( Originally Published 1910 )

DURING the reign of Louis XV., which followed, the newly formulated architectural laws were not forgotten or violated, but were expanded and played with so as to give considerably wider latitude in forms. The life of the court during Louis XV.'s time was not admirable. The king had all the arrogance of his father without his capacity for constructive statesmanship. The new Louis was a good deal of a weakling, and his interest in the pleasures of life seems greatly to have outweighed his ambition as a ruler. The weakness and vices of the monarch were promptly imitated by his courtiers and very plainly reflected in the architecture, which became lavish and ornate rococco, the very extreme of over-rich luxuriance, the only salvation being the fundamental regard for the supporting lines of proportion which descended from the previous period and could not at once be overthrown. Louis XV. reigned for half a century, and his reckless disregard for the needs of his people precipitated that terrific descent which ended in the demolition of the French monarchy.

His son, Louis XVI., was the weak son of a weak father, but he suffered for the sins of his father rather than for his own inability to grasp the immensely difficult situation he had fallen heir to. He was merely stupid; not like his father, who was also vicious.

During the reign of the fifteenth Louis there was license without restraint, and in the reign that followed a reaction came which expressed its protest in the architecture, giving us restraint without license.

The aristocratic and sensitive Marie Antoinette, Queen of the last Louis of the old regime, was a potent influence in the marked change of style this brought about. As she cleansed the court life of much of its grossness, so the overornamentation of the preceding reign disappeared in a refinement of the Renaissance style that went even beyond the restraint of Louis XIV.'s time. An example is the Petit Trianon in the garden of Versailles, which Marie Antoinette built that she might play at pastoral house-keeping. This building is a carefully studied return to the classic laws, the ornamentation, while conforming to the new school, being made secondary in importance to the structural lines. This in itself seems to be the instinctive response to any demand for greater refinement.

The beheading of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette was the end, not only of the royal family, but of the second great revolution. The first, you remember, was religious. The second was political. Its primary cause was the arrogance and selfishness of the nobles and the king. The financial condition of the kingdom was terrible. The poor toiled and suffered to meet the taxes and to fill the pockets of their recklessly extravagant overlords much as they had done in the Dark Ages. Revolution broke out, and there was no power which could control it, either by force or by the resolute correction of the evils that had caused it. So France fell from her high estate among the nations. She became a lesser power. The old aristocracy—which, bad as it had been, was a real aristocracy --the old traditions were swept away. Many of them, indeed, could well face oblivion, but the fine arts must suffer for a time.

With all its ferocious brutality, the French Revolution was a step forward in the march of civilization toward political freedom. It was, in fact, an inevitable result of the selfishness of the Bourbons and the nobility, who had all the vices and few of the virtues of their ancestors, the old feudal lords.

It is not to be expected that so destructive a change would immediately bear fine fruits in architecture, for it was not the inspiration of a new ideal that brought it about, but a ferocious revolt against unbearable conditions. If the first empire could have continued under strong leaders for the ensuing century, something of greatness might have been expected; but on the contrary, as we know, France went from one unsettled rule to another without one dominating personality except Napoleon's, until in 1871 she became a republic and settled down to the active national life she is now leading.

With the disappearance of the old aristocracy a new one came into existence. It consisted of Napoleon's favorites—men who, for the most part, had made quickly the wealth and position which gave them the name of nouveaux riches. Wanting as much of the grandeur of royalty as they could get, and a little more than the old nobility had, they sought to outdo the elegance of the Bourbon reigns. The chief of the few remaining architects of the Renaissance, Percier and Fontaine, were called upon to do honor to the mushroom nobility and to the emperor, and out of the shreds and patches of the Renaissance in France and in Rome they evolved the style called Empire.

His nouveau riche nobility desired to please or flatter Napoleon, and there must have been much straining of artistic imaginations to fit decorative forms to this cold and austere big little man whose character was so strongly in contrast with his kingly and pleasure-loving predecessors. In some of the early work there are indications of Egyptian decorative forms, in flattering recognition of his expedition into Africa, but these were incongruous and disappeared. The Empire style which was evolved was comparatively cold and formal as to design, though supremely rich in color and texture. There is, for instance, much use of mahogany with flush panels, crotch-veneered, with the natural wood markings, and with applied ornaments of gold and brass. None of it rings true except to the curious social condition of the times, a condition dominated by a single individual who was least of anything an artist. This style shows the Greek forms in its methods of decoration and ornamentation.

The very obvious and unskilful sort of personal flattery involved in the creation of this style is here seen for the first time, but it finds an odd contemporary counterpart in our own country in the coarse and unstudied imitation of "Empire" undertaken during the first quarter of the last century as a tribute to the martial and financial assistance France at that time gave the United States. Examples are still in existence among the old houses of our sea-coast cities.

