MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS (continued 2)

4. That the historical is nature in action. With regard to the face, it is expression.

Hogarth’s pictures are true history. Every feature, limb, figure, group, is instinct with life and motion. He does not take a subject and place it in a position, like a lay figure, in which it stirs neither limb nor joint. The scene moves before you: the face is like a frame-work of flexible machinery. If the mouth is distorted with laughter, the eyes swim in laughter. If the forehead is knit together, the cheeks are puckered up. If a fellow squints most horribly, the rest of his face is awry. The muscles pull different ways, or the same way, at the same time, on the surface of the picture, as they do in the human body. What you see is the reverse of still life. There is a continual and complete action and re-action of one variable part upon another, as there is in the Elgin Marbles. If you pull the string of a bow, the bow itself is bent. So is it in the strings and wires that move the human frame. The action of any one part, the contraction or relaxation of any one muscle, extends more or less perceptibly to every other:

‘Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.’

Thus the celebrated Iö of Correggio is imbued, steeped, in a manner in the same voluptuous feeling all over—the same passion languishes in her whole frame, and communicates the infection to the feet, the back, and the reclined position of the head. This is history, not carpenter’s work. Some painters fancy that they paint history, if they get the measurement from the foot to the knee and put four bones where there are four bones. This is not our idea of it; but we think it is to show how one part of the body sways another in action and in passion. The last relates chiefly to the expression of the face, though not altogether. Passion may be shown in a clenched fist as well as in clenched teeth. The face, however, is the throne of expression. Character implies the feeling, which is fixed and permanent; expression that which it occasional and momentary, at least, technically speaking. Portrait treats of objects as they are; history of the events and changes to which they are liable. And so far history has a double superiority; or a double difficulty to overcome, viz. in the rapid glance over a number of parts subject to the simultaneous action 343of the same law, and in the scope of feeling required to sympathise with the critical and powerful movements of passion. It requires greater capacity of muscular motion to follow the progress of a carriage in violent motion, than to lean upon it standing still. If, to describe passion, it were merely necessary to observe its outward effects, these, perhaps, in the prominent points, become more visible and more tangible as the passion is more intense. But it is not only necessary to see the effects, but to discern the cause, in order to make the one true to the other. No painter gives more of intellectual or impassioned appearances than he understands or feels. It is an axiom in painting that sympathy is indispensable to truth of expression. Without it, you get only caricatures, which are not the thing. But to sympathise with passion, a greater fund of sensibility is demanded in proportion to the strength or tenderness of the passion. And as he feels most of this whose face expresses most passion, so he also feels most by sympathy whose hand can describe most passion. This amounts nearly, we take it, to a demonstration of an old and very disputed point. The same reasoning might be applied to poetry, but this is not the place.—Again, it is easier to paint a portrait than an historical face, because the head sits for the first, but the expression will hardly sit for the last. Perhaps those passions are the best subjects for painting, the expression of which may be retained for some time, so as to be better caught, which throw out a sort of lambent fire, and leave a reflected glory behind them, as we see in Madonnas, Christ’s heads, and what is understood by sacred subjects in general. The violences of human passion are too soon over to be copied by the hand, and the mere conception of the internal workings is not here sufficient, as it is in poetry. A portrait is to history what still-life is to portraiture: that is, the whole remains the same while you are doing it; or while you are occupied about each part, the rest wait for you. Yet, what a difference is there between taking an original portrait and making a copy of one! This shows that the face in its most ordinary state is continually varying and in action. So much of history is there in portrait!—No one should pronounce definitively on the superiority of history over portrait, without recollecting Titian’s heads. The finest of them are very nearly (say quite) equal to the finest of Raphael’s. They have almost the look of still-life, yet each part is decidedly influenced by the rest. Everything is relative in them. You cannot put any other eye, nose, lip in the same face. As is one part, so is the rest. You cannot fix on any particular beauty; the charm is in the whole. They have least action, and the most expression of any portraits. They are doing nothing, and yet all other business seems insipid in comparison of their thoughts. They are silent, retired, and 344do not court observation; yet you cannot keep your eyes from them. Some one said, that you would be as cautious of your behaviour in a room where a picture of Titian’s was hung, as if there was somebody by—so entirely do they look you through. They are the least tiresome furniture-company in the world!

5. Grandeur consists in connecting a number of parts into a whole, and not leaving out the parts.

Sir Joshua lays it down that the great style in art consists in the omission of the details. A greater error never man committed. The great style consists in preserving the masses and general proportions; not in omitting the details. Thus, suppose, for illustration’s sake, the general form of an eye-brow to be commanding and grand. It is of a certain size, and arched in a particular curve. Now, surely, this general form or outline will be equally preserved, whether the painter daubs it in, in a bold, rough way, as Reynolds or perhaps Rembrandt would, or produces the effect by a number of hair-lines arranged in the same form as Titian sometimes did; and in his best pictures. It will not be denied (for it cannot) that the characteristic form of the eye-brow would be the same, or that the effect of the picture at a small distance would be nearly the same in either case; only in the latter, it would be rather more perfect, as being more like nature. Suppose a strong light to fall on one side of a face, and a deep shadow to involve the whole of the other. This would produce two distinct and large masses in the picture; which answers to the conditions of what is called the grand style of composition. Well, would it destroy these masses to give the smallest veins or variation of colour or surface in the light side, or to shade the other with the most delicate and elaborate chiaro-scuro? It is evident not; from common sense, from the practice of the best masters, and, lastly, from the example of nature, which contains both the larger masses, the strongest contrasts, and the highest finishing, within itself. The integrity of the whole, then, is not impaired by the indefinite subdivision and smallness of the parts. The grandeur of the ultimate effects depends entirely on the arrangement of these in a certain form or under certain masses. The Ilissus, or River-god, is floating in his proper element, and is, in appearance, as firm as a rock, as pliable as a wave of the sea. The artist’s breath might be said to mould and play upon the undulating surface. The whole is expanded into noble proportions, and heaves with general effect. What then? Are the parts unfinished; or are they not there? No; they are there with the nicest exactness, but in due subordination; that is, they are there as they are found in fine nature; and float upon the general form, like straw or weeds upon the tide of ocean. Once more: in Titian’s portraits we perceive a 345certain character stamped upon the different features. In the Hippolito de Medici the eye-brows are angular, the nose is peaked, the mouth has sharp corners, the face is (so to speak) a pointed oval. The drawing in each of these is as careful and distinct as can be. But the unity of intention in nature, and in the artist, does not the less tend to produce a general grandeur and impressiveness of effect; which at first sight it is not easy to account for. To combine a number of particulars to one end is not to omit them altogether; and is the best way of producing the grand style, because it does this without either affectation or slovenliness.

6. The sixth rule we proposed to lay down was, that as grandeur is the principle of connexion between different parts; beauty is the principle of affinity between different forms, or their gradual conversion into each other. The one harmonizes, the other aggrandizes, our impressions of things.

There is a harmony of colours and a harmony of sounds, unquestionably: why then there should be all this squeamishness about admitting an original harmony of forms as the principle of beauty and source of pleasure there we cannot understand. It is true, that there is in organized bodies a certain standard of form to which they approximate more or less, and from which they cannot very widely deviate without shocking the sense of custom, or our settled expectations of what they ought to be. And hence it has been pretended that there is in all such cases a middle central form, obtained by leaving out the peculiarities of all the others, which alone is the pure standard of truth and beauty. A conformity to custom is, we grant, one condition of beauty or source of satisfaction to the eye, because an abrupt transition shocks; but there is a conformity (or correspondence) of colours, sounds, lines, among themselves, which is soft and pleasing for the same reason. The average or customary form merely determines what is natural. A thing cannot please, unless it is to be found in nature; but that which is natural is most pleasing, according as it has other properties which in themselves please. Thus the colour of a cheek must be the natural complexion of a human face;—it would not do to make it the colour of a flower or a precious stone;—but among complexions ordinarily to be found in nature, that is most beautiful which would be thought so abstractedly, or in itself. Yellow hair is not the most common, nor is it a mean proportion between the different colours of women’s hair. Yet, who will say that it is not the most beautiful? Blue or green hair would be a defect and an anomaly, not because it is not the medium of nature, but because it is not in nature at all. To say that there is no difference in the sense of form except from custom, is like saying that there is no difference in the sensation of smooth or rough. Judging by analogy, a gradation 346or symmetry of form must affect the mind in the same manner as a gradation of recurrence at given intervals of tones or sounds; and if it does so in fact, we need not inquire further for the principle. Sir Joshua (who is the arch-heretic on this subject) makes grandeur or sublimity consist in the middle form, or abstraction of all peculiarities; which is evidently false, for grandeur and sublimity arise from extraordinary strength, magnitude, &c. or in a word, from an excess of power, so as to startle and overawe the mind. But as sublimity is an excess of power, beauty is, we conceive, the blending and harmonizing different powers or qualities together, so as to produce a soft and pleasurable sensation. That it is not the middle form of the species seems proved in various ways. First, because one species is more beautiful than another, according to common sense. A rose is the queen of flowers, in poetry at least; but in this philosophy any other flower is as good. A swan is more beautiful than a goose; a stag than a goat. Yet if custom were the test of beauty, either we should give no preference, or our preference would be reversed. Again, let us go back to the human face and figure. A straight nose is allowed to be handsome, that is, one that presents nearly a continuation of the line of the forehead, and the sides of which are nearly parallel. Now this cannot be the mean proportion of the form of noses. For, first, most noses are broader at the bottom than at the top, inclining to the negro head, but none are broader at top than at the bottom, to produce the Greek form as a balance between both. Almost all noses sink in immediately under the forehead bone, none ever project there; so that the nearly straight line continued from the forehead cannot be a mean proportion struck between the two extremes of convex and concave form in this feature of the face. There must, therefore, be some other principle of symmetry, continuity, &c. to account for the variation from the prescribed rule. Once more (not to multiply instances tediously), a double calf is undoubtedly the perfection of beauty in the form of the leg. But this is a rare thing. Nor is it the medium between two common extremes. For the muscles seldom swell enough to produce this excrescence, if it may be so called, and never run to an excess there, so as, by diminishing the quantity, to subside into proportion and beauty. But this second or lower calf is a connecting link between the upper calf and the small of the leg, and is just like a second chord or half-note in music. We conceive that any one who does not perceive the beauty of the Venus de Medicis, for instance, in this respect, has not the proper perception of form in his mind. As this is the most disputable, or at least the most disputed part of our theory, we may, perhaps, have to recur to it again, and shall leave an opening for that purpose.

