even young personage into the realm of the ideal and of history. But when Napoleon had become emperor and David his none too carefully treated servant, his art became weaker and weaker from year to year, the while his compositions grew larger in size. When after the downfall of the emperor and the return of the Bourbons he left France in exile and settled in Brussels, where he lived until the year 1824, he still attracted the attention of the world through his many pupils and admirers, though his art now belonged to the past. David belongs with the few artists who are mentioned not only in the history of art but also in political history--perhaps a doubtful advantage, for preoccupation with two so conflicting fields as art and politics, was only possible through the sacrifice of one or the other. Indeed David as politician lived only in the shadow of the greater ones. In the field of art he was at his best when his political ideas did not tempt him too much toward abstract themes--that is to say, in portraiture, when he had the model before him. As a human being his forte lay in a highly sensitive response to the most intense intellectual and emotional currents of his time. Since, during the greater part of his lifetime, these currents were not primarily of an artistic nature, his art could not always take advantage of them. This too intense interest in the great events of the day was perhaps his weak point: the fact that he submitted too easily to the ephemeral demands of his contemporaries, preferring the fortune of a successful present to the glory which the future reserves only for the highest aims and the complete renunciation of the demands of the day. From his earliest years David had the critics on his side, and the steady stream of admirers that had gathered about him showed no decrease, remaining with him even in the most dangerous periods of his life. How different did it fare with one of his really great contemporaries--Beethoven--who throughout his life had to contend with uncomprehending critics, but who is quoted as having said in this connection, “Damn me as much as you like; you are not able to damn me into eternity.” Just as to the great ones is given as a recompense for the misunderstanding of their day the consciousness of their own value to the future, so the artist who is glorified in his own time knows his own limitations. David said himself that many of his own works such as the Brutus no longer had a living value. It was his bad fortune that he was in too close contact with the affairs of the revolution, for the greatest art (we return here to our introductory remarks) cannot arise in the midst of bloodshed. There can be no doubt of where the unattached and eternal art lay during David’s period, when we call to mind the poetry of Goethe or the music of Beethoven. The centers where the greatest poet and the greatest musician of the days of the revolution lived--Weimar