For the rest, it is very easy to see how one may vacillate, and even fall; and on this account I deem it my duty, for the love that I bear to young men, to put them on their guard against the blandishments of praise. Imagine, dear reader, an inexperienced youth of spirit and lively fancy, who in his first essays in art finds it said and written of him that he has surpassed all others, has begun where others ended, that he is born perhaps to outdo the Greeks with his chisel, that Michael Angelo must descend from the pedestal he has occupied for centuries, and other similar stuff, and you will have the secret of his vacillations, even if with God's help he is not led utterly astray. ... We may quote, however, to show that even his moment of triumph was not without alloy, the following anecdote of his early career. While Dupre was still in the workshop of his master the woodcarver, he had executed a crucifix in wood, which the well-known banker Fenzi had ordered as a marriage present for his son. On the occasion of a conversazione at Fenzi's house, when Bartolini was hold ing forth upon the degeneracy of the existing age, its mistaken ideal, etc., and vaunting the superiority of medieval artists, Fenzi, malicioso, produced the crucifix and exhibited it to the eloquent professor. whether the Guelfi or the Ghibellini were getting the best of it. The only sign our sculptor gives of any relations on the popular side, is a passing note that most of the distinguished artists and amateurs who had once frequented his studio were, after the return of the grand duke, and collapse of the premature revolution, refugees, fuoriusciti, as one-half of the notables of Florence continually were in mediæval days. And he had a strong argument in favor of the existing régime in the fact that the return of the grand duke meant pecuniary salvation for himself and his family, although not perhaps in the most desirable way. Not even grand dukes can commission new statues forever; and the blessed work which came to save the discouraged artist from idleness and penury, was more in the way of his early trade than of his ambition. The grand duke employed him to make a casket to hold his daughter's jewels. It was to be excuted in ivory, and was intended to be a valuable work of art; but there was no concealing that it was a great coming down for the sculptor of Cain and Abel. He consoled himself as best he could with the recollection that Baccio d'Agnolo had manufactured cassone, the old oak chests which once bore decora tions so splendid in Florence; and that a little terra cotta of Luca della Robbia was worth more than a hundred thousand wretched statues in marble or bronze. But still the necessity was bitter. After examining it, he said: "The proof that our artists of old were as able as they were modest can be seen in this work. The artist who made it, and who probably was only an intagliatore, would have been able to make a statue such as perhaps no one to-day could." At this Fenzi replied, with a smile, "Excuse me, but you are in error. This is a mod-ist, and after long study and anxiety have ever ern work, and there is the artist who made it," pointing me out, who was just coming in at that moment. Bartolini laid down the "Christ," spoke not a word more, and did not deign even to look at me, although he had praised the work. The period at which he had now arrived was as perilous for art, as were the war ring thoughts in his mind for the artist's work; for these were the troubled times of 1848, when Italy was too much excited by warlike preparations, and the sudden hopes of national emancipation, to spare time any longer for those discussions and dilettanteisms in which all the life remaining in its depressed States had found an outlet. Duprè seems never to have taken any part in politics. He was neither Liberal nor codino, but an artist with his soul absorbed in his work. Giot to, too, it seems probable, cared very little what way the tide of party ran, and went to his shop in peace, indifferent Consider, friendly reader, if you are an art obtained the hoped-for compensations and triumphs, the more deserved because so earnestly labored for, that you now see an artist occupied, on a work difficult indeed, but very far from being of that ideal greatness that his hopes and the applause previously given him have led him to anticipate and desire. The smallness of the work, the material, and even humbleness of my origin. I felt sick at heart, the tools for working it, reminded me of the and then flashed into my mind the fear that Í might be obliged to return to wood-carving. Not that I despised that art I have already said the material is of no account; but I wanted to be a sculptor, and meantime I had nothing to do, and my family looked to me for support. This thought gave me strength, drove away the golden dreams of the future, even the memory of the smiling past, and I worked all day long and part of the night. My poor wife, to the household economy and to the education who was always so good and active, attending