sented to the museum by the State.
Wherever the traveller goes, in France, he is reminded of this very
honourable practice--the purchase by the Government of a certain number
of "pictures of the year," which are presently distributed in the
provinces. Governments succeed each other and bid for success by
different devices; but the "patronage of art" is a plank, as we should
say here, in every platform. The works of art are often
ill-selected--there is an official taste which you immediately
recognise--but the custom is essentially liberal, and a Government which
should neglect it would be felt to be painfully common. The only thing
in this particular Musee that I remember is a fine portrait of a woman
by Ingres--very flat and Chinese, but with an interest of line and a
great deal of style.

There is a castle at Nantes which resembles in some degree that of
Angers, but has, without, much less of the impressiveness of great size,
and, within, much more interest of detail. The court contains the
remains of a very fine piece of late Gothic--a tall elegant building of
the sixteenth century. The chateau is naturally not wanting in history.
It was the residence of the old Dukes of Brittany, and was brought, with
the rest of the province, by the Duchess Anne, the last representative
of that race, as her dowry, to Charles VIII. I read in the excellent
handbook of M. Joanne that it has been visited by almost every one of
the kings of France, from Louis XI. downward; and also that it has
served as a place of sojourn less voluntary on the part of various other
distinguished persons, from the horrible Marechal de Retz, who in the
fifteenth century was executed at Nantes for the murder of a couple of
hundred young children, sacrificed in abominable rites, to the ardent
Duchess of Berry, mother of the Count of Chambord, who was confined
there for a few hours in 1832, just after her arrest in a neighbouring
house. I looked at the house in question--you may see it from the
platform in front of the chateau--and tried to figure to myself that
embarrassing scene. The Duchess, after having unsuccessfully raised the
standard of revolt (for the exiled Bourbons) in the legitimist Bretagne,
and being "wanted," as the phrase is, by the police of Louis Philippe,
had hidden herself in a small but loyal house at Nantes, where, at the
end of five months of seclusion, she was betrayed, for gold, to the
austere M. Guizot by one of her servants, an Als