Chapter 20 - Page 2

the
order of Richelieu. With these objects the interest of
the Capitol was exhausted. The building, indeed,
has not the grandeur of its name, which is a sort
of promise that the visitor will find some sensible
embodiment of the old Roman tradition that once
flourished in this part of France. It is inferior in
impressiveness to the other three famous Capitols of
the modern world, - that of Rome (if I may call the
present structure modern) and those of Washington
and Albany!

The only Roman remains at Toulouse are to be
found in the museum, - a very interesting establish-
ment, which I was condemned to see as imperfectly
as I had seen the Capitol. It was being rearranged;
and the gallery of paintings, which is the least in-
teresting feature, was the only part that was not
upside-down. The pictures are mainly of the mo-
dern French school, and I remember nothing but a
powerful, though disagreeable specimen of Henner,
who paints the human body, and paints it so well,
with a brush dipped in blackness; and, placed among
the paintings, a bronze replica of the charming young
David of Mercie. These things have been set out in
the church of an old monastery, long since suppressed,
and the rest of the collection occupies the cloisters.
These are two in number, - a small one, which you
enter first from the street, and a very vast and ele-
gant one beyond it, which with its light Gothic arches
and slim columns (of the fourteenth century), its broad
walk its little garden, with old tombs and statues in
the centre, is by far the most picturesque, the most
sketchable, spot in Toulouse. It must be doubly so
when the Roman busts, inscriptions, slabs and sarco-
phagi, are ranged along the walls; it must indeed (to
compare small things with great, and as the judicious
Murray remarks) bear a certain resemblance to the
Campo Santo at Pisa. But these things are absent
now; the cloister is a litter of confusion, and its trea-
sures have been stowed away, confusedly, in sundry
inaccessible rooms. The custodian attempted to con-
sole me by telling me that when they are exhibited
again it will be on a scientific basis, and with an
order and regularity of which they were formerly
innocent. But I was not consoled. I wanted simply
the spectacle, the picture, and I didn't care in the
least for the classification. Old Roman fragments, ex-
posed to light in the open air, under a southern sky,
in a quadrangle round a garden, have an immortal
charm simply in their general effect; and the charm
is all the greater when the soil of the very place has
yielded them up.