to the former place they have an inducement to go; there are their own portraits, or the portraits of their friends, or the portraits of public characters; and you will see them infallibly wondering over No.2645 in the catalogue, representing "The Portrait of a Lady," or of the "First Mayor of Little Pedlington since the passing of the Reform Bill;" or else bustling and squeezing among the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the Gallery.
England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of admirers of art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever, portrait painters.How many ARTISTS? Let the reader count upon his five fingers, and see if, living at the present moment, he can name one for each.
If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble cafe's in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers, representing "Les Gloires de l'Armee Francaise,"the "Seasons," the "Four Quarters of the World," "Cupid and Psyche," or some other allegory, landscape or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, is undeniable.In Paris, the manner in which the cafes and houses of the restaurateurs are ornamented, is, of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can be more beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the designs which adorn many of them.We are not prepared to say what sums were expended upon the painting of "Very's" or "Vefour's," of the "Salle Musard," or of numberless other places of public resort in the capital.There is many a shop-keeper whose sign is a very tolerable picture; and often have we stopped to admire (the reader will give us credit for having remained OUTSIDE) the excellent workmanship of the grapes and vine-leaves over the door of some very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of a marchand de vin.
These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people.But the same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of resort, appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family, however poor, may bear witness how profusely the walls of his smart salon in the English quarter, or of his little room au sixieme in the Pays Latin, has been decorated with prints of all kinds.In the first, probably, with bad engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures of the artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay caricatures of Granville or Monnier: military pieces, such as are dashed off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of the three designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous hand); or clever pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the admirable Roqueplan, or Decamp.We have named here, we believe, the principal lithographic artists in Paris; and those--as doubtless there are many--of our readers who have looked over Monsieur Aubert's portfolios, or gazed at that famous caricature-shop window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted with the exterior of Monsieur Delaporte's little emporium in the Burlington Arcade, need not be told how excellent the productions of all these artists are in their genre.We get in these engravings the loisirs of men of genius, not the finikin performances of labored mediocrity, as with us: all these artists are good painters, as well as good designers; a design from them is worth a whole gross of Books of Beauty; and if we might raise a humble supplication to the artists in our own country of similar merit--to such men as Leslie, Maclise, Herbert, Cattermole, and others--it would be, that they should, after the example of their French brethren and of the English landscape painters, take chalk in hand, produce their own copies of their own sketches, and never more draw a single "Forsaken One,""Rejected One," "Dejected One" at the entreaty of any publisher or for the pages of any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or Loveliness whatever.
Can there be a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fete-day; not to look so much at the pictures as at the lookers-on? Thousands of the poorer classes are there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling grisettes, smart dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed wondering faces, marching together in little companies of six or seven, and stopping every now and then at Napoleon or Leonidas as they appear in proper vulgar heroics in the pictures of David or Gros.The taste of these people will hardly be approved by the connoisseur, but they have A taste for art.Can the same be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable and amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday paper? So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so well has it succeeded in materializing and binding down to the earth the imagination of men, for which God has made another world (which certain statesmen take but too little into account)--that fair and beautiful world of heart, in which there CAN be nothing selfish or sordid, of which Dulness has forgotten the existence, and which Bigotry has endeavored to shut out from sight--"On a banni les demons et les fees, Le raisonner tristement s'accredite:
On court, helas! apres la verite:
Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son merite!"