Note 127 — LECTURE IX. THE DIFFERENT ARTS.

I have not myself had the good fortune to hear the religious music of the Vatican. Therefore, I shall let a competent judge, M. Quatremère de Quincy, speak, Considérations Morales sur les Destination des Ouvrages de l'Art, Paris, 1815, p. 98: "Let one call to mind those chants so simple and so touching, that terminate at Rome the funeral solemnities of those three days which the Church particularly devotes to the expression of its grief, in the last week of Lent. In that nave where the genius of Michael Angelo has embraced the duration of ages, from the wonders of creation to the last judgment that must destroy its works, are celebrated, in the presence of the Roman pontiff, those nocturnal ceremonies whose rites, symbols, and plaintive liturgies seem to be so many figures of the mystery of grief to which they are consecrated. The light decreasing by degrees, at the termination of each psalm, you would say that a funeral veil is extended little by little over those religious vaults. Soon the doubtful light of the last lamp allows you to perceive nothing but Christ in the distance, in the midst of clouds, pronouncing his judgments, and some angel executors of his behests. Then, at the bottom of a tribune interdicted to the regard of the profane, is heard the psalm of the penitent king, to which three of the greatest masters of the art have added the modulations of a simple and pathetic chant. No instrument is mingled with those accents. Simple harmonies of voice execute that music; but these voices seem to be those of angels, and their effect penetrates the depths of the soul."

We have cited this beautiful passage—and we could have cited many others, even superior to it—of a man now forgotten, and almost always misunderstood, but whom posterity will put in his place. Let us indicate, at least, the last pages of the same production, on the necessity of leaving the works of art in the place for which they were made, for example, the portrait of Mlle. de Vallière in the Madeleine aux Carmélites, instead of transferring it to, and exposing it in the apartments of Versailles, "the only place in the world," eloquently says M. Quatremère, "which never should have seen it."