"M.

Mignard does them best," said Le Poussin not long before, with lofty good nature, "though his heads are all paint, without force or character." To Mignard succeeded Rigaud as portrait painter, worthy to preserve the features of Bossuet and Fenelon.

The unity of organization, the brilliancy of style, the imposing majesty which the king's taste had everywhere stamped about him upon art as well as upon literature, were by this time beginning to decay simultaneously with the old age of Louis XIV., with the reverses of his arms, and the increasing gloominess of his court; the artists who had illustrated his reign were dying one after another, as well as the orators and the poets; the sculptor James Sarazin had been gone some time; Puget and the Anguiers were dead, as well as Mansard, Perrault, and Le Notre; Girardon had but a few months to live; only Coysevox was destined to survive the king, whose statue he had many a time moulded.

The great age was disappearing slowly and sadly, throwing out to the last some noble gleams, like the aged king who had constantly served as its centre and guide, like olden France, which he had crowned with its last and its most splendid wreath.
END OF VOL.

V..