of our little girls, comforted me with her simple and affectionate words. Sometimes, returning home with the children, she would stop to see me, and would look at and praise my work, and perhaps, because it reminded | work convalescent, he lingered in Rome her of our early years, would say, Beautiful, this work, is it not, Nanni?" "Yes; do you like it?" "Yes." Wherever this gentle woman appears the scene brightens, and the husband's words glitter with a tender light. No doubt in her heart there was always a sincere conviction that the beautiful work which was within the reach of her modest capacity was really the best, and that Nanni would have been safer had he held fast by it, and eschewed those big shining ghosts in marble, which no woman could be expected to care for. And in the mean time, though it was a humiliation, the beautiful work saved the family, and led to pecuniary comfort at least, if nothing more, The grand duke proved himself a generous master, giving one commission after another; and when Duprè fell ill, charged himself with the costs of an expedition to Naples, which it was hoped would cure him. He set off with his wife and one of his children by vettura in mellow October weather. "That eight days' journey in the sweet company of my wife, the pretty innocent questionings of Beppina about the fields, rivers, and villages, ... the novelty of the life, the pure country air," softened his sufferings and indeed one can well imagine such a jour ney to be sovereign against the malady of fatigue and over-anxiety, which is the modern artist's ill. He was cured at last, after trying all the nostrums possible, by hydropathy, or at least by so much of hydropathy as is involved in the curious process of 'packing." Of Naples he gives a most amusing account, the noise and crowd filling him with "a mixture of wonder and anger." Why couldn't those good people do what they had to do without screaming and throwing themselves about? he asks, as if he had been an Englishman. The Englishman, however, would probably think all Italians the same, and would open his mouth and eyes with astonishment to hear a Tuscan complain of the coachman's whip "cracked within five fingers of his ears; " for foreigners are incapable of perceiving the fine shades of difference between one locality and another in a country which is not their own. As Dupre returned to Florence and his on his way, and thought over all the crude conclusions which he had come to on his former visit. The old vexed question about the ideal and nature had come back to his mind with renewed force, and tormented him till he found a solution. Perhaps, besides the abstract principle, of which it was so important to find some settlement, the question had been again forced upon him in a sharp, practical way by the problem how to represent Saint Antonino, the best archbishop of Florence, whose statue was to be added to those in the Uffizi. The true Saint Antonino was small-hence the diminutive by which he was called-and, it was said by tradition, deformed (the latter, however, unlikely, since the Church was not apt to admit to high dignity any one thus placed at a disadvantage by nature). Was he to be rendered thus in deference to truth, or made into a dignified type of ecclesiastical sanctity in deference to the rules of art?-a question which is extremely difficult, and which we confess ourselves quite unable to solve. Duprè made a little model of what he believed to be the saint's actual appearance, putting as a staff into the hand of the feeble little figure a pen which had been used by the musician Verdi: but in the actual statue he was not so bold. He went about Rome pondering all these things in the leisure of his convalescence, seeing everything more clearly in the light of restored health and courage, but with his mind at first full of hesitation and doubt. E quale è quei, che disvuol ciò che volle The first gleam of light which came to his mind was from the works of Canova, especially the kneeling figure of the Pope Rezzonico in St. Peter's. "The movement and expression of concentrated feeling in this statue, united with a sentiment of imitation so strong, and yet so free from minute and servile detail," made a great impression upon him, especially as he found in the very same monument figures which were entirely servile and mannered, imitated not from nature but from the an tique. From this he came to see that while Canova sought in the highest degree the beautiful, he yet allowed himself to be carried away by the noble force of nature, the power of higher life and sentiment, even when not in perfect harmony with academic rule; and thus attained a very much greater effect than if he had confined himself either to the inspiration of classic art or to that of nature alone: | slow and majestic step, talking with her comin short, that nature was not to be taken panions. A sportsman who spies a hare, a in the mass in all her manifestations, any creditor who meets a debtor, a friend who finds more than art was to be followed with ser- another