This collection is entered by a separate door in the Cour du Louvre, marked E on Baedeker’s plan. It takes up the development of French plastic art at the point where the last collection leaves off. It is, however, of vastly inferior interest, and should only be visited by those who have time to spare from more important subjects. The decline which affected French painting after the age of the early Renaissance had even more disastrous effects in the domain of sculpture. I will not, therefore, enumerate individual works in these rooms, but will touch briefly on the characteristics of the various epochs represented in the various galleries. The =Salle de Puget= contains sculptures of the age of Louis XIII and XIV, for the most part theatrical, fly-away, and mannered. They are grandiose with the grandiosity of the school of Bernini; unreal and over-draperied. Like contemporary painting, too, they represent official or governmental art, with a courtier-like tendency to flattery of monarchy, general and particular. A feeble pomposity, degenerating into bombast, strikes their keynote. Few works in this room need detain the visitor. The =Salle de Coyzevox= continues the series, with numerous portrait-busts of the celebrities of the age of Louis XIV, mostly insipid and banal. The decline goes on with accelerated rapidity. The =Salle des Coustou=, mostly Louis XV, marks the lowest depth of the degradation of plastic art, here reduced to the level of Palais Royal trinkets. It represents the worst type of 18th century handicraft, and hardly contains a single passable statue. Its best works are counterparts in marble of Boucher and Greuze, but without even the touch of meretricious art which colour and cleverness add to the craft of those boudoir artists. Few of them rise to the level of good Dresden china. The more ambitious lack even that mild distinction. The =Salle de Houdon=, of the Revolutionary epoch, shows a slight advance upon the preceding (parallel to the later work of Greuze), and is interesting from its portrait-busts of American statesmen and French republican leaders. Some of the ideal works, even, have touches of grace, and a slightly severer taste begins to make itself apparent. The classical period is foreshadowed. The =Salle de Chaudet=, of the First Empire, answers in sculpture to the School of David in painting. It is cold, dignified, reserved, and pedantic. It imitates (not always at all successfully) the antique ideals. The best works in this room are Canova’s; but the intention is almost always better than the execution. A sense of chilly correctness distinguishes these blameless academic works from the natural grace and life of antique Greek sculptors. They lie under the curse which pursues revivals.