lay's way; but phenomena so striking demanded surely a more philosophical and candid observation. And the conclusion to which he comes in respect to the religious vacillations of England in the generations previous to his History, is not particularly honourable to the nation defended. Mr Macaulay's explanation of the many turns and changes of the popular faith in the days of the Tudors, is very clearly given in one of his historical essays where he maintains that the people of England held "the fundamental doctrines of Christianity," without caring much for the distinctions of Protestant and Catholic and quotes Shakespeare and the elder dramatists to prove his opinion. But we do not doubt that the Vicar of Bray himself held the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Is he to be received as a traditional representative of sober and moderate faith?

Brave

We have scarcely space to touch upon the extremely picturesque and lifelike sketch of Ireland, in this time of extreme distress and humiliation to that unhappy country. Derry, besieged and militant, might, we fancy, have stood out from these animated pages in still higher and brighter relief, had Mr Macaulay pleased; but we are grateful to see it painted so well. The siege of Derry, by an unfortunate chance, has been made into a good-boy-andgirl story, and circulated by the thousand, as these good little novels have the astonishing fortune to be; and it is a comfort to see an episode of real and extraordinary heroism restored out of this abyss into its true position-a noble incident in the history of a nation. The wild crowd of Celtic chiefs and vassals, the polished and bloodless Frenchman in the midst of them-the heroic figure of Sarsfield, the Irish Bayard, throwing a single ray of the old light of chivalry

over the scene-makes this, as a picture, one of Mr Macaulay's most successful efforts. Nothing could be said or told of that unfortunate land, which did not involve a sad amount of misery; but the atmosphere is wide and wild, and harmonious with the actors; and there is a just account of the relations between the natural-born inhabitants, and the harsh, yet heroic, dominant race.

Having a somewhat stronger personal interest in the matter, we prefer to settle accounts with Mr Macaulay, in respect to Scotland, on another occasion, and also to consider a little more in detail the fate of those unfortunate individuals whom it has pleased the historian to set up in his pillory for the warning of mankind. We do not pretend, in so hasty a survey, to have done anything like justice to the most attractive work of the age; but we do not feel that we can conclude what we have said more fitly than in Mr Macaulay's own words, long ago written, and sounding now like a prophecy of his own fame. "A history of England, written throughout in this manner, would be the most fascinating book in the language. It would be more in request at the circulating libraries than the last novel." What our historian thus said of Mackintosh, his illustrious friend and predecessor, has come true to the letter of himself; for there is no last novel so hard to be obtained at the circulating libraries as Macaulay. And despite of much with which we differ, and much on which we cannot rely, we are heartily rejoiced to think that a story so brilliant, lifelike, and vivid, a chronicle so dignified and able, should mirror forth to the public of England the beginning of the modern era of national history-the groundwork and foundation of the liberties and blessings of our own time.

IF we were called upon to decide what is the last product of human refinement, we should probably answer, "A true taste for the beautiful in landscape." Although this taste, in the present state of the world, belongs only to a favoured few, yet the minds in which it is capable of being produced by cultivation are certainly much more numerous than is usually supposed. Our language admits of no general head under which the fine arts may be classed, so as to include poetry, commonly so called; yet Poetry might be used in a secondary sense as a general term to include Painting, Sculpture, Music, and beautiful composition in words; and thus it would correspond to the matter of that part of education which was called Music (meaning the domain of the Muses) by the ancient Greeks. In this view, landscape-painting is the last and most refined, if not the highest, development of Poetry. Mere imitation cannot constitute Painting any more than the mere stringing together of descriptive words, in rhyme or out of rhyme, can constitute Poetry. But Maga long ago observed, with playful irony, "every man, woman, or child is by nature a poet, except those who write verses;' and thus we may say, that every man, woman, and child is a musician, except those who are born deaf and dumb. So much cannot be said of the taste for fine arts, properly so called. The usual mistake is, to suppose that all persons capable of imitating natural objects are by nature painters or sculptors, as they are by nature poets and musicians. The difference lies in the amount of cultivation necessary to draw out the pictorial and plastic instincts. When poetry was in that full bloom which it attained nearly in the earliest times, the fine arts had advanced no farther than that imitation which, though a necessary phase of their being, is no more like the reality of

them than the unsightly chrysalis is like the beautiful butterfly. But even in the golden days of Greece, when Painting and Sculpture had advanced far beyond imitation, and produced works breathing perfect and immortal poetry-although artists had attained to an appreciation of the divinity of the human form which they have never since surpassed, their chisels and pencils fell short of representing that divinity of external nature which we know from their writings to have thoroughly pervaded their souls. It was late in the Middle Ages that the first steps were made in this direction, and not till after the glorification of humanity had culminated in Raffaelle, in the addition of spiritual to sensuous beauty. It is even now a strongly debated question whether the old Italian masters not only understood landscape - painting in its poetical sense, but brought the art to a perfection which could only be illustrated, and not surpassed; or whether they worked under a partially blind instinct in the production of the beautiful, and were unable to give any clear account of the image in their souls, and consequently obliged to leave to later hands the consummation of the art. It is strongly disputed, as we all well know, whether the moderns have or have not improved upon the old masters; and some even venture to divine that the art is still in its cradle, and that the elucidations of the theory of landscape-painting, so rife at the present day, denote the possibility of still further advances in the practical part of the art. Of those writers who adopt some modification of the last view, if not its entireness, and place the moderns on a higher pedestal than the ancients, the name of Mr Ruskin naturally occurs as the most obvious. On the other hand, the memory of the old masters is still dear to another large class of artists and expositors of art,

