The founder and the representative of the modern French school is David. Born in 1750, he early saw and forsook the conventional feebleness, and, to a great degree, the false glare, of contemporaries, and thus merits the appellation of restorer of art. Unfortunately, however, he engaged in other revolutions than those of taste, and participated too largely in the atrocities which desecrated the close of last century. As one of the regicides, he was, at the restoration, driven into exile--a useless severity, which might have been spared in favor of one who has contributed largely to the solid glory of his country. He died at Brussels in 1825. The leading defect of preceding art in France, is a want of dignified and correct form; next, of simple and natural expression. The former the genius of David detected, and sought to apply the remedy in the careful study of antique sculpture. In this he has been far from unsuccessful; his drawing is most correct, his style of design noble, but both are cold and without feeling. The second defect David either did not discover, or has failed in rectifying. The system which he pursued was in part excellent, but he followed it too exclusively. Statuary can give little to painting beyond form and proportion--the essentials, indeed--but expression, action, not less true and dignified, but more varied, and composition, not to mention coloring, must be added from nature. Here David has failed. He either conceived that the artists who preceded him wanted only form to render French art perfect, or that, by grouping the statuary of ancient Greece in more violent and complicated action, and with more vehemence of expression, pictures would be produced, such, to use his own words, 'that if an Athenian were to return to this world, they might appear to him the works of a Greek painter.' Like Poussin, then, he lived too much for antiquity, and too little with the present; but if Poussin has often given to representations of the most perfect art, instead of delineations of nature, he has at least depicted antiquity as it is, in all its simplicity and perfect repose. David has not done this; he has completely changed, nay, inverted, the character of ancient art, by adding exaggerated expression and forced attitude. The coloring is also very indifferent; for though highly finished, the effect is hard and dry, without sweetness or depth; and while the general tone inclines to the bronze or metallic, the local tints are feeble or untrue. Here, likewise, we discover an endeavor at improvement failing through neglect of the proper object of study. Wishing to avoid the glaring hues of his predecessors, David has fallen into the opposite extreme from overlooking the living subject. The grouping, too, participates in the meagreness inseparable from the system, the arrangement of the figures often approaching to the basso-relievo, where they necessarily stand in lines, while, to relieve