friend whom he thought to be far away vile subjection; that a careful selection or dead, these give a weak notion of my surmust be exercised in respect to models prise in beholding this girl. My dear reader, I do not in the least exaggerate when I say from the one, and a large interpretation of that I seemed to look on the Venus of Milo. examples in the other. After his careful Her head and neck, which alone were exposed study of all that came under his eyes in to view, were as like that statue as two drops Rome, he made a corresponding survey of water. I was astounded. I turned back to over again, on returning to Florence, of look at her again, and it would have been well everything of importance in art to be for me had I contented myself with this; but found there. "From this examination II wished to see her yet once more. The girl, came to the conclusion that the artists of all time studied their predecessors, and only imitated nature after having studiously selected what was favorable to the idea which first rose in their minds. Henceforward, the way was clear." It helped him a little also in coming to this conclusion, to find that in Rome there was considerably less difference between the living type and that of classic art, than in the models with which he was familiar. As he walked about the streets with his keen artist eye, seeing everything, he found himself nearer to the Apollos and Joves than he had believed possible. One day in particular, his spirit was stirred to wonder and admiration as he strolled along on the other side of Tiber, where dwells the race who are still worthy to represent the old gods. The sketch he gives us is not only very graphic and vivid, but affords an admirable glimpse of the true artist's power of observation, so vigilant, so devoid of self-consciousness, so absorbed in his great pursuit. One day (it was Sunday towards evening) I was, as usual, dreaming about those busts or necks of Minerva and Polymnia, and the Venus of Milo, and I know not how many other antique statues, which seemed to me to give a solemn contradiction to all my little models of pastry that I had left in Florence, and I fixed my eyes on the neck of every woman that I passed. This examination induced me to modify in measure my opinion as to the conventionalism of the necks of the antique statues; and I should have been satisfied, and have changed my mind entirely, even had I not purely by chance gone on into the Trastevere. Here there was a great number of young persons, both male and female,- the men either in the pot-houses, or gathered around the doors, or standing in groups, and the girls in companies of three and four walking up and down the streets of the Longaretta. Among these I saw one who, if she had been made on purpose to prove that the necks of the antique statues were not conventional, could not have here offered a more absolute proof. There were three girls, two small, and one large who was between them. She walked along with a VOL. XLVIII. 2487 LIVING AGE. who had not an idea within a thousand miles of what I was pondering, nor of the corrections that I was formulating on an æsthetical stopped, and, taking the dagger from her hair, opinion of such great importance, suddenly advanced towards me, and with a strong and almost masculine voice said to me, "Well, Mr. Dandy, does your life stink in your nostrils?" I shot off home directly, looking neither to the right nor left; and when I arrived, I told my wife what had happened, and she reproved me gently for making my studies so out of time and place. The discovery of this beautiful head and neck of the antique what a complexion !) led me to consider how style and character, set upon a living girl, (and many other parts of incontestable beauty which we find in the antique statues, and so readily believe to be born of the imagination of the Greek sculptors, are really to be found in nature; and the Greeks only selected them for imitation. But there is still a great deal more to tell did our space permit - many amusing anecdotes and shrewd remarks, as well as the personal history which goes on for a number of prosperous years, and through some overshadowed by those clouds from which scarcely any human life escapes. Into the warmth of domestic love and association, of which he gives us so many delightful pictures, there comes the inevitable chill; and the artist's lament over his young Luiga, Luisina, Gigina, as he calls her in fond diminutives, is as touching as the picture of the united family is admirable. Indeed the light thus thrown upon the simple interior of an unpretending Italian family is one of the most interesting things in the book. We are apt to think that only the Teutonic races appreciate the sanctity of home, for the exquisite reason that the word which expresses it has more meaning to our ears in English and German than in corresponding words in the Latin tongues. From The National Review. THE MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE TOURZEL FOR fifty years the "Memoirs of Madame de