The whole subject is certainly extremely fascinating.  The Renaissance had for its object the development of great personalities.  The perfect freedom of the temperament in matters of art, the perfect freedom of the intellect in intellectual matters, the full development of the individual, were the things it aimed at.  As we study its history we find it full of great anarchies.  It solved no political or social problems; it did not seek to solve them.  The ideal of the ‘Grand Siecle,’ and of Richelieu, in whom the forces of that great age were incarnate, was different.  The ideas of citizenship, of the building up of a great nation, of the centralisation of forces, of collective action, of ethnic unity of purpose, came before the world.  It was inevitable that they should have done so, and Lady Dilke, with her keen historic sense and her wonderful power of grouping facts, has told us the story of their struggle and their victory.  Her book is, from every point of view, a most remarkable work.  Her style is almost French in its clearness, its sobriety, its fine and, at times, ascetic simplicity.  The whole ground-plan and intellectual-conception is admirable.

It is, of course, easy to see how much Art lost by having a new mission forced upon her.  The creation of a formal tradition upon classical lines is never without its danger, and it is sad to find the provincial towns of France, once so varied and individual in artistic expression, writing to Paris for designs and advice.  And yet, through Colbert’s great centralising scheme of State supervision and State aid, France was the one country in Europe, and has remained the one country in Europe, where the arts are not divorced from industry.  The Academy of Painting and Sculpture and the School of Architecture were not, to quote Lady Dilke’s words, called into being in order that royal palaces should be raised surpassing all others in magnificence: 

Bievrebache and the Savonnerie were not established only that such palaces should be furnished more sumptuously than those of an Eastern fairy-tale.  Colbert did not care chiefly to inquire, when organising art administration, what were the institutions best fitted to foster the proper interests of art; he asked, in the first place, what would most contribute to swell the national importance.  Even so, in surrounding the King with the treasures of luxury, his object was twofold—­their possession should, indeed, illustrate the Crown, but should also be a unique source of advantage to the people.  Glass-workers were brought from Venice, and lace-makers from Flanders, that they might yield to France the secrets of their skill.  Palaces and public buildings were to afford commissions for French artists, and a means of technical and artistic education for all those employed upon them.  The royal collections were but a further instrument in educating the taste and increasing the knowledge of the working classes.  The costly factories of the Savonnerie