By what strange diversity could a country, in which the mental arts were carried to such perfection, remain ordinary in the other arts? Was the sentiment of the beautiful wanting, then, to that society so polished, to that magnificent court, to those great lords and those great ladies passionately loving luxury and elegance, to that public of the _elite_, enamored of every kind of glory, whose enthusiasm defended the _Cid_ against Richelieu? No; France in the seventeenth century was a whole, and produced artists that she can place by the side of her poets, her philosophers, her orators. But, in order to admire our artists, it is necessary to comprehend them. We do not believe that imagination has been less freely imparted to France than to any other nation of Europe. It has even had its reign among us. It is fancy that rules in the sixteenth century, and inspires the literature and the arts of the _Renaissance_. But a great revolution intervened at the commencement of the seventeenth century. France at that moment seems to pass from youth to virility. Instead of abandoning imagination to itself, we apply ourselves from that moment to restrain it without destroying it, to moderate it, as the Greeks did by the aid of taste; as in the progress of life and society we learn to repress or conceal what is too individual in character. An end is made of the literature of the preceding age. A new poetry, a new prose, begin to appear, which, during an entire century, bear fruits sufficiently beautiful. Art follows the general movement; after having been elegant and graceful, it becomes in its turn serious; it no longer aims at originality and extraordinary effects; it neither flashes nor dazzles; it speaks, above all, to the mind and the soul. Hence its good qualities and also its defects. In general, it is somewhat wanting in brilliancy and coloring, but it is in the highest degree expressive. Some time since we have changed all that. We have discovered, somewhat late, that we have not sufficient imagination; we are in training to acquire it, it is true, at the expense of reason, alas! also at the expense of soul, which is forgotten, repudiated, proscribed. At this moment, color and form are the order of the day, in poetry, in painting, in every thing. We are beginning to run mad with Spanish painting. The Flemish and Venetian schools are gaining ground on the schools of Florence and Rome. Rossini equals Mozart, and Gluck will soon seem to us insipid.