Among all the "most
Christian kings" of the house of Bourbon who had preceded him for
five hundred years, history shows no such obedience to the
religious and moral sense of the nation. Catharine de' Medici and
her sons, plunging the nation into the great wars of religion,
never showed any such feeling; Louis XIV, revoking the Edict of
Nantes for the glory of God, and bringing the nation to sorrow
during many generations, never dreamed of making the construction
of his palaces and public buildings wait upon the demands of
charity. Louis XV, so subservient to the Church in all things,
never betrayed the slightest consciousness that, while making
enormous expenditures to gratify his own and the national
vanity, he ought to carry on works, _pari passu_, for charity. Nor
did the French nation, at those periods when it was most largely
under the control of theological considerations, seem to have any
inkling of the idea that nation or monarch should make provision
for relief from human suffering, to justify provision for the
sumptuous enjoyment of art: it was reserved for the second half
of the nineteenth century to develop this feeling so strongly,
though quietly, that Napoleon III, notoriously an unbeliever in all
orthodoxy, was obliged to recognise it and to set this great example.
Pages:
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899