CHAPTER VIII.
THE RESTORATION, AND LOUIS PHILIPPE.
He had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing during his exile, and notwithstanding the strong advice of the Powers who had set him up in business as a monarch, he encouraged a steady reaction against the improvements that had been so liberally encouraged in the State by Napoleon and his ministers.
The French nation had but little loyalty or affection for this gouty, gluttonous, fat old man, but they ridiculed him, and bore with him, till his death in 1824.
His brother, the Comte d’Artois, who succeeded him as Charles X., a narrow-minded, obstinate, and priest-ridden man, persevered in the same course as Louis XVIII., and was even more unpopular.
Under these two Bourbons, who strove hard to undo all the reforms that the Revolution had effected, those of the old nobility who had survived the Terror and the Wars were encouraged to return to France, and once again the refrain was:
“Chapeau bas, chapeau bas!
Gloire au Marquis de Carabas.”
They resumed their ancient titles, estates, and family arms, but the bulk of the French nation declined to consider them, or their claims, seriously. Both Louis XVIII. and Charles X. created new nobles from amongst their personal and political adherents, but few men of worth or importance were willing thus to be ennobled.
The rules of heraldry devised by Napoleon were annulled, and the old system revived. But though the wealth of the nation had greatly increased during the few years of peace, whilst the taste for literature and the formation of large collections of books had once again come into fashion, the book-plates of this period show no improvement in taste, and no originality in design. They are either overladen with meretricious ornamentation, or simple name labels possessing no artistic interest whatever.
One of the very few plates of the time worth naming is that of the Duchesse de Berry for her library at Resny, on which we find the lilies of the French royal family. The Duchess also used a simpler plate similar to a book-binding stamp.