THE LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The Age of Marie Antoinette. Revised Edition. By Charles Newton Scott. (The Leadenball Press. 3s. 6d.)—English and foreign reviews united in welcoming the first edition of this interesting little book. It is a study of what historians, both of art and life, have been inclined to neglect, the renascence of moral dignity and true artistic taste during the reign of Louis XVI. The immense interest of the last years of the century, during which the events of the Revolution throw every- thing else into the shade, have no doubt interfered with any really fair study of the years that preceded them. But the truth is, as we have tried to point out before now, that French society on the eve of the Revolution was in every way much better than in the days of Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour. It is easy to sneer at Louis XVI.'s simplicity of mind and life, and to deny the purity of heart, the fine taste and noble manners, of Marie Antoinette. In truth, she was the centre of that " glow of enthusiasm to which was due a great pull up of fashionable society's gilded coaches on a certain very broad road." As to her influence on art, any one who wishes to be convinced of its reality cannot de better than study Mr. Newton Scott's most interesting critical account of the art and artists of the time.
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