amongst whom we may quote the distinguished name of the author of the Sketcher papers. Without committing ourselves unreservedly to the view of either of these parties, both represented by eminence, we may be excused if our present business lies rather with those opinions which the Sketcher so ably illustrated, professing, at the same time, our conviction that the whole controversy is valuable to the cause of art, and that the able discussion of either view, whatever its amount of truth, is not to be despised, as throwing a general light on the subject, and enabling minds of ordinary intelligence to gain a quicker grasp of its difficulties. Any person wishing to read on the subject of art will find assistance in Mr Ruskin's published works; yet these, with all their merits, are characterised by a one-sidedness and a dogmatism, which we do not suppose even their author would deny, but perhaps rather glory in the admission, such qualities being prerogatives of one who, by his own assumption, and on the strength of his having produced, at long intervals, four ponderous green volumes, is supreme judge, and without appeal, in the court of the Fine Arts.

Long before Mr Ruskin was free from the dominion of tutors and governors we were going to say, before he was born or thought of the attention of the public was called to the subject of Art by the admirable papers which are now given to the world in a single octavo volume. The author of them was one of our most valued contributors, who did good service for this Magazine for a quarter of a century, and of whose contributions on the subject of Art these Papers only form, as it were, the introductory chapter. They were written, as notified in the preface, in 1833 and the two following years. They are distinguished, as far as we can see, by the statement of no startling paradoxes, such as those often brought forward in more modern publications as a means of arresting attention, of much the same character as the alarming announcements, backed by notes of admiration, of advertising tailors. Yet there is a VOL. LXXX.-NO. CCCCXC.

great charm of novelty in them, and when they appeared, they commanded the universal appreciation that they doubtlessly deserved; and that novelty is of a kind that well justifies a republication, even if it were only for the sake of reperusal in a collective form. It is the novelty which consists not so much in putting forward the unknown and the generally denied and disallowed, as in expressing that which is known with peculiar beauty, developing common sentiments, and appealing to the latent taste of all educated minds, and expanding into full-blown luxuriance the budding thoughts of all imaginative hearts. These papers, almost more than any others we know, have the quality of transporting the reader out of the fictitious atmosphere of civilisation, and the cramping air of the world of taskwork, into the region of nature and freedom, and poetry and fairyland. Collected, they form a book to be the companion of summer rambles, to be read in the garden-bower, or at the river-side, or in the depth of a shady wood, when the mind is at leisure, rather than to be taken down from library shelves, in the company of books of reference, and attacked as a laborious study. Yet delightful as they are in matter and manner, they do not disdain to supply a rich abundance of practical precepts. Yet the main object which the Sketcher had in view seems to have been to enforce his persuasion of the dignity of art, and his conviction that it is his duty to enforce this dignity by every argument in his power. If Mr Ruskin has chosen to devote much of his time and talent to the exposition of art, even though he is the advocate of a theory which may be considered in many quarters positively heretical; it must be confessed by his admirers that the Sketcher, at an earlier period, led the way to the same goal, though by a divergent path, and we have no hesitation in saying that his book ought to be in the hands of all those who wish to make themselves acquainted with the theory and practice of landscape-painting, for he had the advantage of founding his theories on a life of enthusiastic practical experience. The reason that a

K

true insight has been generally wanting into the dignity of the art of landscape-painting is, that many landscape-painters have been but more or less correct copyists from nature, and that nevertheless they have found a public to appreciate and buy their pictures, who have thus confirmed them in their self-esteem, and fixed the position in society of the whole artistic brotherhood, far below the standard which might be assumed to belong to the few genuine members of the fraternity. Granted once for all that a man is truly a poet in painting, and we cannot easily discover any pursuit more noble, refined, and elevating.

How rare is the true poetry of art, we may learn from our public Exhibitions. Most of the landscapes are nothing but portraits of scenery, such as would be done infinitely better, except so far as colour is concerned, by the photographic process, and most of these are either ignoble in their subjects, or ignobly treated. It is the same with all other subjects. The portraits of persons (though some are poems-Grant's portraits, for instance, who knows how to flatter, not by enhancing the lineaments but the soul of the resemblance) are generally demonstrative of faces stamped with stupidity and conceit, evidently painted for the purpose of being shown, and yet with nothing to show, utterly characterless; city-knights in fancy dresses, young ladies interlacing their arms, and sentimentally named "the sisters," pretty enough at first sight, but of a soulless red-and-white prettiness that is exceedingly tiresome, because soulless; nor is the artist to be excused in these cases by the necessity of painting any subject that paid him, because the fault is not in the subject, but in the treatment, the sin of omission consisting in not enduing the portrait with a speaking, living character; in not enabling it to tell any story at all, good, bad, or indifferent. So also with grave and historical pictures; a man ought to be fined for painting on subjects which distress the feelings, as distresses, for instance, legally so called, and other unpleasant incidents of human society, illustrating the

