I have indicated now, by a brief line or two, the direction in which Moreau le Jeune must chiefly be studied, and the places in which he may be seen if men would see him at his prime. Perhaps it may be a matter of taste, and a matter of taste only, whether one prefers him in his more spontaneous or in his more official work. The draughtsman is the same in either labour, though the inspiration is different. For me his greatest achievement is ‘L’Histoire des Mœurs,’ or, in another phrase, ‘Le Monument du Costume,’ which must be spoken of in detail later on. For many, and above all, for the lovers of curiosities, the seekers in byways of history, his celebrity hangs chiefly on his performance of the various ‘Sacres’; his records of the public functions, his ‘Fêtes at Versailles for the Marriage of the Dauphin and of Marie Antoinette’; his ‘Crowning of Voltaire’--at the Théâtre Français--in 1788; his ‘Fêtes at the Hôtel de Ville,’ on the birth of a new Dauphin to Louis XVI. Among these we may look perhaps principally at the ‘Crowning of Voltaire,’ for it has the virtues of them all. The drawing was engraved by Gaucher, who has preserved in the print the lively touch of the original. But what, one asks, was the occasion of the ceremony, what the cause of the ‘crowning’? At the Théâtre Français, Voltaire’s _Irène_ had been performed for sixteen nights. In those days of limited audiences that was a brilliant success. The bust of the poet is placed then in the middle of the stage, to be adorned and declaimed before. Madame Vestris--another, of course, than the Vestris known to Englishmen--reads aloud, and with emphasis, the lines of which the Marquis de Saint-Maur has hurriedly been delivered. Other performers, in more or less classic garb, cluster about her with garlands in their hands, ready to bestow them on the bust. In a box, high up on one side of the theatre, sits the demi-god, with two fair friends--one of whom is his niece, Madame Denis, and the other that Marquise de Villette to whom the print that represents the occasion is dedicated. The playhouse is full. The clapping of hands is lusty and enthusiastic. People rise in their boxes. Men stare upwards from the pit. Fine ladies crane their necks to catch a glimpse of the hero with the thin angular face, with its tell-tale lines of wit and mockery and observation.