Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

not survive for long. It was dismantled in 1816. Its legacy, however, was significant on both
sides of the Channel and the attitude to history that it proposed, narrative, reciprocal, involved in
the ‘manners and customs’ and personalities of the past, was prescient and influential. Jules
Michelet (1798-1874), in his Histoire de la Révolution Française (1847-53) recalled its effect on
himself and his contemporaries:
Que d’âmes ont pris dans ce musée l’étincelle historique, l’intérêt des grands souvenirs, le vague désir de remonter
les ages! Je me rapelle encore l’émotion toujours la même et toujours vive, qui me faisait batter le Coeur, quand,
tout petit, j’entrais sous ces voûtes sombre et contemplais ces visages pales, quand j’allais et cherchais, ardent,
curieux, craintif, de salle en salle et d’âge en âge... je cherchais quoi? Je ne sais; la vie d’alors, sans doute, et le genie
des temps. [ How many souls were struck in that museum with the spark of history, the appeal of great memories,
the vague desire to go back through time! I still remember the emotion, still the same and still immediate, that made
my heart beat faster when, as a child, I entered under those dark vaults and gazed upon those pale faces, when I went
looking, ardent, curious, fearful, from room to room and from century to century… what was I looking for? I don’t
know; the life of those times, certainly, and the spirit of the age.] 45
In sensibility the French and the English had much at this point in common and they
would continue to do so for decades to come. There were differences, however, and Turner put
his finger on precisely those that would have, eventually, the largest implications for
antiquarianism. During one of several return visits that he and his party made to the Louvre
before they left Paris on 28 June they fell into conversation with a French army officer. The
officer found it difficult to believe that in Britain most art works remained in private hands. ‘This
it is in its various ramifications,’ Turner noted, ‘that seems to constitute one of the leading points
of difference between France and England.’ 46
In the former country everything is the property of the nation & the Government is the principal, if not the only,
spring that puts in motion the energies of artists & men of letters, & gives birth to public institutions. In the latter it
is quite the contrary; the Government is exclusively confined to its own affairs; in the arts, the sciences, even in
hospitals & often in roads, individuals do all, have all, & are all. Thus more splendor [sic] is in France, more
enjoyment in England. 47
45
Quoted in Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument, p.67.
46
Turner, ‘Journal of a Tour to France, 1814’, f 190 .
47
Turner, ‘Journal of a Tour to France, 1814’, f 190 .
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