vey no adequate idea of the objects which are
described. There is nothing more uninteresting than the catalogue of
pictures which are to be found in the works of many modern travellers;
nor any thing in general more ridiculous than the ravings of admiration
with which this catalogue is described, and with which the reader in
general is little disposed to sympathise. Without attempting,
therefore, to enumerate the great works which were there to be met with,
we shall confine ourselves to a simpler object, to the delineation of
the _general character_ by which the different schools of painting are
distinguished, and the great features in which they all differ from the
sculpture of ancient times. For the justice of these observations, we
must of course appeal to those who have examined this great collection;
and in the prosecution of them, we pretend to nothing more than the
simple account of the feelings which, we are persuaded, must have
occurred to all those who have viewed it without any knowledge of the
rules which art has established, or the more despicable principles which
connoisseurs have maintained.

For an attempt of this kind, the Louvre presented, singular advantages,
from the unparalleled collection of paintings of every school and
description which was there to be met with, and the facility with which
you could trace the progress of the art from its first beginning to the
period of its greatest perfection. And it is in this view that the
collection of these works into one museum, however much to be deplored
as the work of unprincipled ambition, and however much it may have
diminished the impression which particular objects, from the influence
of association, produced in their native place, was yet calculated, we
conceive, to produce the greatest of all improvements in the progress of
the art, by divesting particular schools and particular works of the
unbounded influence which the effect of early association, or the
prejudices of national feeling, have given them in their original
situation, and placing them where their real nature is to be judged of
by a more extended circle, and subjected to the examination of more
impartial sentiments.

The character of every school of painting has been determined by some
peculiar circumstances under which that school first originated, which
have contributed to form its greatest excellencies, and been the real
source of its principal defects; and it has unfortunately hap