as contributing to the external pomp, splendor, and show of their '_monarchie_,' the people have been trained to applaud. There never has been mutual sympathy between the artist and his countrymen; he drew his encouragement, and looked for his reward, from other and far less ennobling inspiration than their praise. That incense which not unfrequently was really kindled at the Muses' flame, was burnt before the idols set up by a despot, instead of being offered to the majesty of national feeling. In confirmation of these remarks, so congenial with the whole history of art as an intellectual attainment, we have only to refer to the reigns of Louis XIII., XIV., XV.; more especially of the second, whose selfish glory, the pursuit of his entire life, converted the most splendid of the arts into a vehicle of adulation, through fulsome and direct flattery, or glaring and far-fetched allegory. If, during the recent order of things, more respect was paid to real merit, and less to cabal than formerly, the same, nearly, was the isolation of the art from popular enthusiasm--it was still under the same thraldom to the cold and selfish aggrandisement of an individual; or, where this object seemed more directly connected with national exultation, the art was exercised on a theme, whose violent and artificial aspect is, throughout, unvaried, entirely destructive of natural expression and discrimination of character. The gold and glitter of military portraits--the unromantic combinations of modern warfare, with its mechanical levelling of distinctive peculiarities, were little calculated to rectify--they increased--the errors and the wants of French painting; while that which is absolutely good was derived from the colder forms of sculpture. The most ancient labours of the art in France appear to have been on glass, and, as in every other country, dedicated to the service of religion. Of these primitive specimens, many still remain of considerable beauty, as in the church of St Genevieve at Paris. Another method, common also to Germany, and which, in the fourteenth century, had assumed the appearance of a regular and important branch of ingenuity, was a species of enamel, formed by the fusion of metallic colors with glass. Of this method, many remains of surprising beauty occur in the early part of the fifteenth century, which, with the Gothic paintings already described, seem to have exercised the ingenuity of his subjects, till the exertions of Francis I. for their improvement brought artists from Italy. Among these was the great Leonardo, who died at Fontainbleau, in the arms of this monarch, in 1524, and before he had exercised his pencil in France. Copies of his works, especially of the Last Supper, were executed for Francis, who was desirous of carrying off the original with the wall upon which it is painted.[B]