principles, and interests of human nature! Suppose a Michael Angelo to be born to us in England: we should not, perhaps, set him to make a statue of snow, but where or how would his gigantic genius, which revelled in the great deeps of passion and imagination, find scope for action? He would struggle and gasp like a stranded Leviathan!

But this is digressing: the question is, may not the moral effect of painting be still counted on, if the painter be himself imbued with the right spirit?*

There is, in the academy at Antwerp, a picture by Rubens, which represents St. Theresa kneeling before Christ, and interceding for the souls in purgatory. The treatment of the subject is exceedingly simple; the upper part of the picture is occupied by the Redeemer, with his usual attributes, and the saint, habited as a nun. In the lower part of the picture, instead of a confused mob of tormented souls, and flames, and devils

"A l'exposition de Paris (1822) on a vu un millier de tableaux représentant des sujets de l'Ecritoire Sainte, peints par des peintres qui n'y croient pas du tout: admirés et jugés par des gens qui n'y croient pas beaucoup, et enfin payês par des gens qui, apparemment, n'y croient pas, non plus."

"L'on cherche aprés cela le pourquoi de la décadence de l'art!"

est realities of life, with the loftiest imagery, the most luxurious tints of poetry. Both had the same passion for allegory, and managed it with equal success. "The thoughts that breathe and words that burn" of Dryden, may be compared to the living, moving forms, the glowing, melting, dazzling hues of Rubens, under whose pencil

"Desires and adorations,

Winged persuasions and wild destinies,

Splendours, and glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of hopes, and fears, and twilight fantasies,—"

took form and being-became palpable existences: and yet with all this inventive power, this love of allegorical fiction, it is life, the spirit of animal life, diffused through and over their works; it is the blending of the plain reasoning with splendid creative powers;-of wonderful fertility of concep tion with more wonderful facility of execution; it is the combination of truth, and grandeur, and masculine vigour, with a general coarseness of taste, which may be said to characterize both these great men. Neither are, or can be, favourites of the women, for the same reasons.

There must have been something analogous in the genius of Rubens and Titian. The distinction was of climate and country. They appear to

have looked at nature under the same aspect, but it was a different nature, the difference between Flanders and Venice. They were both painters of flesh and blood: by nature, poets; by conformation, colourists; by temperament and education, magnificent spirits, scholars, and gentlemen, lovers of pleasure and of fame. The superior sentiment and grace, the refinement and elevation of Titian, he owed to the poetical and chivalrous spirit of his age and country. The delicacy of taste which reigned in the Italian literature of that period influenced the arts of design. As to the colouring-we see in the pictures of Rubens the broad daylight effects of a northern climate, and in those of Titian, the burning fervid sun of a southern clime, necessarily modified by shade, before the objects could be seen: hence the difference between the glow of Rubens, and the glow of Titian: the first "i' the colours of the rainbow lived," and the other bathed himself in the evening sky; the one dazzles, the other warms. I can bring before my fancy at this moment, the Helen Forman of Rubens, and Titian's "La Manto;" the "man with a hawk" of Rubens, and Titian's "Falconer;" can any thing in heaven or earth be more opposed? Yet in all alike, is it not the intense feeling of life and individual nature which

with pitchforks, the painter has represented a few heads as if rising from below. I remember those of Adam, Eve, and Mary Magdalene. I remember and never shall forget the expression of each! The extremity of misery in the countenance of Adam; the averted, disconsolate, repentant wretchedness of Eve, who hides her face in her hair; the mixture of agony, supplication, hope, in the face of the Magdalene, while a cherub of pity extends his hand to her, as if to aid her to rise, and at the same time turns an imploring look towards the Saviour. As I gazed upon this picture a feeling sank deep into my heart, which did not pass away with the tears it made to flow, but has ever since remained there, and has become an abiding principle of action. This is only one instance out of many, of the moral effect which has been produced by painting.

To me it is amusing, and it cannot but be interesting and instructive to the philosopher and artist, to observe how various people, uninitiated into any of the technicalities of art, unable to appreciate the amount of difficulties overcome, are affected by pictures and sculpture. But in forming our judgment, our taste in art, it is unsafe to listen to opinions springing from this vague kind of enthusiasm ; for in painting, as in music—“just as the soul is pitched, the eye is pleased."

I amuse myself in the gallery here with watching the countenances of those who look at the pictures. I see that the uneducated eye is caught by subjects in which the individual mind sympathizes, and the educated taste seeks abstract excellence. Which has the most enjoyment? The last, I think. Sensibility, imagination, and quick perception of form and colour, are not alone necessary to feel a work of art; there must be the power of association; the mind trained to habitual sympathy with the beautiful and the good; the knowledge of the meaning, and the comprehension of the object of the artist.

In the gallery here there are eighty-eight pictures of Rubens-some among the very finest he ever painted; for instance, that splendid picture, Castor and Pollux carrying off the daughters of Leucippus, so full of rich life and movement; the destruction of Sennacherib's host; Rubens and his wife, full lengths, seated in a garden; that wonderful picture of the defeat of the Amazons; the meeting of Jacob and Laban; the picture of the Earl of Arundel and his wife, with other figures, full lengths;* and a series of the designs for the

* Of this celebrated picture, Sir Joshua Reynolds says, that it is miscalled, and certainly does not contain the portraits of the Earl and Countess of Arundel. Perhaps he is mistaken. It appears that the Earl of Arundel, of James the First's time, (the collector of the