Racine’s portrait revives the long controversy between the classic and romantic schools; that of La Bruy re the art of character-painting now one of the highest functions of popular literature; that of Bossuet the pulpit eloquence of France and the persecution of Fenelon, and that of Saint Cyr the Jansenist discussion.  A blank like that which designates the place of Marino Faliero in the Ducal palace at Venice, is left here for Le Sage, as the nativity of the author of Gil Blas is yet disputed.  We look at Rousseau to revert to the social reforms, of which he was the pioneer; at La Place to realize the achievements of the exact sciences, and at St. Pierre to remember the poetry of nature.  Voltaire’s likeness is not labelled for the same reason that there is no name on the tomb of Ney; both are too well known to require announcement.  How incongruous become the associations as we proceed; old Pere la Chaise cheek by jowl with the American Presidents; Cagliostro, who died before the word his career incarnated had become indispensable to the English tongue—­the apotheosis of humbug; Marmontel, dear to our novitiate as royal leaders; and near to the original Pamela; Chateaubriand’s ancestor the Marshal; Bisson going below to ignite the magazine, rather than “give up the ship;” and the battered war dog, with a single eye and leg, beneath whose fragmentary portrait is inscribed that Mars left him only a heart.

It is with singular interest that we look upon the authentic resemblance of persons with whose minds and career literature has made us familiar, and compare what we have imagined of their appearance with the reality.  Of such characters as Gluck, Klopstock and Madame Le Brun, whose ministry of art has excited a vague delight, we may have formed no very distinct image; but associated as is the name of Madame Roland with courage, suffering and affliction, we naturally expect a more dignified and less vivacious expression than here meets us, until we remember the earlier development of her rare and sympathetic intelligence.  Count Mirabeau has a look of mildness and sang froid instead of the earnestness we fancied.  Who would have supposed the fair assassin of Marat such a thin, delicate and spirituelle blonde?  The sensuous face of George IV. and the tragic one of Charles I., in the ever recurring Vandyke, with Sheridan’s confident, handsome and genial physiognomy, seem grouped to make more elevated, by comparison, the noble abstraction of Flaxman.  Talleyrand resembles a keen, selfish, humorous and gentlemanly man of the world, in an unexceptionable white wig.  Richelieu is piquant and Madame de Stael impassioned and Amazonian.  What decadence even in the warlike notabilities is hinted by glancing from Soult to Oudinot!  I thought of the French fleet in the memorable storm off Newport, as I recognized the portrait of the Count d’Estaing; and realized anew the military instinct of the nation in the preponderance of battle-scenes and heroes, and marked the interest with which groups of soldiers lingered and talked before them.