He was twenty years of age when Count Marshal Bülow, with a fatherly regard for the Crown Prince, and desirous of giving that touch of refinement denied the youth by the naturalistic theories of Struensee and the sterner methods of the Queen Dowager, took him from his military duties to pay early morning visits to the Royal factory. These glimpses into a world of artistry cannot have been other than stimulating to the young prince. Struensee's Rousseau-like training had made him a child of nature, and Juliane Marie had twisted him into the cast-iron grooves of a stiff and formal Court etiquette. In regard to art, he came at a time when the love of nature was becoming paramount. The age was rapidly shaking off the artificial. Sated with rococo ornament and with insipid and frivolous unrealities, the pendulum swung to the natural and to the essentially simple. Straight or shapely curved lines became the fashion. The period of _Louis Seize_ had succeeded the rococo taste of _Louis Quinze_ in Continental art. =The Taste of the Empress Catherine of Russia.=--From 1784, when he made his _coup d'état_, Frederik advisedly gave important orders to the royal factory. In 1790 the _Flora Danica_ service was ordered by the Crown Prince. It was not at first known for whom it was intended. The old factory books record it as "_Perle model broge malet med Flora Danica_" (Pearl body, colour painted with _Flora Danica_). As the service progressed it transpired that it was to be presented to Catherine II, Empress of Russia. The modern spirit was in the air, the new style was realistic and tinged with a scientific _motif_; moreover, it was to be a gift to a bluestocking. The Empress Catherine essayed to make her Court the centre of letters and art. At great cost she purchased the library of Diderot, and invited him to come to St. Petersburg to be the custodian of his own collection. She corresponded with Voltaire and she talked philosophy with Grimm, who, in his celebrated _Correspondance Littéraire_, kept her informed of the latest plays and books appearing in Paris. She established a French theatre in St. Petersburg, and fined absentee courtiers fifty roubles and sent her guards to bring in those who had failed to attend. French visionaries looked to Russia as a land of promise. Voltaire never tired of proclaiming that the Mohammedans should be driven out of Europe. And the Empress Catherine was to be the chosen instrument. The philosopher of Ferney, with his pen dipped in honey, writes:-- "_Si vous étiez souveraine de Constantinople votre majesté établirait bien vite une belle académie grecque; on vous ferait une Catériniade; les Zeuxis et les Phidias couvriraient la terre de vos images; la chute de l'empire ottoman serait célébrée en grec; Athènes serait une de vos capitales; la langue grecque deviendrait la langue universelle; tous les negocians de la mer Egée demanderaient des passeports de votre majesté._"