meters-keys of the rivers of thought and sentiment, which have been held with too much Anubis-like sameness by their watchers.

On taking an extended view of that sphere of painting, the value of which is based in its moral significance, two grand divisions present themselves. To one of these belongs Michael Angelo; to the other Raphael: and the more that the ultimate relations of art are taken into cognizance, the further do these become separated from those around them who belong to the same circle. Michael Angelo, like his youthful Victory, under whom the aged warrior bows in support, rises above all the labours of his predecessors: Raphael, as the radiance from the angel in his St Peter conducted from prison dims the torches and the moonlight, absorbs the efforts of his; both with an extended certainty of purpose, which renders those labours (although in some instances their importance can only be affected by comparison with those of Buonarotti, and Raphael), and also those of their successors, limited and partial. But setting aside their common mode of addressing the mind-pictorial representation there is no resemblance betwixt them. The order of sentiment which the one enters into, is altogether different from that of the other. They operate towards their final purpose or bearing with distinct separateness. They have frequently been compared; but there is no mutual ground of comparison betwixt them. The efficiency of the nature of their labours, in connexion with their ultimate object, and the extent to which each has entered into, or become identical with, the sphere of mind to which his works belong, are grounds of contrast, not of comparison; and were the superiority of the one to the other

Its

attempted to be assigned, it would depend upon the decision of these questions. The genius of Michael Angelo exhibits or announces the effort of will and desire in man. reference centres in the fate of the genus; he seems constantly to question,-shall humanity be dignified or abased-shall its energy triumph or suffer defeat? He designed a representation of venerable Age placed in a go-cart, and wrote underneath, Anchora imparo-I still learn. His prophets and sibyls are impressive of mental power beyond the nature of material being. His statue of Lorenzo de Medicis is altogether unapproached, in its centred and commanding reference to a past and a future individuality. His region is the intellectual. That of Raphael is different-it is the moral. The one operates through an elevated and abstract bearing on human emotion; the other, by virtue of moral reliance, raises emotion to the abstract and intellectual. But, before proceeding further, it may be neces sary to remove several theoretical constructions that have been put upon the nature or purposes of painting, which may appear to interfere with what may be advanced.

One of these is the limitation which has been attempted to be put to expression in painting and sculpture. It has been considered that they should be confined to the adoption of particu lar phases of emotion, or rather to the nearest approach to the total negation of emotion. A hypothetic demarkation has been endeavoured to be pointed out as the true bounds of their field, to the implied exclusion of some of their grandest productions. But the existence of these productions (the statue of the gladiator, or the cartoon of Pisa, for example), and their effect on the mind-the true cri

terion of what is right and wrong in art-is a conclusive answer to this critical solecism. There is, however, a limitation of a different kind which has been made, the examination of which will include the reply to this.

Painting and poetry have been frequently compared or paralleled. Muta poesis, et pictura loquens, has assumed the station of a sententious definition of both; but if poetry is to be regarded to consist in what even the mean. est verses attempt to pursue-the expression of sentiment under the influence of enthusiasm or of imagination, the parallel is altogether defective. But if this, the legitimate distinction of what is poetical, is not to be regarded, and the recurrence of certain sounds, or a particular measure of syllables, be deemed distinctive of written poetry, there might appear to be some grounds for the comparison, inasmuch as there may be measured verse and recurring rhymes (not rhythm, from which these originate, but which is essentially and inherently part of verbal poetry), where there is no excited feeling, or virtual poetry. Were measure and rhyme considered to belong alike to the expression of every species of emotion, or of sentiment, or of detail, the parallel might hold; but on regarding poetry to be what it really is -a particular state of sentiment, which in language is most frequently expressed in measured verse, and not confined to oral or to written language, but likewise extending throughout all the arts, as one division or form in which expression is given to thought, at the same time that it is recognised to hold no connexion with other states of mental activity, which are also expressed in the different liberal arts (and, in a descending scale, in various ways in the mechanical arts)-the comparison must at once be recognised to be altogether defective. But while painting and poetry cannot be com pared, painting and literature may; and, by keeping such a comparison in view, much misunderstanding on the subject may be avoided. Painting is the