3477. That grace is the beautiful or harmonious in what relates to position or motion.

There needs not much be said on this point; as we apprehend it will be granted that, whatever beauty is as to the form, grace is the same thing in relation to the use that is made of it. Grace, in writing, relates to the transitions that are made from one subject to another, or to the movement that is given to a passage. If one thing leads to another, or an idea or illustration is brought in without effect, or without making a boggle in the mind, we call this a graceful style. Transitions must in general be gradual and pieced together. But sometimes the most violent are the most graceful, when the mind is fairly tired out and exhausted with a subject, and is glad to leap to another as a repose and relief from the first. Of these there are frequent instances in Mr. Burke’s writings, which have something Pindaric in them. That which is not beautiful in itself, or in the mere form, may be made so by position or motion. A figure by no means elegant may be put in an elegant position. Mr. Kean’s figure is not good; yet we have seen him throw himself into attitudes of infinite spirit, dignity, and grace. John Kemble’s figure, on the contrary, is fine in itself; and he has only to show himself to be admired. The direction in which anything is moved has evidently nothing to do with the shape of the thing moved. The one may be a circle and the other a square. Little and deformed people seem to be well aware of this distinction, who, in spite of their unpromising appearance, usually assume the most imposing attitudes, and give themselves the most extraordinary airs imaginable.

8. Grandeur of motion is unity of motion.

This principle hardly needs illustration. Awkwardness is contradictory or disjointed motion.

9. Strength in art is giving the extremes, softness the uniting them.

There is no incompatibility between strength and softness, as is sometimes supposed by frivolous people. Weakness is not refinement. A shadow may be twice as deep in a finely coloured picture as in another, and yet almost imperceptible, from the gradations that lead to it, and blend it with the light. Correggio had prodigious strength, and greater softness. Nature is strong and soft, beyond the reach of art to imitate. Softness then does not imply the absence of considerable extremes, but it is the interposing a third thing between them, to break the force of the contrast. Guido is more soft than strong. Rembrandt is more strong than soft.

10. And lastly. That truth is, to a certain degree, beauty and grandeur, since all things are connected, and all things modify one another 348in nature. Simplicity is also grand and beautiful for the same reason. Elegance is ease and lightness, with precision.

This last head appears to contain a number of gratis dicta, got together for the sake of completing a decade of propositions. They have, however, some show of truth, and we should add little clearness to them by any reasoning upon the matter. So we will conclude here for the present.

FONTHILL ABBEY

London Magazine. November 1822.

The old sarcasm—Omne ignotum pro magnifico est—cannot be justly applied here. Fonthill Abbey, after being enveloped in impenetrable mystery for a length of years, has been unexpectedly thrown open to the vulgar gaze, and has lost none of its reputation for magnificence—though, perhaps, its visionary glory, its classic renown, have vanished from the public mind for ever. It is, in a word, a desert of magnificence, a glittering waste of laborious idleness, a cathedral turned into a toy-shop, an immense Museum of all that is most curious and costly, and, at the same time, most worthless, in the productions of art and nature. Ships of pearl and seas of amber are scarce a fable here—a nautilus’s shell surmounted with a gilt triumph of Neptune—tables of agate, cabinets of ebony and precious stones, painted windows ‘shedding a gaudy, crimson light,’ satin borders, marble floors, and lamps of solid gold—Chinese pagodas and Persian tapestry—all the miniature splendour of Solomon’s Temple is displayed to the view—whatever is far-fetched and dear-bought, rich in the materials, or rare and difficult in the workmanship—but scarce one genuine work of art, one solid proof of taste, one lofty relic of sentiment or imagination!

The difficult, the unattainable, the exclusive, are to be found here in profusion, in perfection; all else is wanting, or is brought in merely as a foil or as a stop-gap. In this respect the collection is as satisfactory as it is unique. The specimens exhibited are the best, the most highly finished, the most costly and curious, of that kind of ostentatious magnificence which is calculated to gratify the sense of property in the owner, and to excite the wondering curiosity of the stranger, who is permitted to see or (as a choice privilege and favour) even to touch baubles so dazzling and of such exquisite nicety of execution; and which, if broken or defaced, it would be next to impossible to replace. The same character extends to the pictures, which are mere furniture-pictures, remarkable chiefly for their antiquity or painful finishing, without beauty, without interest, 349and with about the same pretensions to attract the eye or delight the fancy as a well-polished mahogany table or a waxed oak-floor. Not one great work by one great name, scarce one or two of the worst specimens of the first masters, Leonardo’s Laughing Boy, or a copy from Raphael or Correggio, as if to make the thing remote and finical—but heaps of the most elaborate pieces of the worst of the Dutch masters, Breughel’s Sea-horses with coats of mother-of-pearl, and Rottenhammer’s Elements turned into a Flower-piece. The Catalogue, in short, is guiltless of the names of any of those works of art

‘Which like a trumpet make the spirits dance;’

and is sacred to those which rank no higher than veneering, and where the painter is on a precise par with the carver and gilder. Such is not our taste in art; and we confess we should have been a little disappointed in viewing Fonthill, had not our expectations been disabused beforehand. Oh! for a glimpse of the Escurial! where the piles of Titians lie; where nymphs, fairer than lilies, repose in green, airy, pastoral landscapes, and Cupids with curled locks pluck the wanton vine; at whose beauty, whose splendour, whose truth and freshness, Mengs could not contain his astonishment, nor Cumberland his raptures;

‘While groves of Eden, vanish’d now so long,

Live in description, and look green in song;’

the very thought of which, in that monastic seclusion and low dell, surrounded by craggy precipices, gives the mind a calenture, a longing desire to plunge through wastes and wilds, to visit at the shrine of such beauty, and be buried in the bosom of such verdant sweetness.—Get thee behind us, temptation; or not all China and Japan will detain us, and this article will be left unfinished, or found (as a volume of Keats’s poems was carried out by Mr. Ritchie to be dropped in the Great Desart) in the sorriest inn in the farthest part of Spain, or in the marble baths of the Moorish Alhambra, or amidst the ruins of Tadmor, or in barbaric palaces, where Bruce encountered Abyssinian queens! Any thing to get all this frippery, and finery, and tinsel, and glitter, and embossing, and system of tantalization, and fret-work of the imagination out of our heads, and take one deep, long, oblivious draught of the romantic and marvellous, the thirst of which the fame of Fonthill Abbey has raised in us, but not satisfied!—

