In literature the victory was complete. The reason is easy to discover. The smart dramatist and the young novelist are always more likely to catch the fickle taste of the uneducated public than the budding painter, who depends to a great extent for his appreciation upon the trained and generally prejudiced eye of a connoisseur. There is another reason for the success of the Romantic School in literature. The majority of its leaders lived to extreme old age, and were themselves able to correct their youthful extravagances. Hugo, Dumas, Gautier (to mention but three) went down to their graves in honour. They had outlived the antagonisms of their early days, and no man dared to raise his voice in protest against poets who had added fresh laurels to the glory of France. The world of art was less fortunate. Many of the younger men barely lived through the first flush of youth. Destroying Death is the worst enemy to the arts. It is idle to imagine the changes which must have ensued had Géricault and Bonington reached the Psalmist’s allotted span. The unnatural union of Classical traditions with the yeast of Romanticism might not have taken place. Such artists as Delaroche and Couture would have dropped into the background, and there would have been less reason for the revolt of Edouard Manet. It is possible that Claude Monet might have been forestalled. Surely, Impressionism would have come to us in another shape from different easels. In any event it was bound to arrive, for a French artist had already struck the note nearly a century and a half before. The schools of painting which flourished under the last three Capet kings lacked many of the essentials of truly great art. But they possessed qualities, which the Classicalists despised, and the Romanticists never reached in exactly the same way. They possessed a strong sense of colour. Watteau, in particular, was the first to catch the sunlight. The painters of “les fêtes galantes” are artificial, unreal, dominated by mannerisms. But the cold inanities of David, Girodet, Gérard, and Gros are no more to be compared with them than the bituminous melodramatics of the lesser Romantic artists. Watteau’s successors never entirely lost their master’s sense of light and colour. In a mild way Chardin attempted realism. Boucher, and, later, Fragonard were influenced by that Japanese art which was to take such a prominent place in the movement of a hundred years later. But the world altered. The stern, hard ideals of Rome and Greece were too severe for these poor triflers with the Orient. David reigned supreme. The _Journal de l’Empire_ considered Boucher ridiculous. Unhappy, forgotten Fragonard, surely one of the most pathetic of figures, died in poverty whilst the drums of Austerlitz were still reverberating through the air.