language of form and colour, and one general and extended means of expressing and inculcating thought. Literature, or written language, with a more varied capacity of specifying and also of conveying ideas, but with less universality or immediate oneness with nature (its medium being conventional, and not alike addressed to those of different times and countries), pursues the same end. The parallel betwixt poetry and painting, substitutes written poetry for the extensive sphere of all written knowledge--literature; and those who have made it must have experienced the necessity of not being baffled by difficulties in respect to its congruity. Instead of being confined to the enunciation of the poetic element, painting embraces (to the extent that its medium is fitted to recognise, and communicate or convey) every diversity of sentiment. From the lyric to the historic, and from that descending through various grades of the specialties of the art-the exhibition of styles of drawing, effect, and colour, made ultimate objects; and through a numerous diversity of transcriptions of, and allusions to, the fluctuating modes of life and individual pursuit; through all the variety of descriptive scenery in landscape, to the literal nomination or repetition of fact, in the lowest grade of visible existence-painting finds its subjects and field. The most poetic, and the most unelevated or prosaic, come within its range. Regarding it in any less extended view, what place can be assigned to the works of hundreds of names, which, by no refinement of analogy, can be considered to belong to poetry; and to those instances in the works of almost all the greatest painters, wherein the intention which was pursued, denied, or was not consistent with, poetic treatment? In many of these, the dramatic element becomes so strong, that the poetic has no place in others, a narrative mode, rather than what can properly be styled dramatic, predominates; and again, historical severity does not ad

VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXXIV.

3 G

mit poetical elevation. Of the first of these, Raphael himself not unfrequently furnishes exemplifications. Andrea del Sarto, in the Life of S. Philip Benizzi, in the cortile of the Church of the Annunziata at Florence, and the Communion of St Jerome by Domenichino, may serve to instance the second: while the historical is largely exemplified in Poussin, almost the only one among the old masters who can be said to have rendered historical subjects in a historical spirit, divested of conventionalities and extraneous concomitants, either in method or in style. To descend from these, and seek poetry throughout the works of Gerhard Douw, Netscher, and Terburg, or in Teniers, Jan Steen, and Ostade, might certainly be an exercise for ingenuity, but its reward would be scanty. The attempt would be almost as vain, as were the diver to plunge in search of *coral into one of their country's canals. They have it not; but they make no pretensions to it. These qualities are other, and different, and consummate in their sphere; but, by the endeavour to throw a false illumination over them, their just character is misunderstood the appreciation of their real nature or worth is lost sight of, and confused notions in respect to them are originated. Hence they are at one time treated with contemptuous disregard; and at another with jealous partisanship, asserted to realize the highest excellence in painting.

Painting, then, in a just significa, tion, is reiterative of whatever impressions may be conveyed by the most subtle and extensive of the sensessight. The external world presents a continued tablet. Every visual sensation is a picture; and it is only by means of other senses that it becomes more. Every arrangement of objects is a picture to the eye; of which there is not a line, or a colour, or gleam of light, or dimness of shade, which virtually does not at once, and ever after, constitute part of the mental relations of the perceiver; and the art of painting, in its proper acceptation, re-impresses, re-presents them, in their collected tendency. It strives to create a world recognizable by the sense of

sight, which will present things, or more properly mental impressions, divested of those circumstances which link with purposes aside from their more important or ultimate endresting upon that alone which is most valuable in relation to mind. This is the essence of painting, and it is needless to say, after what has been observed, that its application extends to a very varied scale. In one instance it becomes connected with abstract intellection; in others it is limited to a mere reproduction of an impression of sense. Hence that variety which constitutes the taste of different periods, and necessarily diversity, or fitness to various grades of mind: from whence, by some particular branches of the art gaining the ascendency, while no invariable standard of greatness or worth has been recognised, and while the general sense (never wrong if operating freely) of the true or absolute value of the various productions of painting has been lost sight of, or denied, by prejudice or individual preferences, much confusion and discrepancy of opinion has originated.

