Probably Berryer the famous advocate, had his plate engraved about this time; it is in the Louis XVI. style. (See page 149.)
The pretentious plate of Victor, Duc de Saint Simon Vermandois, Pair de France, Grand d’Espagne, is an example of the want of taste of the Restoration, as is also that of the Bibliothèque de La Motte which is destitute of grace or finish.
At length, in July, 1830, the French, weary of the reactionary rule of Charles X. and of his breaches of faith, drove him from the throne, and he sought refuge in England.
His cousin Louis Philippe was elected king of the French, and for eighteen years the country enjoyed comparative peace, and great commercial prosperity.
Then at last was France released from the nightmare pressure of the ancien régime, and free to choose a constitutional government suited to her requirements and the progress of modern civilization.
During his reign Louis Philippe created a number of new nobles, the chosen men being for the most part politicians who supported the government in parliament, rich tradesmen, office holders, and a few literary men.
Two of the greatest men of the day, Thiers and Guizot, bluntly refused to be ennobled, as later on did Mons. Rouher. The assumption of false titles still continued, whilst the prefix de which had formerly indicated gentle birth or landed estates, came to be so commonly employed as to carry no signification whatever. Book-plates of this period have little to distinguish them from those of the Restoration, except that the seal pattern, or the plain shield within a belt or garter became more common, whilst some artists affected a revival of a kind of Gothic ornamentation, with the inscription in archaic phraseology.
Of this latter style a beautiful example is the plate designed for himself by the late Mons. Claude E. Thiery, of Maxéville.
It represents the interior of a mediæval library, the walls of which are decorated with the arms of Lorraine. A reader is seated in front of two open folios, and above the design the inscription is: