His taste is often singularly false;it is the taste of the early years of the present century,the period that produced clocks surmounted with sentimental "subjects."Stendhal does not admire these clocks,but he almost does.He admires Domenichino and Guercino,and prizes the Bolognese school of painters because they "spoke to the soul."He is a votary of the new classic,is fond of tall,squire,regular buildings,and thinks Nantes,for instance,full of the "air noble."It was a pleasure to me to reflect that fiveandforty years ago he had alighted in that city,at the very inn in which I spent a night,and which looks down on the Place Graslin and the theatre.The hotel that was the best in 1837appears to be the best today.On the subject of Touraine,Stendhal is extremely refreshing;he finds the scenery meagre and much overrated,and proclaims his opinion with perfect frankness.He does,however,scant justice to the banks of the Loire;his want of appreciation of the picturesque want of the sketcher's sense causes him to miss half the charm of a landscape which is nothing if not "quiet,"as a painter would say,and of which the felicities reveal themselves only to waiting eyes.He even despises the Indre,the river of Madame Sand.The "Memoires d'un Touriste"are written in the character of a commercial traveller,and the author has nothing to say about Chenonceaux or Chambord,or indeed about any of the chateaux of that part of France;his system being to talk only of the large towns,where he may be supposed to find a market for his goods.It was his ambition to pass for an ironmonger.But in the large towns he is usually excellent company,though as discursive as Sterne,and strangely indifferent,for a man of imagination,to those superficial aspects of things which the poor pages now before the reader are mainly an attempt to render.It is his conviction that Alfieri,at Florence,bored the Countess of Albany terribly;and he adds that the famous Gallophobe died of jealousy of the little painter from Montpellier.The Countess of Albany left her property to Fabre;and Isuppose some of the pieces in the museum of his native town used to hang in the sunny saloons of that fine old palace on the Arno which is still pointed out to the stranger in Florence as the residence of Alfieri.
The institution has had other benefactors,notably a certain M.Bruyas,who has enriched it with an extraordinary number of portraits of himself.As these,however,are by different hands,some of them distinguished,we may suppose that it was less the model than the artists to whom M.Bruyas wished to give publicity.Easily first are two large specimens of David Teniers,which are incomparable for brilliancy and a glowing perfection of execution.I have a weakness for this singular genius,who combined the delicate with the grovelling,and I have rarely seen richer examples.Scarcely less valuable is a Gerard Dow which hangs near them,though it must rank lower as having kept less of its freshness.This Gerard Dow did me good;for a master is a master,whatever he may paint.It represents a woman paring carrots,while a boy before her exhibits a mousetrap in which he has caught a frightened victim.The goodwife has spread a cloth on the top of a big barrel which serves her as a table,and on this brown,greasy napkin,of which the texture is wonderfully rendered,lie the raw vegetables she is preparing for domestic consumption.