Mr. Beckford has undoubtedly shown himself an industrious bijoutier, a prodigious virtuoso, an accomplished patron of unproductive labour, an enthusiastic collector of expensive trifles—the 350only proof of taste (to our thinking) he has shown in this collection is his getting rid of it. What splendour, what grace, what grandeur might he substitute in lieu of it! What a handwriting might he spread out upon the walls! What a spirit of poetry and philosophy might breathe there! What a solemn gloom, what gay vistas of fancy, like chequered light and shade, might genius, guided by art, shed around! The author of Vathek is a scholar; the proprietor of Fonthill has travelled abroad, and has seen all the finest remains of antiquity and boasted specimens of modern art. Why not lay his hands on some of these? He had power to carry them away. One might have expected to see, at least, a few fine old pictures, marble copies of the celebrated statues, the Apollo, the Venus, the Dying Gladiator, the Antinous, antique vases with their elegant sculptures, or casts from them, coins, medals, bas-reliefs, something connected with the beautiful forms of external nature, or with what is great in the mind or memorable in the history of man,—Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Chaldee manuscripts, or paper made of the reeds of the Nile, or mummies from the Pyramids! Not so; not a trace (or scarcely so) of any of these;—as little as may be of what is classical or imposing to the imagination from association or well-founded prejudice; hardly an article of any consequence that does not seem to be labelled to the following effect—‘This is mine, and there is no one else in the whole world in whom it can inspire the least interest, or any feeling beyond a momentary surprise!’ To show another your property is an act in itself ungracious, or null and void. It excites no pleasure from sympathy. Every one must have remarked the difference in his feelings on entering a venerable old cathedral, for instance, and a modern-built private mansion. The one seems to fill the mind and expand the form, while the other only produces a sense of listless vacuity, and disposes us to shrink into our own littleness. Whence is this, but that in the first case our associations of power, of interest, are general, and tend to aggrandize the species; and that in the latter (viz. the case of private property) they are exclusive, and tend to aggrandize none but the individual? This must be the effect, unless there is something grand or beautiful in the objects themselves that makes us forget the distinction of mere property, as from the noble architecture or great antiquity of a building; or unless they remind us of common and universal nature, as pictures, statues do, like so many mirrors, reflecting the external landscape, and carrying us out of the magic circle of self-love. But all works of art come under the head of property or showy furniture, which are neither distinguished by sublimity nor beauty, and are estimated only by the labour required to produce what is trifling or worthless, and are 351consequently nothing more than obtrusive proofs of the wealth of the immediate possessor. The motive for the production of such toys is mercenary, and the admiration of them childish or servile. That which pleases merely from its novelty, or because it was never seen before, cannot be expected to please twice: that which is remarkable for the difficulty or costliness of the execution can be interesting to no one but the maker or owner. A shell, however rarely to be met with, however highly wrought or quaintly embellished, can only flatter the sense of curiosity for a moment in a number of persons, or the feeling of vanity for a greater length of time in a single person. There are better things than this (we will be bold to say) in the world both of nature and art—things of universal and lasting interest, things that appeal to the imagination and the affections. The village-bell that rings out its sad or merry tidings to old men and maidens, to children and matrons, goes to the heart, because it is a sound significant of weal or woe to all, and has borne no uninteresting intelligence to you, to me, and to thousands more who have heard it perhaps for centuries. There is a sentiment in it. The face of a Madonna (if equal to the subject) has also a sentiment in it, ‘whose price is above rubies.’ It is a shrine, a consecrated source of high and pure feeling, a well-head of lovely expression, at which the soul drinks and is refreshed, age after age. The mind converses with the mind, or with that nature which, from long and daily intimacy, has become a sort of second self to it: but what sentiment lies hid in a piece of porcelain? What soul can you look for in a gilded cabinet or a marble slab? Is it possible there can be any thing like a feeling of littleness or jealousy in this proneness to a merely ornamental taste, that, from not sympathising with the higher and more expansive emanations of thought, shrinks from their display with conscious weakness and inferiority? If it were an apprehension of an invidious comparison between the proprietor and the author of any signal work of genius, which the former did not covet, one would think he must be at least equally mortified at sinking to a level in taste and pursuits with the maker of a Dutch toy. Mr. Beckford, however, has always had the credit of the highest taste in works of art as well as in virtù. As the showman in Goldsmith’s comedy declares that ‘his bear dances to none but the genteelest of tunes—Water parted from the Sea, or The Minuet in Ariadne;’—so it was supposed that this celebrated collector’s money went for none but the finest Claudes and the choicest specimens of some rare Italian master. The two Claudes are gone. It is as well—they must have felt a little out of their place here—they are kept in countenance, where they are, by the very best company!

352We once happened to have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Beckford in the Great Gallery of the Louvre—he was very plainly dressed in a loose great coat, and looked somewhat pale and thin—but what brought the circumstance to our minds, was that we were told on this occasion one of those thumping matter-of-fact lies, which are pretty common to other Frenchmen besides Gascons—viz. That he had offered the First Consul no less a sum than two hundred thousand guineas for the purchase of the St. Peter Martyr. Would that he had! and that Napoleon had taken him at his word!—which we think not unlikely. With two hundred thousand guineas he might have taken some almost impregnable fortress. ‘Magdeburg,’ said Buonaparte, ‘is worth a hundred queens:’ and he would have thought such another stronghold worth at least one Saint. As it is, what an opportunity have we lost of giving the public an account of this picture! Yet why not describe it, as we see it still ‘in our mind’s eye,’ standing on the floor of the Thuilleries, with none of its brightness impaired, through the long perspective of waning years? There it stands, and will for ever stand in our imagination, with the dark, scowling, terrific face of the murdered monk looking up to his assassin, the horror-struck features of the flying priest, and the skirts of his vest waving in the wind, the shattered branches of the autumnal trees that feel the coming gale, with that cold convent spire rising in the distance amidst the sapphire hills and golden sky—and over-head are seen the cherubim bringing the crown of martyrdom with rosy fingers; and (such is the feeling of truth, the soul of faith in the picture) you hear floating near, in dim harmonies, the pealing anthem, and the heavenly choir! Surely, the St. Peter Martyr surpasses all Titian’s other works, as he himself did all other painters. Had this picture been transferred to the present collection (or any picture like it) what a trail of glory would it have left behind it! for what a length of way would it have haunted the imagination! how often should we have wished to revisit it, and how fondly would the eye have turned back to the stately tower of Fonthill Abbey, that from the western horizon gives the setting sun to other climes, as the beacon and guide to the knowledge and the love of high Art!

The Duke of Wellington, it is said, has declared Fonthill to be ‘the finest thing in Europe.’ If so, it is since the dispersion of the Louvre. It is also said, that the King is to visit it. We do not mean to say it is not a fit place for the King to visit, or for the Duke to praise: but we know this, that it is a very bad one for us to describe. The father of Mr. Christie was supposed to be ‘equally great on a ribbon or a Raphael.’ This is unfortunately not our case. We are not ‘great’ at all, but least of all in little things. 353We have tried in various ways: we can make nothing of it. Look here—this is the Catalogue. Now what can we say (who are not auctioneers, but critics) to

Six Japan heron-pattern embossed dishes; or,

Twelve burnt-in dishes in compartments; or,

Sixteen ditto, enamelled with insects and birds; or,

Seven embossed soup-plates, with plants and rich borders; or,

Nine chocolate cups and saucers of egg-shell China, blue lotus pattern; or,

Two butter pots on feet, and a bason, cover, and stand, of Japan; or,

Two basons and covers, sea-green mandarin; or,

A very rare specimen of the basket-work Japan, ornamented with flowers in relief, of the finest kind, the inside gilt, from the Ragland Museum; or,

Two fine enamelled dishes scalloped; or,

Two blue bottles and two red and gold cups—extra fine; or,

A very curious egg-shell lantern; or,

Two very rare Japan cups mounted as milk buckets, with silver rims, gilt and chased; or,

Two matchless Japan dishes; or,

A very singular tray, the ground of a curious wood artificially waved, with storks in various attitudes on the shore, mosaic border, and avanturine back; or,

Two extremely rare bottles with chimæras and plants, mounted in silver gilt; or,

Twenty-four fine OLD SÈVE dessert plates; or,

Two precious enamelled bowl dishes, with silver handles;—

Or, to stick to the capital letters in this Paradise of Dainty Devices, lest we should be suspected of singling out the meanest articles, we will just transcribe a few of them, for the satisfaction of the curious reader:—

A Rich and Highly Ornamented Casket of the very rare gold Japan, completely covered with figures.

An Oriental Sculptured Tassa of Lapis Lazuli, mounted in silver gilt, and set with lapis lazuli intaglios. From the Garde Meuble of the late King of France.

A Persian Jad Vase and Cover, inlaid with flowers and ornaments, composed of oriental rubies, and emeralds on stems of fine gold.

A large Oval Engraved Rock Crystal Cup, with the figure of a Syren, carved from the block, and embracing a part of the vessel with her wings, so as to form a handle; from the Royal Collection of France.

An Oval Cup and Cover of Oriental Mamillated Agate, richly marked in arborescent mocoa, elaborately chased and engraved in a very superior manner. An unique article.

354Shall we go on with this fooling? We cannot. The reader must be tired of such an uninteresting account of empty jars and caskets—it reads so like Della Cruscan poetry. They are not even Nugæ Canoræ. The pictures are much in the same mimminèe-pimminèe taste. For instance, in the first and second days’ sale we meet with the following:—

A high-finished miniature drawing of a Holy Family, and a portrait: one of those with which the patents of the Venetian nobility were usually embellished.

A small landscape, by Breughel.

A small miniature painting after Titian, by Stella.

A curious painting, by Peter Peters Breughel, the conflagration of Troy—a choice specimen of this scarce master.

A picture by Franks, representing the temptation of St. Anthony.

A picture by old Breughel, representing a fête—a singular specimen of his first manner.

Lucas Cranach—The Madonna and Child—highly finished.

A crucifixion, painted upon a gold ground, by Andrea Orcagna, a rare and early specimen of Italian art. From the Campo Santo di Pisa.

A lady’s portrait, by Cosway.

Netecher—a lady seated, playing on the harpsichord, &c.

Who cares any thing about such frippery, time out of mind the stale ornaments of a pawnbroker’s shop; or about old Breughel, or Stella, or Franks, or Lucas Cranach, or Netecher, or Cosway?—But at that last name we pause, and must be excused if we consecrate to him a petit souvenir in our best manner: for he was Fancy’s child. All other collectors are fools to him: they go about with painful anxiety to find out the realities:—he said he had them—and in a moment made them of the breath of his nostrils and the fumes of a lively imagination. His was the crucifix that Abelard prayed to—the original manuscript of the Rape of the Lock—the dagger with which Felton stabbed the Duke of Buckingham—the first finished sketch of the Jocunda—Titian’s large colossal portrait of Peter Aretine—a mummy of an Egyptian king—an alligator stuffed. Were the articles authentic?—no matter—his faith in them was true. What a fairy palace was his of specimens of art, antiquarianism, and virtù, jumbled all together in the richest disorder, dusty, shadowy, obscure, with much left to the imagination (how different from the finical, polished, petty, perfect, modernised air of Fonthill!) and with copies of the old masters, cracked and damaged, which he touched and retouched with his own hand, and yet swore they were the genuine, the pure originals! He was gifted with a second-sight in such matters: he believed whatever was incredible. Happy 355mortal! Fancy bore sway in him, and so vivid were his impressions that they included the reality in them. The agreeable and the true with him were one. He believed in Swedenborgianism—he believed in animal magnetism—he had conversed with more than one person of the Trinity—he could talk with his lady at Mantua through some fine vehicle of sense, as we speak to a servant down stairs through an ear-pipe.—Richard Cosway was not the man to flinch from an ideal proposition. Once, at an Academy dinner, when some question was made, whether the story of Lambert’s leap was true, he started up, and said it was, for he was the man that performed it;—he once assured us, that the knee-pan of King James I. at Whitehall was nine feet across (he had measured it in concert with Mr. Cipriani); he could read in the book of Revelations without spectacles, and foretold the return of Buonaparte from Elba and from St. Helena. His wife, the most lady-like of Englishwomen, being asked, in Paris, what sort of a man her husband was, answered, Toujours riant, toujours gai. This was true. He must have been of French extraction. His soul had the life of a bird; and such was the jauntiness of his air and manner that, to see him sit to have his half-boots laced on, you would fancy (with the help of a figure) that, instead of a little withered elderly gentleman, it was Venus attired by the Graces. His miniatures were not fashionable—they were fashion itself. When more than ninety, he retired from his profession, and used to hold up the palsied right hand that had painted lords and ladies for upwards of sixty years, and smiled, with unabated good humour, at the vanity of human wishes. Take him with all his faults or follies, ‘we scarce shall look upon his like again!’

