It is like an audience with the peers of art to range the
Louvre; in radiant state and majestic silence they receive their reverend
guests; first smiles down upon him the celestial meekness of Raphael's
holy women, then the rustic truth of Murillo's peasant mothers, and the
most costly, though, to our mind, not the most expressive, of all his
pictures--the late acquisition for which kings competed at Marshal Soult's
sale; now we are warmed by the rosy flush of Rubens--like a mellow sunset
beaming from the walls; and now startled at the life-like individuality of
Vandyke's portraits, as they gaze down with such placid dignity and keen
intelligence; at one point, we examine with mere curiosity the stiff
outlines of early religious limning; and, at another, smile at the homely
nature of the Dutch school; Philip de Champagne's portraits, Wouverman's
white horses, Cuyp's meadows and kine, Steen's rural _fetes_, Claude's
sunsets, Pannini's architecture and Sneyder's animals; David's
melodramatic pieces, Isabey's miniatures, Oudny's dogs, Robert's "Harvest
Home," all hint a chapter, not only in the history of art, but in the
philosophy of life and the secrets of the beautiful--enshrined there for
the world's enjoyment, with a liberal policy yet more aptly illustrated by
the vast and lofty colonnades, the courteous custodes, and the provisions
for students in the drawings of successive schools.
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