After Napoleon came the Restoration with the three successive kings: Louis XVIII., brother of Louis XVI., Charles X., and Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans. These men were unfitted in temperament, training, or mental equipment for ruling anything, and it is not to be expected that they should make any impression on the great country of France, except to keep it by their weakness and cowardice in a state of continual and paralyzing uncertainty. Napoleon III., with his second Empire, was little if any better. During all this time architecture was practically non-existent. Good work could not be done under such unsettled and dispirited conditions. The only development of any sort was a sporadic classic revival called "Neo-Grec," which had a brief and comparatively insignificant existence in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

This entire term of years, from the overthrow of Napoleon in 1815 to the end of the Second Empire in 1871, might be called appropriately the black-walnut-andslippery-hair-cloth period, giving us the wax-fruit-andmarble-top style, the abominations of which are familiar to us on account of its acceptance in this country. Over this period in France I prefer to draw a veil. Its significance is wholly negative, and it merely gives me the opportunity to say once again that good and lasting architectural style cannot develop without either a powerful and inspiring personality at the head of the state, a strong idealism, or a great movement of national pride.

Since the beginning of the present republic, France has made much real progress in the arts and sciences, continuing, as in the old days, to supply the entire world with intellectual ideas. This remarkable nation still holds the primacy in the world of intellect discovered by her at the beginning of the Renaissance period. The architectural laws have been classified, and the reasons why in design and composition are scientifically stated and recognized as never before, until today there are few schools in the world equal to the French School of Fine Arts. There are strong indications of a new rise toward a complete and recognized type, unless further disturbances should destroy the present efficient government by the people for the good of the nation.

Before leaving France and the Renaissance I want you to take with me a unique bird's-eye view of the whole Renaissance period. It is offered in the Louvre of Paris. This magnificent building, or group of buildings, as it now stands, has been under construction or reconstruction from the time of Francis I. (1546), and every phase of Renaissance development is recorded in its walls. A volume might easily be written with this building as the theme, and the story would be of unflagging interest. We shall, however, very briefly sketch its history, bearing in mind that this is to be in the nature of a recapitulation of our studies of Renaissance progress (Fig. 94).

The original Louvre was built during the thirteenth century under Philip Augustus. Its architecture was Military Gothic, for it was, in fact, a fortress and prison, with many round towers and tiny windows and large and undecorated wall surfaces. Some improvements and embellishments were added by Raimond du Temple, architect for Charles V., in 1364; but the entire period of the Flamboyant left the gloomy old castle practically untouched.

When Francis I. returned from his captivity in Madrid to take up his kingly residence in Paris, he found the dismal palace quite unsuited to the requirements of entertaining other monarchs in royal splendor, and its architecture quite out of fashion. He planned the reconstruction of the entire building, and began the west wing. This had the effect of bringing architects and artists of all sorts from Italy to Paris, among them the great Benvenuto Cellini, and the art of the ancients as interpreted by the Italians became the fashion. In 1546 Francis appointed Pierre Lescot, a man of the new school, architect of the Louvre, and this began the real work of reconstruction.

Francis died only a few months after the appointment of Lescot, one of the deaths we regret most in the history of architecture. His buildings at Blois and Chambord have such delicacy and charm, strongly suggesting the joy of both architect and builder in the new method of expression, and the housing of a witty and brilliant court, that we wish he had had time to fulfil his desire for a new Louvre. What different type might have been developed if this enlightened monarch had been allowed to play out the game with Lescot in the heart of the gay French capital we cannot guess, but we feel sure it would have been very well worth while. As it was, Francis had only the glory of initiating the plan, and his successor, Henry II., carried on the work with Lescot, completing the west wing.

Under Henry III., Metezeau was appointed architect, in 1578, and under Henry IV., Ducerceau followed him. These men built the little gallery and the grand gallery which run along the banks of the Seine from the southwest corner of the Louvre proper toward the Tuileries.

Louis XIII., with Le Mercier as architect, began, in 1624, on the west wing, continuing it to the northwest corner and finishing part of the north wing. Le Mercier was succeeded by Le Vau in 1660, under Louis XIV., and completed the square. Louis, with Perrault, later widened the east and south wings covering the facades already built. Perrault's tame colonnade on the east was constructed on ground formerly occupied by the Hotel de Bourbon.

During the first empire Percier and Fontaine, architects for the new regime, built the wing on the Rue de Rivoli from the Tuileries, beginning in 18o6, and this was completed to the Louvre proper under Napoleon III. by Visconti and Lefeul in 1852.