After speaking of him, we are ashamed to go back to Fonthill, lest one drop of gall should fall from our pen. No, for the rest of our way, we will dip it in the milk of human kindness, and deliver all with charity. There are four or five very curious cabinets—a triple jewel cabinet of opaque, with panels of transparent amber, dazzles the eye like a temple of the New Jerusalem—the Nautilus’s shell, with the triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite, is elegant, and the table on which it stands superb—the cups, vases, and sculptures, by Cellini, Berg, and John of Bologna, are as admirable as they are rare—the Berghem (a sea-port) is a fair specimen of that master—the Poulterer’s Shop, by G. Douw, is passable—there are some middling Bassans—the Sibylla Libyca, of L. Caracci, is in the grand style of composition—there is a good copy of a head by Parmegiano—the painted windows in the centre of the Abbey have a surprising effect—the form of the building (which was raised by torch-light) is fantastical, to say the least—and the grounds, which 356are extensive and fine from situation, are laid out with the hand of a master. A quantity of coot, teal, and wild fowl sport in a crystal stream that winds along the park; and their dark brown coats, seen in the green shadows of the water, have a most picturesque effect. Upon the whole, if we were not much pleased by our excursion to Fonthill, we were very little disappointed; and the place altogether is consistent and characteristic.

JUDGING OF PICTURES

Painters assume that none can judge of pictures but themselves. Many do this avowedly, some by implication, and all in practice. They exclaim against any one writing about art who has not served his apprenticeship to the craft, who is not versed in the detail of its mechanism. This has often put me a little out of patience—but I will take patience, and say why.

In the first place, with regard to the productions of living artists, painters have no right to speak at all. The way in which they are devoured and consumed by envy would be ludicrous if it were not lamentable. It is folly to talk of the divisions and backbitings of authors and poets while there are such people as painters in the world. I never in the whole course of my life heard one speak in hearty praise of another. Generally they blame downrightly—but at all events their utmost applause is with a damning reservation. Authors—even poets, the genus irritabile—do taste and acknowledge the beauties of the productions of their competitors; but painters either cannot see them through the green spectacles of envy, or seeing, they hate and deny them the more. In conformity with this, painters are more greedy of praise than any other order of men. ‘They gorge the little fame they get all raw’—they are gluttonous of it in their own persons in the proportion in which they would starve others.

I once knew a very remarkable instance of this. A friend of mine had written a criticism of an exhibition. In this were mentioned in terms of the highest praise the works of two brothers—sufficiently so, indeed, to have satisfied, one would have thought, the most insatiate. I was going down into the country to the place where these brothers lived, and I was asked to be the bearer of the work in which the critique appeared. I was so, and sent a copy to each of them. Some days afterwards I called on one of them, who began to speak of the review of his pictures. He expressed some thanks for what was said of them, but complained that the writer of 357it had fallen into a very common error under which he had often suffered—the confounding, namely, his pictures with his brother’s. ‘Now, my dear sir,’ continued he, ‘what is said of me is all very well, but here,’ turning to the high-wrought panegyric on his brother, ‘this is all in allusion to my style—this is all with reference to my pictures—this is all meant for me.’ I could hardly help exclaiming before the man’s face. The praise which was given to himself was such as would have called a blush to any but a painter’s face to speak of; but, not content with this, he insisted on appropriating his brother’s also: How insatiate is the pictorial man!

But to come to the more general subject—I deny in toto and at once the exclusive right and power of painters to judge of pictures. What is a picture meant for? To convey certain ideas to the mind of painters? that is, of one man in ten thousand?—No, but to make them apparent to the eye and mind of all. If a picture be admired by none but painters, I think it is strong presumption that the picture is bad. A painter is no more a judge, I suppose, than another man of how people feel and look under certain passions and events. Every body sees as well as him whether certain figures on the canvas are like such a man, or like a cow, a tree, a bridge, or a windmill. All that the painter can do more than the lay spectator, is to tell why and how the merits and defects of a picture are produced. I see that such a figure is ungraceful and out of nature—he shows me that the drawing is faulty, or the foreshortening incorrect. He then points out to me whence the blemish arises; but he is not a bit more aware of the existence of the blemish than I am. In Hogarth’s ‘Frontispiece’ I see that the whole business is absurd, for a man on a hill two miles off could not light his pipe at a candle held out of a window close to me—he tells me that it is from a want of perspective, that is, of certain rules by which certain effects are obtained. He shows me why the picture is bad, but I am just as well capable of saying ‘The picture is bad’ as he is. To take a coarse illustration, but one most exactly apposite, I can tell whether a made dish be good or bad,—whether its taste be pleasant or disagreeable.—It is dressed for the palate of uninitiated people, and not alone for the disciples of Dr. Kitchener and Mr. Ude. But it needs a cook to tell one why it is bad; that there is a grain too much of this, or a drop too much of t’other—that it has been boiled rather too much, or stewed rather too little—these things, the wherefores, as ‘Squire Western would say, I require an artist to tell me,—but the point in debate—the worth or the bad quality of the painting or potage, I am as well able to decide upon as any he who ever brandished a pallet or a pan, a brush or a skimming-ladle.

358To go into the higher branches of the art—the poetry of painting—I deny still more peremptorily the exclusiveness of the initiated. It might be as well said, that none but those who could write a play have any right to sit on the third row in the pit, on the first night of a new tragedy. Nay, there is more plausibility in the one than the other. No man can judge of poetry without possessing in some measure a poetical mind. It need not be of that degree necessary to create, but it must be equal to taste and to analyze. Now in painting there is a directly mechanical power required to render those imaginations, to the judging of which the mind may be perfectly competent. I may know what is a just or a beautiful representation of love, anger, madness, despair, without being able to draw a straight line—and I do not see how that faculty adds to the capability of so judging. A very great proportion of painting is mechanical. The higher kinds of painting need first a poet’s mind to conceive:—Very well, but then they need a draughtsman’s hand to execute. Now he who possesses the mind alone is fully able to judge of what is produced, even though he is by no means endowed with the mechanical power of producing it himself. I am far from saying that any one is capable of duly judging pictures of the higher class. It requires a mind capable of estimating the noble, or touching, or terrible, or sublime subjects which they present—but there is no sort of necessity that we should be able to put them upon the canvas ourselves.

There is one point, even, on which painters usually judge worse of pictures than the general spectator; I say usually, for there are some painters who are too thoroughly intellectual to run into the error of which I am about to speak. I mean that they are apt to overlook the higher and more mental parts of a picture, in their haste to criticise its mechanical properties. They forget the expression, in being too mindful of what is more strictly manual. They talk of such a colour being skilfully or unskillfully put in opposition to another, rather than of the moral contrast of the countenances of a group. They say that the flesh-tints are well brought out, before they speak of the face which the flesh forms. To use a French term of much condensation, they think of the physique before they bestow any attention on the morale.

I am the farthest in the world from falling into the absurdity of upholding that painters should neglect the mechanical parts of their profession; for without a mastery in them it would be impossible to body forth any imaginations, however strong or beautiful. I only wish that they should not overlook the end to which these are the means—and give them an undue preference over that end itself. Still more I object to their arrogating to the possessors of these qualities 359of hand and eye all power of judging that which is conveyed through the physical vision into the inward soul.

On looking over what I have written, I find that I have used some expressions with regard to painters as a body which may make it appear that I hold them in light esteem; whereas no one can admire their art, or appreciate their pursuit of it, more highly than I do. Of what I have said, however, with regard to their paltry denial of each other’s merits, I cannot bate them an ace. I appeal to all those who are in the habit of associating with painters to say whether my assertion be not correct. And why should they do this?—surely the field is wide enough. Haydon and Wilkie can travel to fame together without ever jostling each other by the way. Surely there are parallel roads which may be followed, each leading to the same point—but neither crossing or trenching upon one another.

The Art of Painting is one equally delightful to the eye and to the mind. It has very nearly the reality of dramatic exhibition, and has permanence, which that is wholly without. We may gaze at a picture, and pause to think, and turn and gaze again. The art is inferior to poetry in magnitude of extent and succession of detail—but its power over any one point is far superior: it seizes it, and figures it forth in corporeal existence if not in bodily life. It gives to the eye the physical semblance of those figures which have floated in vagueness in the mind. It condenses indistinct and gauzy visions into palpable forms—as, in the story, the morning mist gathered into the embodying a spirit. But shall it be said that the enchanter alone can judge of the enchantment—that none shall have an eye to see, and a heart to feel, unless he have also a hand to execute? Alas, our inherent perceptions give the lie to this. As I used to go to the Louvre, day after day, to glut myself and revel in the congregated genius of pictorial ages, would any one convince me that it was necessary to be able to paint that I might duly appreciate a picture?

