pened, that
the unbounded admiration for the great production of these schools has
everywhere formed the national taste, and tended to perpetuate their
errors, when the progress of society would otherwise have led to their
earlier abandonment. It deserves well to be considered, therefore,
whether the restoration of these monuments of art to their original
situations, while it must unquestionably enhance the veneration with
which they will severally be regarded, may not perpetuate the defects
which particular circumstances have stamped on their school of
composition; and whether the continuance of them in one vast collection,
however fatal to the implicit veneration for the works of antiquity, was
not calculated, by the comparison of their excellencies and the
exhibition of their defects, to form a new school, possessed of a more
general character, and adapted for the admiration of a more unbiassed
public. It is in the despotic reign of arbitrary governments, if we may
be allowed, in a discussion on matters of taste, to borrow an
illustration from politics, that the influence of ancient error, and the
power of ancient prejudice, is most unbounded; but it is in the
unbiassed discussion which distinguishes a free state, that the
influence of prejudice is forgotten, and truth emerges from the
collision of opposite opinions. However this may be, it will not, it is
hoped, be deemed an useless attempt, if we now endeavour to state, in a
few words, the impression which was produced by this great collection of
the works of art, which has been felt, we doubt not, by all who have
viewed it with untutored eyes, but has not hitherto been described by
those so much better able to do justice to it than ourselves.

The first hall of the Louvre in the Picture Gallery is filled with
paintings of the French school. The principal artists whose works are
here exhibited are, Le Brun, Gaspar and Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain,
Vernet, and the modern painters Gerard and David. The general character
of the school of French historical painting, is the expression of
_passion and violent emotion_. The colouring is for the most part
brilliant; the canvas crowded with figures, and the incident selected,
that in which the painter might have the best opportunity of displaying
his knowledge of the human frame, or the varied expression of the human
countenance. In the pictures of the modern school of French painting,
this peculiarity is pushed to an ex