It is safe to say that the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV., was the greatest affliction which the kingdom of France was ever called upon to endure. His reign was unfortunately long--1643 to 1715. It was marked by a false splendor of success, by luxury such as the world had not seen since the days of the decline and fall of Rome, by the most venal public service except that which his successor permitted, by the most unblushing corruption in private life, among men and women both; and by a general degradation of all the standards of frugality, sincerity, honor, and nobleness, in public and in private life. Was it possible for art to escape this contamination? Impossible! The florid and foolish taste of the perruquier prevails everywhere, in architecture, in painting, in sculpture, in dress; all is tainted with the showy and the shallow. The flowing scroll appears in all its splendor, decoration is piled in meaningless profusion, and talent and taste, heart, mind, hand, and gold, are lavished in folly and vice, which finally culminated in the social and political Revolution of Louis XVI., when king and noble, lord and lady, went under in a sanguinary flood of anarchy and ruin. Could the taste and the art which prevailed at Sèvres escape this? It could not, and it did not. While, therefore, we cannot but admire the care, the pains, the skill, of the workmen and the artists, let us not be misled by the false glamour of that time, so as to learn to love or to imitate their florid and extravagant tastes in architecture, in furniture, in dress, or in porcelain. Chaffers, in his work upon "Pottery and Porcelain," gives the private marks of some one hundred and twenty-six painters, who were employed at Sèvres before 1800, and quite a number who have painted there since. Among these are some who reached a European reputation: of these _Boucher_ is perhaps most famous; his medallions are sought for, and highly valued. [Illustration: FIG. 133.--_Enameled Sèvres Vase, called "Vase Genicault."_] A distinction is sometimes made between old Sèvres and modern Sèvres. The old--_vieux Sèvres_--comes down to the year 1800; after that it is designated as modern, for convenience. It does not intend to exalt one and condemn the other, as too many now are apt to think, the truth being that equally good work has been done since that time as before it. Indeed, within this year I have seen some pieces of Sèvres painting, such as I fancy have never been done there before, and which can hardly be excelled; in which the artist ceases to be a copyist, abandons himself to the imagination, and produces work which gratifies the highest faculty. Somebody, then, has broken away from traditions and academic rules.