Tourzel" have remained a closed book to the world; and now that at last they are brought to light, they could hardly have appeared at a more favorable moment. Those who still entertain this opinion | shrewd employment of his reasoning facul should read Signor Duprè's most interest- ties, without any of that often obscuring ing history. It might, at the same time, influence which much culture gives. Sor afford a chapter to the more prosaic rec- Giovanni sees with his own eyes, not with ords of "self-help," which are so popular, those of other men; and though he has which would much relieve and lighten his Dante at his finger-ends as becomes a those excellent but dull annals of worldly Tuscan, is not disturbed by much booksuccess and prosperity for Sor Giovanni learning besides, or given to reliance upon is essentially a self-made man; and one other people's opinions. Oddly enough, of his chief objects in writing his memoirs the absence of literature almost always is to show the long and sometimes painful gives a freshness to the intelligent spectaprocesses, through praise and censure, tor for the want of which no elegance of through success and unsuccess, by which culture can make up. he came finally to an understanding of the open secret of art. Artists of all classes, not only those who model and those who paint, but men of letters, and especially those of the imaginative branches of literature, may study with advantage his discoveries and the manner in which he makes them discoveries which are at the heart of every fine theory of art. That fact is not truth in an artistic point of view, that genius is not the mere art of imitation, even imitation of reality, still less of precedent; but that true art demands choice and a living inspiration of idea as well as the thorough realization and following out of the actual, Signor Dupre will have done a good work if he makes this principle apparent, not only to the schools of the sculptors, but to those literary workmen in his own country who take the hunchback of Bartolini as their standard, rather than any Apollo, and consider that devotion of truth means a close and almost servile rendering of those terrible facts of existence which it should be the aim of every good man to make impossible. M. Zola and his loathsome school have so great a predominance at present in the light literature of Italy, that it would be well if Signor Duprè's conclusions were written everywhere before the rising genius of that noble country in letters of gold. every How our sculptor went to England, to Paris, to Vienna, no longer as a strug gling artist, but as professor in his turn and universally acknowledged authorityhow his lively observation noted thing, but sometimes with amusing mis. takes and want of comprehension, as in a certain extraordinary scene at the Crystal Palace, which, however, was explained to him by a young rogue of a cicerone, who probably never expected his play upon the credulous foreigner to get into print - must be read in the book itself. It is an admirable transcript of the mind of an intelligent and clear-headed observer, trained to the use of his eyes, and to the When, last August, the grave closed over the last descendant of the Legitimist line, the principles for which he sacrificed a kingdom, with all the traditions of the old French monarchy, were buried with him. As they are about to disappear from our sight, these memoirs lift the pall which conceals them; and we gaze for the last time upon the face of royal France. Here we find Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, the royal children, the saintly Princess Elizabeth, living again-as, indeed, they have lived ever since their barbarous death, whether it be on the page of the historian, the lips of the orator, or the glowing canvas of the artist. Brought near to us by their personal intimacy with the writer, standing out distinctly defined against the dark clouds of the Revolution, which are about to burst in a storm over their heads, we see them once again. More than this. When each successive crisis of their fate had called forth some new display of heroism, when the immediate peril was over, and a temporary respite was gained from the yells of the bloodthirsty mob, Madame de Tourzel was the sole witness of grief, hitherto masked by the self-restraint which became the royal pride of France, even when tottering to its fall, and of a resignation which it is scarcely overstrained to call sublime. As Gouvernante des Enfants de France (1789, 1790, 1791, * Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel, 1792, 1795). Publiés par le Duc des Cars. Paris, 1883. the circle became narrower and narrower | Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, he, in round the hapless group of doomed roy common with many other families of the alty, her apartments became their only noblesse, returned to the court, attracted refuge, herself the only confidant of their by the many excellent qualities of the king, vanishing hopes, and of their too surely and by the acknowledged