Travels in France during the years 1814-15. Patrick Fraser Tytler

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СКАЧАТЬ view. To the east, the high and gloomy towers of Vincennes rise over the beautiful woods with which the sides of the hill are adorned, and give an air of solemnity to the scene, arising from the remembrance of the tragic events of which it was the theatre. To the south, the domes and spires of Paris can occasionally be discovered through the openings of the wood with which the foreground is enriched, and present the capital at that pleasing distance, when the minuter part of the buildings are concealed, when its prominent features alone are displayed, and the whole is softened by the obscure light which distance throws over the objects of nature. To an English mind, the effect of the whole is infinitely increased, by the animating associations with which this scenery is connected;—by the remembrance of the mighty struggle between freedom and slavery, which was here terminated;—of the heroic deeds which were here performed, and the unequalled magnanimity which was here displayed. It was here that the expiring efforts of military despotism were overthrown—that the armies of Russia stood triumphant over the power of France, and nobly avenged the ashes of their own capital, by sparing that of their prostrate enemy.

      When we visited the heights of Belleville, the traces of the recent struggle were visibly imprinted on the villages and woods with which the hill is covered. The marks of blood were still to be discerned on the chaussée which leads through the village of Pantin; the elm trees which line the road were cut asunder, or bored through with cannon shot, and their stems riddled in many parts with the incessant fire of the grape shot. The houses in La Villette, Belleville and Pantin, were covered with the marks of musket shot; the windows of many were shattered, or wholly destroyed, and the interior of the rooms broken by the balls which seemed to have pierced every part of the buildings. So thickly were the houses in some places covered with these marks, that it appeared almost incredible how any one could have escaped from so destructive a fire. Even the beautiful gardens with which the slope of the heights are adorned, and the inmost recesses of the wood of Romainville, bore throughout the marks of the desperate struggles which they had lately witnessed, and exhibited the symptoms of fracture or destruction in the midst of the luxuriance of natural beauty; yet, though they had so recently been the scene of mortal combat; though the ashes of the dead yet lay in heaps on different parts of the field of battle, the prolific powers of nature were undecayed: the vines clustered round the broken fragments of the instruments of war—the corn spread a sweeter green over the fields, which were yet wet with human blood, and the trees waved with renovated beauty over the uncoffined remains of the departed brave; emblematic of the decay of man, and of the immortality of nature.

      The French have often been accused of selfishness, and the indifference which they often manifest to the fate of their relations, affords too much reason to believe that the social affections have little permanent influence on their minds. We must, however, admit, that they exhibit in misfortunes of a different kind—in calamities which really press upon their own enjoyments of life, the same gaiety of heart, and the same undisturbed equanimity of disposition. That gaiety in misfortune, which is so painful to every observer, when it is to be found in the midst of family-distress, becomes delightful when it exists under the deprivation of the selfish gratification to which the individual had been accustomed. Both here, and in other parts of France, where the houses of the peasants had been wholly destroyed by the allied armies, we had occasion frequently to observe and admire the equanimity of mind with which these poor people bore the loss of all their property. For an extent of 30 miles in one direction, towards the North of Champagne, every house near the great road had-been burnt or pillaged for the firewood which it contained, both by the French and the allied armies, and the people were everywhere compelled to sleep in the open air. When we spoke to them on the subject of their losses, they answered with smiles, "Tout est detruit: tout est brulè, tout, tout;" and seemed to derive amusement from the completeness of the devastation. The men were everywhere rebuilding their fallen walls, with a cheerfulness which never would have existed in England under similar circumstances; and the little children laboured in the gardens during the day, and slept under the vines at night, without exhibiting any signs of distress for their disconsolate situation. In many places, we saw groupes of these little children in the midst of the ruined houses, or under the shattered trees, playing with the musket shot, or trying to roll the cannon balls by which the destruction of their dwellings had been effected;—exhibiting a picture of youthful joy and native innocence, while sporting with the instruments of human destruction, which the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds would have moulded into the expression of pathetic feeling, or employed as the means of moral improvement.

CHAPTER V.

       Table of Contents

      PARIS—THE LOUVRE.

      To those who have had the good fortune to see the pictures and statues which were preserved in the Louvre, all description of these works must appear superfluous; and to those who have not had this good fortune, such an attempt could convey no adequate idea of the objects which are described. There is nothing more uninteresting than the catalogue of pictures which are to be found in the works of many modern travellers; nor any thing in general more ridiculous than the ravings of admiration with which this catalogue is described, and with which the reader in general is little disposed to sympathise. Without attempting, therefore, to enumerate the great works which were there to be met with, we shall confine ourselves to a simpler object, to the delineation of the general character by which the different schools of painting are distinguished, and the great features in which they all differ from the sculpture of ancient times. For the justice of these observations, we must of course appeal to those who have examined this great collection; and in the prosecution of them, we pretend to nothing more than the simple account of the feelings which, we are persuaded, must have occurred to all those who have viewed it without any knowledge of the rules which art has established, or the more despicable principles which connoisseurs have maintained.

      For an attempt of this kind, the Louvre presented, singular advantages, from the unparalleled collection of paintings of every school and description which was there to be met with, and the facility with which you could trace the progress of the art from its first beginning to the period of its greatest perfection. And it is in this view that the collection of these works into one museum, however much to be deplored as the work of unprincipled ambition, and however much it may have diminished the impression which particular objects, from the influence of association, produced in their native place, was yet calculated, we conceive, to produce the greatest of all improvements in the progress of the art, by divesting particular schools and particular works of the unbounded influence which the effect of early association, or the prejudices of national feeling, have given them in their original situation, and placing them where their real nature is to be judged of by a more extended circle, and subjected to the examination of more impartial sentiments.

      The character of every school of painting has been determined by some peculiar circumstances under which that school first originated, which have contributed to form its greatest excellencies, and been the real source of its principal defects; and it has unfortunately happened, that the unbounded admiration for the great production of these schools has everywhere formed the national taste, and tended to perpetuate their errors, when the progress of society would otherwise have led to their earlier abandonment. It deserves well to be considered, therefore, whether the restoration of these monuments of art to their original situations, while it must unquestionably enhance the veneration with which they will severally be regarded, may not perpetuate the defects which particular circumstances have stamped on their school of composition; and whether the continuance of them in one vast collection, however fatal to the implicit veneration for the works of antiquity, was not calculated, by the comparison of their excellencies and the exhibition of their defects, to form a new school, possessed of a more general character, and adapted for the admiration of a more unbiassed public. It is in the despotic reign of arbitrary governments, if we may be allowed, in a discussion on matters of taste, to borrow an illustration from politics, that the influence of ancient error, and the power of ancient prejudice, is most unbounded; but it is in the unbiassed discussion which distinguishes a free state, that the influence of prejudice СКАЧАТЬ