meanness, rapacity, and tyranny of man; but the common fault is not so much this as the choice of a subject really good, but inadequately executed, if we can call that execution at all, where the story is not told, but a canvass is simply covered with coloured lines and figures, which mean nothing but mechanical ingenuity. It seems to us that there is all the difference between real and unreal pictures, pictures which are poems, and pictures which are not, as between death and life: to some the artist has succeeded in imparting the promethean spark; to others, and these, alas! the vast majority, he has not, and they remain to the end mere dead lumber, only distinguished from other dead bodies by the fact that they never have had any life, and therefore do not offend by putrefaction.

Much stress has been laid on the differences of high and low art; but we should be inclined to think these differences very immaterial as compared with those between positive and negative art, as we might call the two classes. Certainly, to paint saints and angels is a higher walk of art than to paint donkeys or Dutch boors, however well done; but it is difficult to say where we ought to draw the line; for no subject poetically treated can be said to belong to low art, which, in our view, would be nearly synonymous with no art at all; and if a subject does not admit of poetical treatment, it ought to be excluded altogether. If we consider how we should class Rosa Bonheur's famous picture, “The Horse Fair at Paris," we should be exceedingly puzzled by being obliged to refer to any ordinary standard. The poetry of the picture consists in this, that the souls of the horses (for horses, no doubt, have a kind of souls) live and breathe, and prance and caper and snort, on the canvass, and not the souls of men in horses, as some painters have painted, and thus ruined the poetry, because the truth.

The dignity and moral eminence of the painter's profession has lost in this, that whereas the public are generally tolerably good judges of what is and is not poetry, and only

tolerate that one or two of the best should live by poetry, supposing them to possess no other means, they are scarcely sufficiently educated to know what is and what is not painting, and thus a large class of people are enabled to get their bread, and call themselves artists, who have not the slightest pretension to the name, but are mere imitators in colours. All pictures ought to be peremptorily destroyed which are not likewise poems, as a sacrifice to the offended Muse. It is through the fact of so many artists who would make consummate workmen in any mechanical line, mistaking their vocation, and thus lowering the general character of art, that a notion is current amongst practical and often seriously-minded persons, that painting is a kind of elegant waste of time to engage in, which, as a pursuit, except for the sake of getting one's bread, would be almost culpable; in fact, such persons probably look upon painting as a kind of worsted-work or embroidery, only less feminine, because more dirty in the nature of its materials. From this consideration, we must suppose the fact to have arisen, that the Sketcher begins with an apologetic chapter; one whose drift is to place the art of painting in general, and that of landscape-painting in particular, on its proper pedestal in public estimation. In the present uncertain light which is thrown on the theory of landscape-painting, we can scarcely too highly value such an introduction. Artists, to whatever school they belong, are perhaps only beginning to acknowledge the vitality and spirituality of external nature. That it was fully recognised by the exquísite imagination of the Greeks is shown by their personification and deification of rivers, mountains, fountains, trees, and the sea. The first they embodied in reclining gods pouring out streams from urns; the next, in Oreads, Naiads, Dryads, and Nereids. These creatures of imagination were expressions of the living beauty that the ancient poetic mind felt to be inherent in these natural objects. But the medieval painter, in the pursuit of the supernatural,

seems to have in a measure overlooked the life and spirit of the natural. His trees (even those of Raffaelle) are stiff and conventional, and closely resemble the trees of shavings which are made as toys for children; his clouds are solid and woolly; his water does not run or flow, but resembles a kind of chaotic avalanche in its fall. Atmosphere to him is non-existent, and aerial perspective is thrown to the dogs. But the modern landscape-painter attempts to transfer to his canvass that vitality of nature which the old Greek felt in his heart. And the vivid representation of nature, embodying, to a certain extent, the mind of the Creator, is as much a part of his religion as that deification of fountains and forests was part of the religion of the old Greeks. Each tree is an individual as well as each man or woman. To draw its anatomy wrong, to make disproportion between the bulk of the leaves and of the bole, is as great a solecism as to draw a human figure with too large a head for the body. And we are not afraid to assert that some of our modern artists, and not always those of most extended fame, have given a character, personality, and individuality to trees, which has never been attained by the ancients. We may cite as examples the beautiful birch-trees so livingly drawn by Mr Thomas Danby of Capel Cürig, especially two of them, which he calls "the sisters" among these ladies of the woods, and which have furnished him with many studies. We may cite, as another example, the Sketcher himself, when he thought fit to rid himself of the trammels of the old masters, and give himself up to the entrainement of Nature.

No man ever more thoroughly and devoutly believed than he in the religion of landscapepainting, a religion quite distinct from, and yet connected with, that natural theology which found so lucid an exponent in Paley. And on this ground he justified his enthusiastic and lifelong pursuit of the art as a serious occupation. Some of the Sketcher's personal friends have been bold enough to differ from his own estimate of his productions. He