Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/200

 upward view running past bridges and gardens, past the grey temple of legislation, to sweep upon a wide curve into the colonnaded heights of the Trocadero. The picture is enhanced by the bright verdure of the Tuileries gardens; by the gay, swift passage of boats; by all the sparkling diversities of Parisian life which fill the streets with so much colour and charm. When you have crossed the Pont des Beaux Arts, on which I have kept you standing awhile, you will enter the school by the busy, old-fashioned, almost provincial Rue Bonaparte. What a pleasant place it is to be sure, this modern school of art! Here it is that the famous Prix de Rome is given, which sends hopeful youths to the very fount and cradle of art for its instruction and gratification, but not infrequently for the careful destruction of all individuality of sprouting genius in thrall to academic rule. It is the rigidity of this academic rule in France which produces such explosions of anarchy in literature and art. Precision and clarity are such essential characteristics of the genius of the race that, when turbulent youth in a tempest of revolt against the discipline of the implacable academies decides to fling its cap over the mill, and carve out its own fresh road to the devil, we are shocked by eccentricities that elsewhere would leave us unmoved.

If youth must occasionally go mad, at least we