beauty and grace grounded fears. of the young queen. On these occasions would become manifest to her that deep-rooted love for the unhappy rebellious country, even when it appeared most unlovely, seething with wickedness and steeped in violence and crime -a love which, to the end, remained proof against the bitterest insult, the most cruel persecution, which could see all, and know all, and yet forgive. It is, therefore, no wonder if, after the lapse of nearly a century, memoirs which can give the key to unlock the secret chambers of such a confidence, should be able to inspire the deepest interest, and be almost priceless so far as regards their historical value. Madame de Tourzel was born in 1749. She came of a proud race, one of the ancien noblesse of France, being the fourth daughter of Louis Ferdinand Joseph de Croy, Duc de Havré, Prince et Maréchal du St. Empire, Marquis de Vailly, Comte de Fontenoy. He was killed at the battle of Filingshausen, in 1761. The daughter, Louise Elizabeth Félicité, to whom we are indebted for these interesting memoirs, was married in 1764 to Louis François du Bouchet des Sources, first Marquis de Tourzel, Grand Prévôt de France.* Louis XV. was still on the throne, and, during the remainder of his reign, the Marquis de Tourzel, so far as was consistent with his official duties, held aloof from Versailles; but on the accession of * Madame de Tourzel had five children, four daughters (la Duchesse de Charost, la Comtesse Françoise de St. Aldegonde, la Comtesse Louise de St. Aldegonde, la Comtesse de Bearn. This last. Pauline, was not married at the time of her mother's appointment to the court. She accompained her mother to Versailles, and the Tuileries, and witnessed the horrors of the 10th August, shared the first part of the captivity of the royal family, till she was removed with her mother to the prison of La Force, whence she made a miraculous escape, which is related at full length in the Memoirs, vol. ii. 271. She had one son, the second Marquis de Tourzel, who was in the Royal Guard. To his daughter Madame la Duchesse des Cars, the precious manuscript finally descended as an heirloom, after the extinction of the male line. La Duchesse des Cars died in 1870, and thus the manuscript became the property of M. le Duc des Cars, and it is to this descendant of Madame de Tourzel that we are indebted for its publi cation. The interest of the work is increased by a portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette, a pastel done at her request for Madame de Tourzel, by the painter Kucharsky. The progress of the picture was interrupted by the journey to Varennes, but in 1792 the painter resumed his task, which he was never able to complete. On the 10th of August, hidden behind a door, the picture escaped the fury of the mob, and was recovered three years afterwards by the Marquis de Tourzel. It was long since the throne of France had appeared to such advantage before the eyes of the nation. The annals of the two preceding centuries reveal it under a very different aspect. During the fifteenth century we see it subject to the baneful influence of the house of Medici, which, not content with ruining the Valois dynasty, asserted itself a second time, to drag through the mire the white plume of Henry of Navarre. Throughout the sixteenth century the same story repeats itself, under different names, of long minorities, of the regency of ambitious, intriguing, unscrupulous women; of the evil example of a corrupt court, to be quickly copied by the young kings as they obtained their majority, so as to dim the splendor of the reign of le Grand Monarque, and to be afterwards transmitted without splendor to his successor. But now above this dark atmosphere of ambition, intrigue, and vice, there shone the pure light of a young queen, in the first splendor of her beauty, in all the freshness of her innocent youth, inspired by and inspiring the tenderest domestic affection, with the love of God in her heart, and the love of her people in her eyes. In such a presence even the troublesome functions of grand prévôt de France - discharged with austere exactitude by the Marquis de Tourzel, in his hereditary office must have lost their stiffness, and, certainly, no rigid rule of etiquette hindered the expression of the most tender solicitude on the part of the king and queen, when he met with an accident which proved fatal while in attendance upon the king at Fontainebleau, in the month of November, 1786. The king stretched a point in immedi ately appointing the son-though still a minor- to the emoluments of the vacant office; and the young Marquis de Tourzel showed his gratitude by remaining faithful at his post to the last. After the death of her husband in 1786, Madame de Tourzel retired from the Court; nor would she voluntarily have abandoned the seclusion, but circumstances left her no choice. The fair promise of the early part of the reign of Louis XVI. had clouded over, events were marching rapidly forwards to their fatal conclusion, and already one stage of |