Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> He thought he could not better introduce this question to their Lordships than by asking the greater number of them to recall to mind what they had seen in the galleries of the Palace of Versailles. Many among their Lordships must there have felt no small degree of weariness and disgust on passing through an almost interminable line of tawdry battle scenes and Court pageants of the largest dimensions. Not a few of these battle scenes would no doubt recall the words of a modern author who had described another such huge picture in England as “an acre of spoiled canvas”. Many such acres of spoiled canvas presented themselves upon the walls of Versailles; but their Lordships would also recollect the great pleasure and as it were refreshment with which they passed from these tawdry battle pieces and Court pageants into a gallery of much smaller dimensions and much less gorgeous decorations containing excellent contemporary portraits of celebrities in French history. He thought few Englishmen could have been at Versailles without wishing that in our own country while the errors of the larger galleries should be avoided some attempt should be made not only to emulate but to extend the example set in the smaller one.