that Zeuxis, Apelles, Protogenes, Parrhasius, and the other great painters of antiquity, regarded the landscape passages of their pictures, but as auxiliary matters, necessary perhaps, or at least desirable, where an out-of-door occurrence was to be represented; yet not absolutely so, and indeed no otherwise necessary or attractive, than to excite the idea of a rock, house, tree, bank, or whatever else appertained to the depicted story, in the way of suggestion, sign, or indication; and not in the way of perspective representation to the optic sense.

That this was also the state of landscape-painting, on the revival of Art in Italy, is sufficiently obvious, from the earliest historical and legendary works which were there produced; where indications merely conventional indications, and suggestions-of such landscape passages as were necessary or indispensable to the pictorial relation of a Scripture history or a mythological legend, were sparingly introduced, as matters that could not be entirely suppressed or omitted, without making the history-pieces seem like transactions in dark holes; as indeed they too frequently did, notwithstanding.

The early works, so sedulously sought for, and so carefully enumerated by Lanzi, sufficiently attest that landscape-painting was merely an auxiliary, whose services were faintly recognised, down to the time of Masaccio and the Peruginos; nay, even down to the era of Raphael, a few tussocks of sedge, with a patch of raw green, served for all the varieties of verdure; a few twigs and sprigs represented all the diversities of forest trees; and though buildings were a little better defined, clouds and seas were quaintly curled, with little or no reference to their natural

forms. The same was done by Michael Wolgemuth and his predecessors in Germany, down to the time. of Albert Durer, Paul Brill, and Lucas of Leyden; from whose grotesque conceits and crudities, Giorgione and Titian made that sudden spring, and took those lofty flights, which have since been the surprise of Europe. The very sound of their wings awakened its slumbering taste.

The consequences that rapidly succeeded, are really wonderful! and to be regarded as an important occurrence in the philosophy of Art, and a sort of advent in the history of painting. Our academician, Constable, in a lecture publicly delivered at the Hampstead assembly-rooms, has been the first man in England, duly to notice this new revelation, and its immediate and important philosophical effects. It certainly should, and as certainly would, have been noticed sooner, had our imperfectly constituted London Academy provided a chair for a Professor of Landscape—a desideratum which was publicly pointed out in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution thirty years ago but "my people will not know, Israel will not remember.”

Early in the sixteenth century, it seemed as if these great minds-soon after followed by those of Dominichino, Rubens, and the Caraccii—while each trowed for itself, had mutually hailed each other in the enthusiastic spirit in which Pope apostrophized his supposed friend Bolingbroke as if, in a moment of transport, Giorgione had sounded forth,

"Awake!" my Titian- —“ leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings:

Let us"-expatiate free

times, a superadded touch of mysticism, in the remarks of Hazlitt on works of art.

Of the present picture,
This is pertinent and

he says, "It is all ear." emphatic; what follows will, perhaps, be thought somewhat less so, though it still has pertinence: "The expression is evanescent as the sounds; the features are seen in a sort of dim chiar-oscuro, as if the confused impressions of another sense intervened-and you might easily suppose some of the performers to have been engaged the night before in

-" mask or midnight serenade,

Which the starv'd [qu. starr'd] lover to his mistress sings; Best quitted with disdain."

It must appear but an equivocal compliment to a fine picture, when we cannot tell whether a certain effect, which we perceive in it, results from design, or damage; but we see not how to avert it, in the present case, without dissembling. If the dimness, and the pale faces, of the present work, proceed from the former, the penetration of our lost friend has discovered and declared the latent reason: but Hazlitt's veneration for the old masters, was somewhat superstitious, and exclusive; and we are, on the whole, led to question whether any thing so metaphysical, or recondite, would have occurred to him, had he been placed before a modern picture having the same peculiarity. But he who visits a picture gallery must bring with him the best part of the enjoymentnamely, his own good taste, or capacity for enjoying. It is else like going without an appetite to a splendid repast; or without an ear, to a concert.

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.

TITIAN.

THE Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian was originally painted for Alphonso I. Duke of Ferrara, and has since graced the Villa Aldobrandini. Who imported it into England we do not know, but probably Lord Kinnaird, as we remember to have had the pleasure of seeing it in his lordship's gallery, many years ago. It has always been celebrated; and, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, came with resounding grace upon the European world, like the first rapturous poem of Pindar upon the listening heroes at Olympia. It is, in fact, a painted Lyric Ode, the nature of which we have endeavoured to develope in our account of Rubens's depicted allegory. The story, which the learning and genius of the great Venetian artist, the patriarch of this species of painting, has turned to this rapturous account, is well known to classic literature. Briefly-The Athenian hero, Theseus, after having espoused a Cretan princess, who had extricated him from a labyrinth of dangersabandoned her, not far from the sea-shore, on the island of Naxos, leaving her asleep. The critical point of time here chosen with great felicity on the part of the artist-is where the sub-deity Bacchus, with his revellers, forth-issuing from the skirts of a forest, awaken Ariadne with the sounds of their cymbals and tambourines; and the god of wine,— smitten with her charms, and while she is in the act of recognising his divinity-leaps from his car in a transport of amorous passion.

years of age; and as Giorgione had long been dead, he had every means, every right, and every honourable inducement, to excel his master; for his master in the true art of painting, Giorgione undoubtedly was, notwithstanding that the latter honourably reciprocated the epithet upon a certain trying occasion. "Let it be remembered (says his biographer) that it was not until he had seen the works of Giorgione, that Titian relinquished the tame and spiritless style which characterized his earlier productions, and became the founder [if he can be a founder who builds on the substruction of another] of a new school of art. But, Giorgione having been commissioned to paint that front of the Fondacio de Tedeschi, which is toward the Grand Canal of Venice; Titian, by the interest of his friend Barberigo, was employed to paint on that other side of the same building which is toward the Merceria. In this work he painted a Judith so admirably, both as to design and colouring, that on its being presented to the public view, it was generally thought to be the work of Giorgione; insomuch that one day some gentlemen of Venice meeting with him, and not knowing that any one but himself was engaged in the undertaking, gave him joy of his great success-unfortunately adding-particularly on the side toward the Merceria: and further, one of them told him that he had here outdone his performance on that side which was toward the great canal." My author proceeds to state, that "Giorgione, with shame and regret,”—but he should surely have added, with the redeeming integrity of a high and honourable mind," replied, that the Judith was not his, but-his master's."

As Titian adopted Giorgione's original and supe