THE VATICAN

L. The Vatican did not quite answer your expectation?

H. To say the truth, it was not such a blow as the Louvre; but then it came after it, and what is more, at the distance of twenty years. To have made the same impression, it should have been twenty times as fine; though that was scarcely possible, since all that there is fine in the Vatican, in Italy, or in the world, was in the Louvre when I first saw it, except the frescoes of Raphael and 360Michael Angelo, which could not be transported, without taking the walls of the building, across the Alps.

L. And what, may I ask (for I am curious to hear,) did you think of these same frescoes?

H. Much the same as before I saw them. As far as I could judge, they are very like the prints. I do not think the spectator’s idea of them is enhanced beyond this. The Raphaels, of which you have a distinct and admirable view, are somewhat faded—I do not mean in colour, but the outline is injured—and the Sibyls and Prophets in the Sistine Chapel are painted on the ceiling at too great a height for the eye to distinguish the faces as accurately as one would wish. The features and expressions of the figures near the bottom of the ‘Last Judgment’ are sufficiently plain, and horrible enough they are.

L. What was your opinion of the ‘Last Judgment’ itself?

H. It is literally too big to be seen. It is like an immense field of battle, or charnel-house, strewed with carcases and naked bodies: or it is a shambles of Art. You have huge limbs apparently torn from their bodies and stuck against the wall: anatomical dissections, backs and diaphragms, tumbling ‘with hideous ruin and combustion down,’ neither intelligible groups, nor perspective, nor colour; you distinguish the principal figure, that of Christ, only from its standing in the centre of the picture, on a sort of island of earth, separated from the rest of the subject by an inlet of sky. The whole is a scene of enormous, ghastly confusion, in which you can only make out quantity and number, and vast, uncouth masses of bones and muscles. It has the incoherence and distortion of a troubled dream, without the shadowiness; everything is here corporeal and of solid dimensions.

L. But surely there must be something fine in the Sibyls and Prophets, from the copies we have of them; justifying the high encomiums of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of so many others.

H. It appears to me that nothing can be finer as to form, attitude, and outline. The whole conception is so far inimitably noble and just; and all that is felt as wanting, is a proportionable degree of expression in the countenances, though of this I am not sure, for the height (as I said before) baffles a nice scrutiny. They look to me unfinished, vague, and general. Like some fabulous figure from the antique, the heads were brutal, the bodies divine. Or at most, the faces were only continuations of and on a par with the physical form, large and bold, and with great breadth of drawing, but no more the seat of a vivifying spirit, or with a more powerful and marked intelligence emanating from them, than from the rest of the limbs, the hands, or even drapery. The filling up of the mind is, I suspect, 361wanting, the divinæ particula auræ: there is prodigious and mighty prominence and grandeur and simplicity in the features, but they are not surcharged with meaning, with thought or passion, like Raphael’s, ‘the rapt soul sitting in the eyes.’ On the contrary, they seem only to be half-informed, and might be almost thought asleep. They are fine moulds, and contain a capacity of expression, but are not bursting, teeming with it. The outward material shrine, or tabernacle, is unexceptionable; but there is not superadded to it a revelation of the workings of the mind within. The forms in Michael Angelo are objects to admire in themselves: those of Raphael are merely a language pointing to something beyond, and full of this ultimate import.

L. But does not the difference arise from the nature of the subjects?

H. I should think, not. Surely, a Sibyl in the height of her phrensy, or an inspired Prophet—‘seer blest’—in the act of receiving or of announcing the will of the Almighty, is not a less fit subject for the most exalted and impassioned expression than an Apostle, a Pope, a Saint, or a common man. If you say that these persons are not represented in the act of inspired communication, but in their ordinary quiescent state,—granted; but such preternatural workings, as well as the character and frame of mind proper for them, must leave their shadowings and lofty traces behind them. The face that has once held communion with the Most High, or been wrought to madness by deep thought and passion, or that inly broods over its sacred or its magic lore, must be ‘as a book where one may read strange matters,’ that cannot be opened without a correspondent awe and reverence. But here is ‘neither the cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night:’ neither the blaze of immediate inspiration nor the hallowed radiance, the mystic gloomy light that follows it, so far as I was able to perceive. I think it idle to say that Michael Angelo painted man in the abstract, and so left the expression indeterminate, when he painted prophets and other given characters in particular. He has painted them on a larger scale, and cast their limbs in a gigantic mould to give a dignity and command answering to their situations and high calling, but I do not see the same high character and intensity of thought or purpose impressed upon their countenances. Thus, nothing can be nobler or more characteristic than the figure of the prophet Jeremiah. It is not abstracted, but symbolical of the history and functions of the individual. The whole figure bends and droops under a weight of woe, like a large willow tree surcharged with showers. Yet there is no peculiar expression of grief in one part more than another; the head hangs down despondingly indeed, but so do the hands, the clothes, and every part seems to labour under and be involved in a 362complication of distress. Again, the prophet Ezra is represented reading in a striking attitude of attention, and with the book held close to him as if to lose no part of its contents in empty space:—all this is finely imagined and designed, but then the book reflects back none of its pregnant, hieroglyphic meaning on the face, which, though large and stately, is an ordinary, unimpassioned, and even unideal one. Daniel, again, is meant for a face of inward thought and musing, but it might seem as if the compression of the features were produced by external force as much as by involuntary perplexity. I might extend these remarks to this artist’s other works; for instance, to the Moses, of which the form and attitude express the utmost dignity and energy of purpose, but the face wants a something of the intelligence and expansive views of the Hebrew legislator. It is cut from the same block, and by the same bold sweeping hand, as the sandals or the drapery.

L. Do you think there is any truth or value in the distinction which assigns to Raphael the dramatic, and to Michael Angelo the epic department of the art?

H. Very little, I confess. It is so far true, that Michael Angelo painted single figures, and Raphael chiefly groups; but Michael Angelo gave life and action to his figures, though not the same expression to the face. I think this arose from two circumstances. First, from his habits as a sculptor, in which form predominates, and in which the fixed lineaments are more attended to than the passing inflections, which are neither so easily caught nor so well given in sculpture as in painting. Secondly, it strikes me that Michael Angelo, who was a strong, iron-built man, sympathised more with the organic structure, with bones and muscles, than with the more subtle and sensitive workings of that fine medullary substance called the brain. He compounded man admirably of brass or clay, but did not succeed equally in breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, of thought or feeling. He has less humanity than Raphael, and I think that he is also less divine, unless it be asserted that the body is less allied to earth than the mind. Expression is, after all, the principal thing. If Michael Angelo’s forms have, as I allow, an intellectual character about them and a greatness of gusto, so that you would almost say ‘his bodies thought;’ his faces, on the other hand, have a drossy and material one. For example, in the figure of Adam coming from the hand of his Creator, the composition, which goes on the idea of a being starting into life at the touch of Omnipotence, is sublime:—the figure of Adam, reclined at ease with manly freedom and independence, is worthy of the original founder of our race; and the expression of the face, implying passive resignation and the first 363consciousness of existence, is in thorough keeping—but I see nothing in the countenance of the Deity denoting supreme might and majesty. The Eve, too, lying extended at the foot of the Forbidden Tree, has an elasticity and buoyancy about it, that seems as if it could bound up from the earth of its own accord, like a bow that has been bent. It is all life and grace. The action of the head thrown back, and the upward look, correspond to the rest. The artist was here at home. In like manner, in the allegorical figures of Night and Morn at Florence, the faces are ugly or distorted, but the contour and actions of the limbs express dignity and power, in the very highest degree. The legs of the figure of Night, in particular, are twisted into the involutions of a serpent’s folds; the neck is curved like the horse’s, and is clothed with thunder.

L. What, then, is the precise difference between him and Raphael, according to your conception?

H. As far as I can explain the matter, it seems to me that Michael Angelo’s forms are finer, but that Raphael’s are more fraught with meaning; that the rigid outline and disposable masses in the first are more grand and imposing, but that Raphael puts a greater proportion of sentiment into his, and calls into play every faculty of mind and body of which his characters are susceptible, with greater subtilty and intensity of feeling. Dryden’s lines—

‘A fiery soul that working out its way

Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay’—

do not exactly answer to Raphael’s character, which is mild and thoughtful rather than fiery; nor is there any want either of grace or grandeur in his figures; but the passage describes the ‘o’er-informing’ spirit that breathes through them, and the unequal struggle of the expression to vent itself by more than ordinary physical means. Raphael lived a much shorter time than Michael Angelo, who also lived long after him; and there is no comparison between the number, the variety, or the finished elegance of their works.^[53] Michael Angelo possibly lost himself in the material and instrumental part of art, in embodying a technical theory, or in acquiring the grammar of different branches of study, excelling in knowledge and in gravity of pretension; whereas Raphael gave himself up to the diviner or lovelier impulse that breathes its soul over the face of 364things, being governed by a sense of reality and of general truth. There is nothing exclusive or repulsive in Raphael; he is open to all impressions alike, and seems to identify himself with whatever he saw that arrested his attention or could interest others. Michael Angelo studied for himself, and raised objects to the standards of his conception, by a formula or system: Raphael invented for others, and was guided only by sympathy with them. Michael Angelo was painter, sculptor, architect; but he might be said to make of each art a shrine in which to build up the stately and gigantic stature of his own mind:—Raphael was only a painter, but in that one art he seemed to pour out all the treasures and various excellence of nature, grandeur and scope of design, exquisite finishing, force, grace, delicacy, the strength of man, the softness of woman, the playfulness of infancy, thought, feeling, invention, imitation, labour, ease, and every quality that can distinguish a picture, except colour. Michael Angelo, in a word, stamped his own character on his works, or recast Nature in a mould of his own, leaving out much that was excellent: Raphael received his inspiration from without, and his genius caught the lambent flame of grace, of truth, and grandeur, which are reflected in his works with a light clear, transparent and unfading.

