antique tower of Notre Dame, here was the site of the Tour de Nesle, that
legend of crime wrought in stone; gracefully looked the bridges as they
spanned the swollen current of the river; cheerfully lay the sunshine on
quay and parapet; it was a scene where the glow of nature and the shadows
of history unite to lend a charm to the panorama of modern civilization.
And turning the gaze within, how calm and refreshing seemed the long and
high vistas of the gallery; how happy the artists at their easels;--girls
with their frugal dinners in a basket on the pavement, copying a Flemish
scene; youths drawing intently some head of an old master; veterans of the
palette reproducing the tints born under Venetian skies; and groups
standing in silent admiration before some exquisite gem or wonderful
conception. 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 _fêtes_, 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