When I was a child, nothing pleased me so much as the woodcuts in Gay's fables, and my nurse could do any thing with me if she promised me a pretty picture. The taste has grown up with me, and I have as much difficulty in passing a printseller's window without looking in, as some people have in passing a book-stall. In returning from our ramble, we fell upon a shop of the kind; but that which most amused us was an engraving of the departure of Louis XVIII., on the return of Napoleon from Elba. In truth, there was little to be represented, except the good old king getting into his carriage in a great fright. But the object of the painter was to represent the sorrow of the people of Paris; and for this purpose he has drawn the two sentinels in tears, one hiding his eyes with his hand, and the other on his knees, not a little embarrassed with his musket, while a great many other tragic attitudes were expended in the background. Frenchmen in many of their undertakings seem striving to do better than nature, and, consequently, nine times out of ten they caricature what they attempt. Their most glaring efforts of this kind are in painting and engraving, and there they appear to have totally forgotten that the _beau ideal_ does not consist in generating what nature never produced, but in assembling the most beautiful objects which naturally harmonize together. Painting is one of the most purely imitative of the arts, and the utmost licence which its greatest masters have allowed it, is simply the power of choosing and combining what is pleasing to the eye, and rejecting all that can offend it. This, however, does not content the present school of painting in France. They must have something such as never was, and never will be, and in their colouring especially they have succeeded to a miracle. David's naked Spartans are brilliant instances of how far art can go beyond nature; for certainly never was any thing seen under heaven like the skins of those polished gentlemen. Take away the shields and helmets, and a very slight alteration would convert the three hundred arming for Thermopylæ, into Diana and her nymphs bathing; and even then they would be somewhat too pretty, for without doubt the goddess's hunting-parties, gave her a much more russet tint than David has thought proper to bestow upon the hardy warriors of Greece. Perhaps the great corrector of all things, time, may deprive these pictures of their adventitious glare of colouring; but even then, though they may be admired for their fine bold outline, one violent defect can never be banished, the forced and extravagant attitudes of some of the principal figures. David had certainly a strange penchant for sans-culotteism; he never missed an opportunity of leaving his heroes without any apparel except a helmet, which sits rather preposterously on a naked man.