L. Will you mention one or two things that particularly struck you?

H. There is a figure of a man leading a horse in the Attila, which I think peculiarly characteristic. It is an ordinary face and figure, in a somewhat awkward dress: but he seems as if he had literally walked into the picture at that instant; he is looking forward with a mixture of earnestness and curiosity, as if the scene were passing before him, and every part of his figure and dress is flexible and in motion, pliant to the painter’s plastic touch. This figure, so unconstrained and free, animated, salient, put me in mind, compared with the usual stiffness and shackles of the art, of chain-armour used by the knights of old instead of coat-of-mail. Raphael’s fresco figures seem the least of all others taken from plaster-casts; this is more than can be said of Michael Angelo’s, which might be taken from, or would serve for very noble ones. The horses in the same picture also delight me. Though dumb, they appear as though they could speak, and were privy to the import of the scene. Their inflated nostrils and speckled skins are like a kind of proud flesh; or they are animals spiritualised. In the Miracle of Bolsano is that group of children, round-faced, smiling, with large-orbed eyes, like infancy nestling in the arms of affection; the studied elegance of the choir of tender novices, with all their sense of the godliness of their function and the beauty of holiness; and the hard, liny, individual 365portraits of priests and cardinals on the right-hand, which have the same life, spirit, boldness, and marked character, as if you could have looked in upon the assembled conclave. Neither painting nor popery ever produced anything finer. There is the utmost hardness and materiality of outline, with a spirit of fire. The School of Athens is full of striking parts and ingenious contrasts; but I prefer to it the Convocation of Saints, with that noble circle of Prophets and Apostles in the sky, on whose bent foreheads and downcast eyes you see written the City of the Blest, the beatific presence of the Most High and the Glory hereafter to be revealed, a solemn brightness and a fearful dream, and that scarce less inspired circle of sages canonised here on earth, poets, heroes, and philosophers, with the painter himself, entering on one side like the recording angel, smiling in youthful beauty, and scarce conscious of the scene he has embodied. If there is a failure in any of these frescoes, it is, I think, in the Parnassus, in which there is something quaint and affected. In the St. Peter delivered from prison, he has burst with Rembrandt into the dark chambers of night, and thrown a glory round them. In the story of Cupid and Psyche, at the Little Farnese, he has, I think, even surpassed himself in a certain swelling and voluptuous grace, as if beauty grew and ripened under his touch, and the very genius of ancient fable hovered over his enamoured pencil.

L. I believe you when you praise, not always when you condemn. Was there anything else that you saw to give you a higher idea of him than the specimens we have in this country?

H. Nothing superior to the Cartoons for boldness of design and execution; but I think his best oil pictures are abroad, though I had seen most of them before in the Louvre. I had not, however, seen the Crowning of the Virgin, which is in the Picture-gallery of the Vatican, and appears to me one of his very highest-wrought pictures. The Virgin in the clouds is of an admirable sedateness and dignity, and over the throng of breathing faces below there is poured a stream of joy and fervid devotion that can be compared to nothing but the golden light that evening skies pour on the edges of the surging waves. ‘Hope elevates, and joy brightens their every feature.’ The Foligno Virgin was at Paris, in which I cannot say I am quite satisfied with the Madonna; it has rather a précieuse expression; but I know not enough how to admire the innumerable heads of cherubs surrounding her, touched in with such care and delicacy, yet so as scarcely to be perceptible except on close inspection, nor that figure of the winged cherub below, offering the casket, and with his round, chubby face and limbs as full of rosy health and joy, as the cup is full of the juice of the purple vine. There is another picture of his I 366will mention, the Leo X. in the Palace Pitti, ‘on his front engraven thought and public care; ‘and again, that little portrait in a cup in the Louvre, muffled in thought and buried in a kind of mental chiaro scuro. When I think of these and so many other of his inimitable works, ‘scattered like stray-gifts o’er the earth,’ meeting our thoughts half-way, and yet carrying them farther than we should have been able of ourselves, enriching, refining, exalting all around, I am at a loss to find motives for equal admiration or gratitude in what Michael Angelo has left, though his Prophets and Sibyls on the walls of the Sistine Chapel are thumping make-weights thrown into the opposite scale. It is nearly impossible to weigh or measure their different merits. Perhaps Michael Angelo’s works, in their vastness and unity, may give a greater blow to some imaginations and lift the mind more out of itself, though accompanied with less delight or food for reflection, resembling the rocky precipice, whose ‘stately height though bare’ overlooks the various excellence and beauty of subjected art.

L. I do not think your premises warrant your conclusion. If what you have said of each is true, I should give the undoubted preference to Raphael as at least the greater painter, if not the greater man. I must prefer the finest face to the largest mask.

H. I wish you could see and judge for yourself.

L. I prythee do not mock me. Proceed with your account. Was there nothing else worth mentioning after Raphael and Michael Angelo?

H. So much, that it has slipped from my memory. There are the finest statues in the world there, and they are scattered and put into niches or separate little rooms for effect, and not congregated together like a meeting of the marble gods of mythology, as was the case in the Louvre. There are some of Canova’s, worked up to a high pitch of perfection, which might just as well have been left alone—and there are none, I think, equal to the Elgin marbles. A bath of one of the Antonines, of solid porphyry and as large as a good-sized room, struck me as the strongest proof of ancient magnificence. The busts are innumerable, inimitable, have a breathing clearness and transparency, revive ancient history, and are very like actual English heads and characters. The inscriptions alone on fragments of antique marble would furnish years of study to the curious or learned in that way. The vases are most elegant—of proportions and materials unrivalled in taste and in value. There are some tapestry copies of the Cartoons, very glaring and unpleasant to look at. The room containing the coloured maps of Italy, done about three hundred years ago, is one of the longest and most striking; and the passing through it with the green hillocks, rivers, and mountains on its spotty sides, is 367like going a delightful and various journey. You recall or anticipate the most interesting scenes and objects. Out of the windows of these long straggling galleries, you look down into a labyrinth of inner and of outer courts, or catch the Dome of St Peter’s adjoining (like a huge shadow), or gaze at the distant amphitheatre of hills surrounding the Sacred City, which excite a pleasing awe, whether considered as the haunts of banditti or from a recollection of the wondrous scene, the hallowed spot, on which they have overlooked for ages, Imperial or Papal Rome, or her commonwealth, more august than either. Here also in one chamber of the Vatican is a room stuffed full of artists, copying the Transfiguration, or the St. Jerome of Domenichino, spitting, shrugging, and taking snuff, admiring their own performances and sneering at those of their neighbours; and on certain days of the week the whole range of the rooms is thrown open without reserve to the entire population of Rome and its environs, priests and peasants, with heads not unlike those that gleam from the walls, perfect in expression and in costume, and young peasant girls in clouted shoes with looks of pleasure, timidity and wonder, such as those with which Raphael himself, from the portraits of him, might be supposed to have hailed the dawn of heaven-born art. There is also (to mention small works with great) a portrait of George the Fourth in his robes (a present to his Holiness) turned into an outer room; and a tablet erected by him in St. Peter’s, to the memory of James III. Would you believe it? Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine, when he saw the averted looks of the good people of England as they proclaimed his Majesty James III. in any of the towns through which they passed, would not have believed it. Fergus Maclvor, when in answer to the crier of the court, who repeated ‘Long live King George!’ he retorted, ‘Long live King James!’ would not have believed it possible!

L. Hang your politics.

H. Never mind, if they do not hang me.

ENGLISH STUDENTS AT ROME

‘No wher so besy a man as he ther n’as,

And yet he semed besier than he was.’

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

Rome is of all places the worst to study in, for the same reason that it is the best to lounge in. There is no end of objects to divert and distract the mind. If a person has no other view than to pass away his time, to fill his portfolio or common-place book, or to 368improve his general taste and knowledge, he may find employment and amusement here for ever: if ever he wishes to do any thing, he should fly from it as he would from the plague. There is a species of malaria hanging over it, which infects both the mind and the body. It has been the seat of too much activity and luxury formerly, not to have produced a correspondent torpor and stagnation (both in the physical and moral world) as the natural consequence at present. If Necessity is the mother of Invention it must be stifled in the birth here, where every thing is already done and provided to your hand that you could possibly wish for or think of. You have no stimulus to exertion, for you have but to open your eyes and see, in order to live in a continued round of delight and admiration. The doors of a splendid banquet of all that is rare and rich in art stand ready open to you, you are invited to enter in and feast your senses and your imagination gratis; and it is not likely that, under these circumstances, you will try to earn a scanty meal by hard labour, or even to gain an appetite by wholesome exercise. The same thing occurs here that is objected to the inhabitants of great cities in general. They have too many objects always passing before them, that engage their attention and fill up their time, to allow them either much leisure or inclination for thought or study. Rome is the great metropolis of Art; and it is somewhat to be feared that those who take up their abode there will become, like other cockneys, ignorant, conceited, and superficial.

