secure with avidity a picture which already belongs to him. There, some
are tempted to buy; and some repent of having bought. There, out of
pique and bravado, another shall pay fifty louis for an article which he
would not have thought worth five and twenty, had he not been ashamed to
draw back when the eyes of a crowded company were upon him. There, you
may see a woman of condition turn pale at the mere thought of losing a
paltry pagoda which she does not want, and, in any other circumstances,
would never have desired."

A closing word as to M. Rouquet himself. The _Etat des Arts_ was duly
noticed by the critics--contemptuously by the _Monthly Review_, and
sympathetically by the _Gentleman's_ and the _Scots Magazine_. In 1755,
the year to which it belongs, its author put forth another work--_L'Art
Nouveau de la Peinture en Fromage ou en Ramequin_ [toasted cheese],
_invente pour suivre le louable projet de trouver graduellement des
facons de peindre inferieures a celles qui existent_. This, as its title
imports, is a skit, levelled at the recent _Histoire et Secret de la
Peinture en Cire_ of Diderot, who nevertheless refers to Rouquet under
_Email_, in the _Dictionnaire Encyclapedique_, as "_un homme habile_."
He seems, however (like "_la_ _peinture a l'huile_)," to have been
somewhat "_difficile_"; and as we have said, his discoveries (for he had
that useful element in enamel-work, considerable chemical knowledge),
like Zincke's, perished with him. Several of his portraits, notably
those of Cochin and Marigny, were exhibited at the Paris Salons. Whether
he was overparted, or overworked, in the Pompadour atmosphere; or
whether he succumbed to the "continual headache" of which he speaks in
his letter to Hogarth, his health gradually declined. In the last year
of his life, his reason gave way; and when he died in 1759, it was as an
inmate of Charenton.