The supposed oneness of the object of painting, or the language of form and colour, with that of the particular portion of written language designated poetry, must have arisen from the very extensive influence of the lyric mode of imitation in Greece, and its almost universal adoption in the early Roman Catholic art of Italy and of other countries. Under this mode, literature, painting, and sculpture, have at particular epochs been one in poetry; but it was at periods which present these under a much more circumscribed development than their history now exhibits. Thus (setting aside the exemplification of this in other times) for centuries, the revived arts of painting and sculpture in Europe were poetic. From the attempts of the Greeks of the middle ages, to those of Chimabue, which, in forms half-human that never could have possessed human faculties, fearful gropings to imitate what they render malcreated and hideous, to the time of the still cramped, but more organized efforts of Mantegra, and Domenico

and Justice having fled from the earth, originated in the very contradiction of what it asserted. Fashions, to use a light phrase, of prejudice, persecution, and discord, have "turned and changed together:" the bipenne, the gladius, and the rapier, have each had their day-a trifling enough motive at times, serving to lead to their usepossibly to try their edge, or a new shape; but into whatever Tartarus it may descend, the beautiful To xaλovhonestum—of man's moral being, however offuscated and obscured it may be at times, has accompanied, and must ever accompany his progress; whether that is onwards to a millennium-like state of improved happiness, or through a succession of individual and profitless experiences.

Discarding those theories which would, in the first place, cut asunder reason from moral sentiment, and afterwards substitute the one for the other, or which would derive from limited principles others that are general (such as Hume's utility or Mandeville's selfishness)—without regard to such systems, which invalidate the distinction betwixt right and wrong; it must be contended, that intellectual and moral perception are equally coexistent portions of one whole-mind, in whatever degree it may be evolved; and to one or other of which all emotion must be held to be related or subjected. These two inclusive branches of mind become the first or original categories of every mental act. Both carry forward one ultimate purpose, of which (without reference to supermundane or transcendental relation) the visible scope or bearing may be designated the impulse or will of man to sustain himself in humanity; originating, as its highest hypostasis, the endeavour to base the mind in permanency-to find an immovable foundation for the good and true-to reconcile the individual with the whole, or perfection with the fixed and perfect. The operation of this impulse-. its advancement or failure-the conflict of Ormuz and Ahrimanes, has the fate of battle; but, to whichever side the balance tends, "humanity's afflicted will" does not cease from the strife. Under its influence, religion, science, and the arts, are produced, each in its separate essence, including a multitudinous variety of action or effort; the relative importance of every particular exemplification of which, must

be discriminated by its greater or more limited degree of power or aptitude to promote this end. At its instigation, "radiant philosophy and starcrowned art," political and physical science, go forth. In this they have one universal aim-one general bond of union. In this, without anticipating uninterrupted happiness or perfection on the one hand, or being in dread of their extinction on the otherneither considering partial evil to be universal good-neither being Utopian, Leibnitzian, or Utilitarian, may be found a cause and end of exertion, that may be considered to absorb, or even to render necessary, the wars and fightings of intellect, passion, and instinct-one general object, which, without being considered to be gained or to be alone reachable by any one path, becomes a common purpose, which, as the links of one chain, binds into unity the separate efforts of man, from whence result his individual en. joyment or suffering.

It is upon this ground that the often talked of but scarcely defined value of the arts is established; upon which they bring forward that combination of intellectual and moral expression, or signification, in connexion with the excitement of emotion, joined to the gratification of sense, which constitutes them a series of the most influential means that operate in sustaining the distinction of humanity.

But, in order that the connexion of the works of Raphael with the humanizing influence of moral sentiment may be fully perceived, the particular mode in which their bearing is evolved must be distinctly recognised. The religious sentiment, which may be defined, the desire to find an objective existence for the intellectual and the moral, in respect to which emotion may be brought into exercise, is the most inclusive and universal form of the operation of the mind. It is scarcely denied, in some degree, to the lowest grade of faculty-to the nearest junction of the rational with the instinctive animal. It embraces a union of the intellective and the moral nature of man, in combination with his emotive faculties; and the various degrees of these, the greater or the inferior measure of reliance which is placed on the one or the other, distinguishes or constitutes the characteristics of the numerous creeds which have succeeded each other, and found place