bow willingly to Lords and Commoners, though we know that ‘breath can make them as a breath has made.’ Blücher, Wittgenstein, Winzingerode, and Ktzichigoff, are true heroes; their names become the mouth well, and rouse the ear as the sound of a trumpet; but they are the heroes of a day, and all that they have done might be as well done by others to-morrow. But here it is: once destroy the great monuments of art, and they cannot be replaced. Those mighty geniuses, who have left their works behind them an inheritance to mankind, live but once to do honour to themselves and their nature. ‘But once put out their light, and there is no Promethean heat that can their light relumine.’ Nor ought it ever to be re-kindled, to be extinguished a second time by the harpies of the human race. What have ‘the worshippers of cats and onions’ to do with those triumphs of human genius, which give the eternal lie to their creed? We would therefore recommend these accomplished pioneers of civilisation and social order, after they have done their work at the Louvre, to follow the river-side, and they will come to a bare inclosure, surrounded by four low walls. It is the place where the Bastille stood: let them rear that, and all will be well. And then some whiffling poet who celebrated the fall of that monument of mild paternal sway—that sacred ark of the confidence of Kings—that strong bulwark of ‘time-hallowed laws,’ and precious relic of ‘the good old times,’ in an ode, may hail its restoration in a sonnet!