The Quarterly Review Vol. 117

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865. Excerpt: ... gloires de la France, ' at Versailles, at an expense little short of half a million, from his own purse, contributed thirty-three pictures to the Louvre. Meanwhile it is difficult now to realise the fact that, with all the real accommodation of this enormous palace, and the boasted better management of the French in such matters, the exhibition of modern painters annually hid the old masters from sight, and inflicted upon them grievous injuries, down to so late a date as 1849. It would seem, indeed, as if republics were more enlightened in their estimate of such treasures than other forms of government, for, with the new powers of 1848, a greatly improved arrangement of the gallery took place. The first edition of the admirable catalogue by M. Villot, from the thirteenth edition of which we have borrowed so largely, was given to the public; and, above all, the periodical eclipse of the old constellations by the grosser bodies of modern creation was entirely abolished. Here our task must cease. The present Administration has been alternately stingy and extravagant. A Murillo has been purchased at the price of a gallery; and an indifferent gallery as regards pictures--the Campana--has swallowed up the average art resources of a long reign. To the last also we find the history of the collections running parallel with that of the country in general. In 1848 they became again the property of the people; now, following the course of events, they have been claimed as the appanage of the Crown. But if a despotic sovereign has made the price and the choice of works of art subservient to his own policy, he has given them, in the completion of the building of the Louvre, a framework which is the admiration of the world. As far, however, as regards the accommodation o...