earch through the pictures of the epoch in
the Louvre, or linger at Sans Souci in Potsdam--where Frederick filled
his house with sculptured duchesses in classical costume playing
at Diana, and covered his walls with Watteaus and his ceilings with
decorations by Pesne, a less worthy Frenchman--and remain in complete
ignorance of hungry Jacques, who, with pike-staff and guillotine, was
so soon to change all that and usher in the period of the Revolution,
Before the evil day dawned for the gilded gentry of France, however,
the British colonies in America, influenced by the teachings of the
precursors of the French Revolution, and aided by their isolation,
were to establish their independence.

[Illustration: JACQUES LOUIS DAVID AS A YOUNG MAN. FROM A PAINTING BY
HIMSELF.

The exact date of this picture is unknown; but it was, presumably,
painted before 1775, when David, having received the Prix de Rome,
went to Italy for the first time. It was given to the Louvre, where it
now is, by the painter Eugene Isabey in 1852; David had presented it
to the elder Isabey, also a painter.]

It was undoubtedly at this time, when revolt was in the air and man
was preoccupied with his primal right to liberty of existence, that
art was given the bad name of a luxury. Until its long prostitution
throughout the seventeenth century, its mission had been noble; but
now, coincident to the fall of the old _regime_, the people, from an
ignorance which was more their misfortune than their fault, confounded
art with luxuries more than questionable, in which their whilom
superiors had indulged while they lacked bread. With the curious
assumption of Spartan virtue which rings with an almost convincing
sound of true metal through so many of the resolutions passed by the
National Convention of France, in the days following the holocaust of
the Reign of Terror, there was serious debate as to whether pictures
and statues were to be permitted to exist or their production
encouraged.

This debate must have fallen strangely on the ears of one of the
members of the Convention, who had already made his power as an artist
felt, and who was from that time for more than forty years to be the
directing influence, not only of French art, but of painting on the
Continent in general. This man, Jacques Louis David, in point of fact
was soon practically to demonstrate to his colleagues that art had
as its mission other aims than those followed by the painters of