The queen and mistress of the ancient and the modern world claims such a transcendent superiority over the mind, that you look down as it were from this eminence on the rest of mankind; and from the contempt you feel for others, come to have a mighty good opinion of yourself. The being at Rome (both from the sound of the name and the monuments of genius and magnificence she has to show) is of itself a sufficient distinction without doing anything there. After viewing some splendid relic of antiquity, the efforts of contemporary art sink into insignificance and nothingness: but we are disposed to occupy the vacant space, the clear ground thus created, with our own puny pretensions and aspiring fancies. As this indulgence of alternate enthusiasm and reflected self-complacency is a never-failing source of gratification, and a much less laborious one than the embodying our vain imaginations in practice, we easily rest in the means as the end; and without making any farther progress, are perfectly satisfied with what others have done, and what we are to do. We indeed wear the livery, and follow in the train of greatness; and, like other livery-servants, despise the rabble, growing more lazy, affected, luxurious, insolent, trifling, and incapable of gaining an honest livelihood every 369hour. We are the dupes of flattering appearances and of false comparisons between ourselves and others. We think that a familiarity with great names and great works is an approach to an equality with them; or fondly proceed to establish our own pretensions on the ruins of others, not considering that if it were not what we do, but what we see, that is the standard of proficiency, thousands of spectators might give themselves the same airs of self-importance on the same idle score, and treat us as barbarians and poor creatures, if they had our impertinence and presumption. We stand before a picture of some great master, and fancy there is nothing between him and us: we walk under the Dome of St. Peter’s, and it seems to grow larger with a consciousness of our presence and with the amplitude of our conceptions. All this is fine as well as easy work; nor can it be supposed that we shall be in any haste to exchange this waking dream for the drudgery of mechanical exertion, or for the mortifying evidence of the disparity between our theory and our practice. All the great names and schools of art stand proxy for us, till we choose to take the responsibility on our own shoulders; and as it happens in other cases, we have no objection to make our faith in the merits of others a convenient substitute for good works and zealous exertions in the cause. Yet a common stone-mason or sign-painter, who understands the use of his tools and sticks close to his business, has more resemblance to Raphael or Michael Angelo, and stands a better chance of achieving something great, than those who visit the Corridors of the Vatican or St. Peter’s once a day, return home, spend the evening in extolling what they have witnessed, begin a sketch or a plan and lay it aside, and saunter out again the next day in search of fresh objects to dissipate ennui and kill the time without being obliged to draw for one instant on their own resources or resolution.

Numberless are the instances of those who go on thus, while vanity and indolence together are confirmed into an incurable disease, the sleek, pampered tone of which they mistake for the marks of taste and genius. What other result can be expected? If they do any thing, it is all over with them. They not only strip off the mask from their own self-love, but expose themselves to the pity and derision of their competitors, whom they before affected to despise. Within ‘the vast, the unbounded’ circle of pretension, of vapouring, and inuendo, they are safe: the future would-be Raphaels, Correggios, &c. have nothing to dread from criticism while they hatch their embryo conquests and prepare a distant triumph: no one can apply Ithuriel’s spear to detect what is confessedly a shadow. But they must waive this privilege when they descend into the common lists; and in proportion as they have committed themselves in conversation or in 370idle fancy, they are ashamed to commit themselves in reality, because any thing they could do at first must unavoidably fall short of that high standard of excellence, which (if at all) can only be attained by the labour and experience of a whole life. Their real incapacity shrinks from the pomp of their professions. The magnificence of the air-drawn edifice of their reputation prevents them from laying the first stone in downright earnest; and they have no other mode of excusing the delay, and the indecision it betokens, than by assuming still greater delicacy of taste and loftiness of ambition, and by thus aggrandising their unfounded schemes, rendering their execution more hopeless and impossible. Should they begin something, a new thought strikes them, and they throw aside a very promising sketch to enlarge their canvass and proceed upon a scale more worthy of them: to this enlarged design some object is indispensably necessary, which is unluckily wanting:—thus time is gained, a new lease of credit is granted, and instead of putting the last hand to the original sketch, they take merit to themselves for the enlargement of their views and the determined pursuit of the higher walk of art. Meantime, the smaller picture stands unfinished on the easel, and nominal commissions pour in for new and more extended projects. Then comes a new secret of colouring, a new principle of grouping, a new theory, a new book—always something to draw off the attention from its proper object, and to substitute laborious idleness for true pains and profitable study. Then a picture is to be copied as a preparation for undertaking a given subject, or a library to be ransacked to ascertain the precise truth of the historical facts or the exact conception of the characters; and after a year thus lost in desultory and scrupulous researches, the whole plan is given up, either because no one comes forward effectually to patronise it, or because some more tempting prospect is opened into the realms of art and high renown. Then again friends are to be consulted; some admire one thing, some another; some recommend the study of nature, others are all for the antique; some insist on the utmost finishing, others explode all attention to minutiæ; artists find one fault, the uninstructed spectator another; and in going backwards and forwards from one to another, listening to new reasons and new objections, in reconciling all parties and pleasing none, life is passed in endless doubts and difficulties, and we discover that our most valuable years have fled in busy preparations to do—nothing. It is then too late, and we consume the remainder in vain regrets and querulous repinings, as we did the flower and marrow of our time in fanciful speculation and egregious trifling. The student should of all things steer clear of the character of the dilettanti—it is the rock on which he is most likely to split. 371Pleasure, or extravagance, or positive idleness, are less dangerous; for these he knows to be fatal to his success, and he indulges in them with his eyes open. But in the other case, he is thrown off his guard by the most plausible appearances. Vanity here puts on the garb of humility, indecision of long-sighted perseverance, and habitual sloth of constant industry. Few will reproach us, while we are accumulating the means of ultimate success, with neglecting the end; or remind us that though art is long, life is short. It is true, that art is a long and steep ascent, but we must learn to scale it by regular, practical stages, and not by a hasty wish or still more futile calculations and measurements of the height. We can only indeed be sensible of its real height by the actual progress we have made, and by the glorious views that gradually dawn upon us, the cheerers of our way, and the harbingers of our success. It is only by attempting something that we feel where our strength lies, and if we have what travellers call a forte journée to perform, it is the more indispensable that we should set out betimes and not loiter on the road. What is well done is the consequence of doing much—perfection is the reward of numberless attempts and failures. The chief requisites are a practised hand and eye, and an active imagination. Indolent taste and passive acquirements are not enough. They will neither supply our wants while living, nor enable us to leave a name behind us after we are dead. Farther, the brooding over excellence with a feverish importunity, and stimulating ourselves to great things by an abstract love of fame, can do little good, and may do much harm. It is, no doubt, a very delightful and enviable state of mind to be in, but neither a very arduous nor a very profitable one. Nothing remarkable was ever done, except by following up the impulse of our own minds, by grappling with difficulties and improving our advantages, not by dreaming over our own premature triumphs or doating on the achievements of others.

If it were nothing else, the having the works of the great masters of former times always before us is enough to discourage and defeat all ordinary attempts. How many elegant designs and meritorious conceptions must lie buried under the high arched porticoes of the Vatican! The walls of the Sistine Chapel must fall upon the head of inferior pretensions and crush them. What minor pencil can stand in competition with the ‘petrific mace’ that painted the Last Judgment? What fancy can expand into blooming grace and beauty by the side of the Heliodorus? What is it we could add, or what occasion, what need, what pretence is there to add anything to the art after this? Who in the presence of such glorious works does not wish to shrink into himself, or to live only for them? Is it not a 372profanation to think he can hope to do any thing like them? And who, having once seen, can think with common patience or with zealous enthusiasm of doing aught but treading in their footsteps? If the artist has a genius and turn of mind at all similar, they baulk and damp him by their imposing stately height: if his talent lies in a different and humbler walk, they divert and unsettle his mind. If he is contented to look on and admire, a vague and unattainable idea of excellence floats before his imagination, and tantalises him with equally vain hopes and wishes. If he copies, he becomes a mechanic; and besides, runs another risk. He finds he can with ease produce in three days an incomparably finer effect than he could do with all his efforts, and after any length of time, in working without assistance. He is therefore disheartened and put out of countenance, and returns with reluctance to original composition: for where is the sense of taking ten times the pains and undergoing ten times the anxiety to produce not one hundredth part of the effect? When I was young, I made one or two studies of strong contrasts of light and shade in the manner of Rembrandt with great care and (as it was thought) with some success. But after I had once copied some of Titian’s portraits in the Louvre, my ambition took a higher flight. Nothing would serve my turn but heads like Titian—Titian expressions, Titian complexions, Titian dresses; and as I could not find these where I was, after one or two abortive attempts to engraft Italian art on English nature, I flung away my pencil in disgust and despair. Otherwise I might have done as well as others, I dare say, but from a desire to do too well. I did not consider that Nature is always the great thing, or that ‘Pan is a god, Apollo is no more!’—Nor is the student repelled and staggered in his progress only by the degree of excellence, but distracted and puzzled by the variety of incompatible claims upon his ingenuous and sincere enthusiasm. While any one attends to what circumstances bring in his way, or keeps in the path that is prompted by his own genius (such as it may be), he stands a fair chance, by directing all his efforts to one point, to compass the utmost object of his ambition. But what likelihood is there of this from the moment that all the great schools, and all the most precious chef-d’œuvres of art, at once unveil their diversified attractions to his astonished sight? What Protestant, for instance, can be properly and permanently imbued with the fervent devotion or saint-like purity of the Catholic religion, or hope to transfer the pride, pomp, and pageantry of that detested superstition to his own canvass, with real feeling and con amore? What modern can enter fully into the spirit of the ancient Greek mythology, or rival the symmetry of its naked forms? What single individual will presume to unite ‘the colouring 373of Titian, the drawing of Raphael, the airs of Guido, the learning of Poussin, the purity of Domenichino, the correggiescity of Correggio, and the grand contour of Michael Angelo,’ in the same composition? Yet those who are familiar with all these different styles and their excellences, require them all. Mere originality will not suffice, it is quaint and Gothic—common-place perfection is still more intolerable, it is insipid and mechanical. Modern Art is indeed like the fabled Sphinx, that imposes impossible tasks on her votaries, and as she clasps them to her bosom pierces them to the heart. Let a man have a turn and taste for landscape, she whispers him that nothing is truly interesting but the human face: if he makes a successful debut in portrait, he soon (under the same auspices) aspires to history; but if painting in its highest walks seems within his reach, she then plays off the solid forms and shining surfaces of sculpture before his eyes, urging him to combine the simple grandeur of the Antique with Canova’s polished elegance; or he is haunted with the majestic effects and scientific rules of architecture, and ruined temples and broken fragments nod in his bewildered imagination! What is to be done in this case? What generally is done—Nothing. Amidst so many pretensions, how is choice possible? Or where all are equally objects of taste and knowledge, how rest satisfied without giving some proofs of our practical proficiency in all? To mould a clay-figure that if finished might surpass the Venus; to make a pen-and-ink drawing after a splendid piece of colouring by Titian; to give the picturesque effect of the arch of some ancient aqueduct as seen by moonlight; some such meagre abstractions and flimsy refinements in art are among the spolia opima and patchwork trophies offered to the presiding Goddess of spleen, idleness, and affectation!—

