The gallery of the Louvre recalls the finest palaces of Italy, and equals, in value and interest, any gallery in the world. Venice is far richer in Titian's pictures, and Rome and Florence keep the greatest works of Raphael and Michael Angelo. To understand Quintin Matsys and Rubens, you must go to Antwerp, where their finest productions remain. But the Louvre has an unsurpassed variety and interest, and exhibits not a few of the chief treasures of ancient and modern art. Among these are some of the masterpieces of Titian, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, the Conception of Murillo, Paul Veronese's great picture of the marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the ever-famous Venus of Milo.
In one of the principal galleries of Venice, I was once shown a large picture by the French artist David. I do not remember much about its merits, but, on asking how it came there, I was told that its place had formerly been occupied by a famous picture by Paul Veronese. Napoleon I., it will be remembered, robbed the galleries of Italy of many of their finest pictures. After his downfall, most of these stolen treasures were restored to their rightful owners; but the French never gave up the Paul Veronese picture, which was this very one that now hangs in the Louvre, where its vivid coloring and rich grouping look like a piece of Venice, bright and glorious like herself.
The student of art, returning from Italy, is possessed with the mediæval gloom and glory which there have filled his eyes and his imagination. With a sigh, looking toward our Western world, so rich in action, so poor as yet in art, he pauses here in surprise, to view a cosmopolitan palace of her splendors. It consoles him to think that the Beautiful has made so brave a stand upon the nearer borders of the Seine. Encouraged by the noble record of French achievement, he carries with him across the ocean the traditions of Jerome, of Rosa Bonheur, of Horace Vernet.
In historical monuments, Paris is rich indeed. The oldest of these that I remember was the Temple,--the ancient stronghold of the Knights Templar, who were cruelly extirpated in the year 1307. It was a large, circular building, occupied, when I visited it, as a place for the sale of second-hand commodities. I remember making purchases of lace within its walls which were nearly black with age. You will remember that Louis XVI. and his family were confined here for some time, and that here took place the sad parting between the King and the dear ones he was never to see again. I will subjoin a brief extract from the diary of my grandfather, Col. Samuel Ward, of the Revolutionary War, who was in Paris at the time of the King's execution:--