teenth Century.

Its great work was done. It had lifted up an art which through
inflation or barrenness Brussels had let train on the ground like a
fallen flag, and it had given to France the glory of acquiring the
highest period of perfection.

To France came the inspiration of gathering the industry under the
paternal care of the government, of relieving it from the exigencies
of private enterprise which must of necessity fluctuate, of keeping
the art in dignified prosperity, and of devoting to its uses the
highest talent of both art and industry.

The Revolution and the Directory both hesitated to kill an institution
that had brought such glory to France, that had placed her above all
the world in tapestry producing. But what deliberate intent did not
accomplish, came near being a fact through scant rations. Operators at
the Gobelins were irregularly paid, and the public purse found onerous
the burden of support.

But with the coming of Napoleon the personal note was struck again. A
man was at the head, a man whose ambition invaded even the field of
decoration. The Emperor would not be in the least degree inferior in
splendour to the most magnificent of the hereditary kings of France.
The Gobelins had been their glory, it should add to his.

Louis David was the painter of the court, he whose head was ever
turned over his shoulder toward ancient Greece and Rome, who not only
preferred that source of inspiration, but who realised the flattery
implied to the Emperor by using the designs of the countries he had
conquered. It was a graceful reminder of the trophies of war.

So David not only painted Josephine as a lady of Pompeii elongated on
a Greek lounge, but he set the classic style for the Gobelins factory
when Napoleon gave to the looms his imperial patronage. It was David
who had found favour with Revolutionary France by his untiring efforts
to produce a style differing fundamentally from the style of kings,
when kings and their ways were unpopular. Technical exactness, with
classic motives, characterises his decorative work for the Gobelins.

The Emperor was hot for throne-room fittings that spoke only of
himself and of the empire he had built. David made the designs,
beautiful, chaste, as his invention ever was, and dotted them with the
inevitable bees and eagles. Percier, the artist, helped with the
painting, but the throne itself was David's and shows his talent in
the floating Victory of the back and t