City of uniquely-artistic city-plan is that of Nancy, where Leopold I. and Stanislaus Leszczynski, the last duke of Lorraine, built near the older city a new one having straight streets laid out at right angles and closed at their ends with triumphal arches which can all be seen at once from the Stanislaus Square in the centre. The hotel de ville, the episcopal palace, and the theatre stand around this square, which is filled with fountains, statues, and groups of trees, and is bounded on all sides by gilded palisades. A triumphal arch leads from the principal square to the Place Carriere, and an avenue thence to the grand-ducal palace; the cathedral is also in this new part of the city, the houses of which are all built after one system, though the monotony is happily diminished by varied grouping.
the first decades of the eighteenth century archi tecture lost its baroque strength and energy, and the sober tendency over powered every architectural idea. In the domain of decoration alone there remained a fantastic though feebly-delicate set of ornamental forms, which, since it belonged to the surfaces, rose so slightly above them that, in contrast to the force of the baroque, it never dominated the ensemble, and, notwithstanding its often endless richness, never con quered the general soberness.
It was only occasionally that this ornamentation appeared on the exterior of the structure; it predominated in the interiors of the rooms, where, since it was felt to be purely decorative, it set aside every law. Twining plant-forms spread over walls and ceilings, avoiding the law of symmetry as their worst enemy, setting at naught the laws of stability, effacing all angles and corners, yet with a peculiar insin uating delicacy which broke through the limitations of the every-day world and introduced in its place an artistic one which had but some slight traces of it, such as figures of pretty smiling children, a laurel wreath, or a garland, to bind the artificial world to the real one. The entire circle of forms may be called one great deception; and it is right to use the word in its most specific sense, since evidently the entire founda tion of the human intelligence is ignored in order that for a few short hours a plunge may be taken into an unreal world—or, rather, that by such a pleasant steeping in unreality life may be made endurable. Yet the amiable refinement and delicacy of this idyllic medley can scarcely be condemned in decorative forms, for the forms which give expression to this hollow eclat cannot be called architectural, and hence an excuse is found for the deception. It does not attempt to pass for truth, but rather
formally denies the right of the latter to exist, since it does not possess that pallid inspiration which artificiality alone can give. Thus it came about that all external adorninent except what lay in tectonic necessities was denied to Architecture, and, save where custom compelled the preser vation of sonic remains of the ancient architectural detail, all that did not serve as a basis for the dreamy decoration was as formless as a stage scene viewed from behind.
If, therefore, that degenerate Renaissance for which the foundation was laid by some caprices of Michelangelo, and which led to the fantas ticalitics of Borromini and Pozzo and of the Zwinger Pavilion at Dresden, may be called the baroque style, that which originated in the court of Louis XV. may be designated " rococo," 1 and should be considered a dec orative, but not an architectural, style. It is only a sobering down of the baroque, affecting the exterior, though the interior is still as baroque as ever—a sobering down which without definite limits carries over the baroque into the stiff "queue style" which is the last flashing up of the Renaissance.
Queue Style. —That sobriety which had become general toward the mid dle of the century made itself evident in the decoration about the end of the third quarter. The unsymmetrical rococo began to disappear, and left behind it only the borders which it had before employed as a limit for its twining foliage, forming resting-places for the view upon the wall-sur faces. These borders, or architraves, were even now sometimes twisted into a wreath bearing a medallion with a knot. But in proportion as the taste for the poetic deception referred to above reverted to reality, archi tectonic forms and architectonic niembering were again designed. The increasing sobriety would not permit a return to the extravagances of the time of Louis XIV., so an approach was again made to the antique, the forms of which, first copied from memory and afterward from actual studies, were mingled with the remaining traces of the baroque style and of the rococo ornamentation.
No precise date can be given for the commencement and the close of all these changes. One element came in after another, one after another disappeared, and we must therefore introduce our reflections in chronolog ical order, but remark that examples of each manner may be found a lit tle before or a little after the series of art-monuments represented. But we may try to find a historic date for some, though not for all, of the indi vidual elements.