and do not wish to obtain any pecuniary advantage from it."

The Academy of Sciences had already for many years had sittings in one of
the rooms of the king's library. Like the French Academy, it had owed
its origin to private meetings at which Descartes, Gassendi, and young
Pascal were accustomed to be present. "There are in the world scholars
of two sorts," said a note sent to Colbert about the formation of the new
Academy. "One give themselves up to science because it is a pleasure to
them: they are content, as the fruit of their labors, with the knowledge
they acquire, and, if they are known, it is only amongst those with whom
they converse unambitiously and for mutual instruction; these are _bona
fide_ scholars, whom it is impossible to do without in a design so great
as that of the _Academie royale_. There are others who cultivate science
only as a field which is to give them sustenance, and, as they see by
experience that great rewards fall only to those who make the most noise
in the world, they apply themselves especially, not to making new
discoveries, for hitherto that has not been recompensed, but to whatever
may bring them into notice; these are scholars of the fashionable world,
and such as one knows best." Colbert had the true scholar's taste; he
had brought Cassini from Italy to take the direction of the new
Observatory; he had ordered surveys for a general map of France; he had
founded the _Journal des Savants;_ literary men, whether Frenchmen or
foreigners, enjoyed the king's bounties. Colbert had even conceived the
plan of a Universal Academy, a veritable forerunner of the Institute.
The arts were not forgotten in this grand project; the academy of
painting and sculpture dated from the regency of Anne of Austria; the
pretensions of the Masters of Arts (maitres is arts), who placed an
interdict upon artists not belonging to their corporation, had driven
Charles Lebrun, himself the son of a Master, to agitate for its
foundation; Colbert added to it the academy of music and the academy of
architecture, and created the French school of painting at Rome. Beside
the palace for a long time past dedicated to this establishment, lived,
for more than thirty-five years, Le Poussin, the first and the greatest
of all the painters of that French school which was beginning to spring
up, whilst the Italian school, though blooming still in talent and
strength, was forgetting more and more every day the nobleness,