f the
globe and his own, great capitalist who had anticipated the brilliant
operations of the present time, he expiated his prosperity by poverty,
imprisonment, and torture. The obscure points in his career have been
elucidated by M. Clement, who has drawn, moreover, a very vivid picture
of the corrupt and exhausted state of France during the middle of the
fifteenth century. He has shown that the spoliation of the great
merchant was a deliberately calculated act, and that the king sacrificed
him without scruple or shame to the avidity of a singularly villanous
set of courtiers. The whole story is an extraordinary picture of
high-handed rapacity--the crudest possible assertion of the right of the
stronger. The victim was stripped of his property, but escaped with his
life, made his way out of France and, betaking himself to Italy, offered
his services to the Pope. It is proof of the consideration that he
enjoyed in Europe, and of the variety of his accomplishments, that
Calixtus III. should have appointed him to take command of a fleet which
his Holiness was fitting out against the Turks. Jacques Coeur, however,
was not destined to lead it to victory. He died shortly after the
expedition had started, in the island of Chios, in 1456. The house at
Bourges, his native place, testifies in some degree to his wealth and
splendour, though it has in parts that want of space which is striking
in many of the buildings of the Middle Ages. The court indeed is on a
large scale, ornamented with turrets and arcades, with several beautiful
windows and with sculptures inserted in the walls, representing the
various sources of the great fortune of the owner. M. Pierre Clement
describes this part of the house as having been of an "incomparable
richesse"--an estimate of its charms which seems slightly exaggerated
to-day. There is, however, something delicate and familiar in the
bas-reliefs of which I have spoken, little scenes of agriculture and
industry which show that the proprietor was not ashamed of calling
attention to his harvests and enterprises. To-day we should question the
taste of such allusions, even in plastic form, in the house of a
"merchant prince" however self-made. Why should it be, accordingly, that
these quaint little panels at Bourges do not displease us? It is perhaps
because things very ancient never, for some mysterious reason, appear
vulgar. This fifteenth-century millionaire, with his palace, his
"swagger" sculpture