Nothing can be conceived more unpropitious to ‘the high endeavour and the glad success,’ than the whole aspect and character of ancient Rome, both what remains as well as what is lost of it. Is this the Eternal City? Is this she that (amazon or votaress) was twice mistress of the world? Is this the country of the Scipios, the Cincinnati and the Gracchi, of Cato and of Brutus, of Pompey and of Sylla, is this the Capitol where Julius Cæsar fell, where Cicero thundered against Catiline, the scene of combats and of triumphs, and through whose gates kings and nations were led captive by the side of their conquerors’ chariot-wheels? All is vanished. The names alone remain to haunt the memory: the spirits of the mighty dead mock us, as we pass. The genius of Antiquity bestrides the place like a Colossus. Ruin here sits on her pedestal of pride, and reads a mortifying lecture to human vanity. We see all that ages, nations, a subjected world conspired to build up to magnificence, overthrown 374or hastening fast into decay; empire, religion, freedom, Gods and men trampled in the dust or consigned to the regions of lasting oblivion or of shadowy renown; and what are we that in this mighty wreck we should think of cultivating our petty talents and advancing our individual pretensions? Rome is the very tomb of ancient greatness, the grave of modern presumption. The mere consciousness of the presence in which we stand ought to abash and overawe our pragmatical self-conceit. Men here seem no better than insects crawling about: everything has a Lilliputian and insignificant appearance. Our big projects, our bloated egotism, shrink up within the enormous shadow of transitory power and splendour: the sinews of desire relax and moulder away, and the fever of youthful ambition is turned into a cold ague-fit. There is a languor in the air; and the contagion of listless apathy infects the hopes that are yet unborn.—As to what remains of actual power and spiritual authority, Hobbes said well, that ‘Popery was the ghost of the Roman Empire, sitting upon the ruins of Rome.’ The only flourishing thing in Rome (and that is only half flourishing) is an old woman; and who would wish to be an old woman? Greatness here is greatness in masquerade—one knows not whether to pity or laugh at it—and the Cardinals’ red legs peeping out like the legs of some outlandish stuffed bird in a Museum, excite much the same curiosity and surprise. No one (no Englishman at least) can be much edified by the array of distinctions, that denote a consummation of art or weakness. Still, perhaps, to the idle and frivolous there may be something alluring in this meretricious mummery and splendour, as moths are attracted to the taper’s blaze, and perish in it!

There is a great deal of gossiping and stuff going on at Rome. There are Conversationes, where the Cardinals go and admire the fair complexions and innocent smiles of the young Englishwomen; and where the English students who have the entrée look at the former with astonishment as a sort of nondescripts, and are not the less taken with their pretty countrywomen for being the objects of attention to Popish Cardinals. Then come the tittle-tattle of who and who’s together, the quaint and piquant inter-national gallantries, and the story of the greatest beauty in Rome said to be married to an English gentleman—how odd and at the same time how encouraging! Then the manners and customs of Rome excite a buzz of curiosity, and the English imagination is always recurring to and teazed with that luckless question of cicisbeism. Some affect to be candid, while others persist in their original blindness, and would set on foot a reform of the Roman metropolis—on the model of the British one! In short, there is a great deal too much tampering and dalliance with subjects, 375with which we have little acquaintance and less business. All this passes the time, and relieves the mind either after the fatigue or in the absence of more serious study. Then there is to be an Academy Meeting at night, and a debate is to take place whether the Academy ought not to have a President, and if so, whether the President of the Academy at Rome ought not (out of respect) to be a Royal Academician, thus extending the links in the chain of professional intrigue and cabal from one side of the Continent to the other. A speech is accordingly to be made, a motion seconded, which requires time and preparation—or a sudden thought strikes the more raw and heedless adventurer, but is lost for want of words to express it—Vox faucibus hæsit, and the cast of the Theseus looks dull and lumpish as the disappointed candidate for popular applause surveys it by the light of his lamp in retiring to his chamber, Sedet infelix Theseus, &c. So the next day Gibbon is bought and studied with great avidity to give him a command of tropes and figures at their next meeting. The arrival of some new lord or squire of high degree or clerical virtuoso is announced, and a cabal immediately commences, who is to share his patronage, who is to guide his taste, who is to show him the lions, who is to pasquinade, epigrammatise or caricature him, and fix his pretensions to taste and liberality as culminating from the zenith or sunk below zero. Everything here is transparent and matter of instant notoriety: nothing can be done in a corner. The English are comparatively few in number, and from their being in a foreign country are objects of importance to one another as well as of curiosity to the natives. All ranks and classes are blended together for mutual attack or defence. The patron sinks into the companion; the protegé plays off the great man upon occasion. Indeed the grand airs and haughty reserve of English manners are a little ridiculous and out of place at Rome. You are glad to meet with any one who will bestow his compassion and ‘his tediousness’ upon you. You want some shelter from the insolence and indifference of the inhabitants, which are very much calculated to repel the feelings, and throw you back on your resources in common humanity or the partiality of your fellow-countrymen. Nor is this the least inconvenience of a stranger’s residence at Rome. You have to squabble with every one about you to prevent being cheated, to drive a hard bargain in order to live, to keep your hands and your tongue within strict bounds, for fear of being stilettoed, or thrown into the Tower of St. Angelo, or remanded home. You have much to do to avoid the contempt of the inhabitants; if you fancy you can ingratiate yourself with them and play off the amiable, you have a still more charming pursuit and bait for vanity and idleness. You must run the gauntlet of sarcastic words or looks 376for a whole street, of laughter or want of comprehension in reply to all the questions you ask; or if a pretty black-browed girl puts on a gracious aspect, and seems to interest herself in your perplexity, you think yourself in high luck, and well repaid for a thousand affronts. A smile from a Roman beauty must be well nigh fatal to many an English student at Rome. In short, while abroad, and while our self-love is continually coming into collision with that of others, and neither knows what to make of the other, we are necessarily thinking of ourselves and of them, and in no pleasant or profitable way. Every thing is strange and new; we seem beginning life over again, and feel like children or rustics. We have not learned the alphabet of civilization and humanity: how, then, should we aspire to the height of Art? We are taken up with ourselves as English travellers and English students, when we should be thinking of something else. All the petty intrigue, vexation, and tracasserie of ordinary dealings, should be banished as much as possible from the mind of the student, who requires to have his whole time and faculties to himself; all ordinary matters should go on mechanically of themselves, without giving him a moment’s uneasiness or interruption; but here they are forced upon him with tenfold sharpness and frequency, hurting his temper and hindering his time. Instead of ‘tearing from his memory all trivial, fond records,’ that he may devote himself to the service of Art, and that ‘her commandment all alone may live within the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter,’ he is never free from the most pitiful annoyances—they follow him into the country, sit down with him at home, meet him in the street, take him by the button, whisper in his ear, prevent his sleeping, waken him before the dawn, and plague him out of his very life, making it resemble a restless dream or an ill-written romance. Under such disadvantages, should an artist do anything, the Academy which has sent him out should lose no time in sending for him back again; for there is nothing that may not be expected from an English student at Rome who has not become an idler, a petit-maitre, and a busy-body! Or if he is still unwilling to quit classic ground, is chained by the soft fetters of the climate or of a fair face, or likes to see the morning mist rise from the Marshes of the Campagna and circle round the Dome of St. Peter’s, and that to sever him from these would be to sever soul from body, let him go to Gensano, stop there for five years, visiting Rome only at intervals, wander by Albano’s gleaming lake and wizard grottoes, make studies of the heads and dresses of the peasant-girls in the neighbourhood, those Goddesses of health and good-temper, embody them to the life, and show (as the result) what the world never saw before!