ing the monstrous doctrine, that the study of works which are examples of the utmost perfection that art has ever reached, could prove lastingly detrimental to art's best interest. We have little admiration for the taste which can worship the admitted loveliness of Fra Angelico's Madonna della Stella, and at the same time deny all beauty to the Venus of Milo, or to the Genius of the Vatican. The highest excellence wherever found, products of genius whatever form they may assume, claim the allegiance of all true and catholic worshippers. It is narrow, exclusive, and untrue, to insist that the early Christian schools contain all desirable perfections; it is prejudicial to the best interests of art, to close the vision to the surpassing beauty of the so-called Pagan works, and thus to place an impassable barrier between the reciprocal influence of two high manifestations of human genius-varied phases of the same art-impulse manifold manifestations of man's insatiable love of the perfect and the beautiful. It is false to assert that Christian art is wholly spiritual, while classic art is exclusively physical. It may well, indeed, be doubted whether the whole range of history can show works more grand, and godlike, and therefore spiritual, than the head of Jupiter in the Vatican, or the various busts of Juno in the Ludovisi palace, and in the museums of the Vatican and the Capitol. In like manner, the ideal heads of Ariadne, of Alexander, and Apollo, are all typical of a beauty and grandeur of soul which cannot well be carried to a further perfection. The secularisation of art, as it is called, was far from an unmitigated evil. The middle-age paintings of Madonnas and saints had given but a partial and dogmatic expression to the goodness and greatness of which human nature was capable, while the beauty and glory of the outer world had been well-nigh forgotten. The hymn of universal nature seemed suspended from that time when the angelic host burst into song at the birth of a Saviour. The stars of heaven from that moment were but a guide to the shepherds' steps, or became a diadem for the Virgin's brow; while the flowers and lilies of the field served but for the Angel Gabriel's message, or grew as a soft carpeting for the gentle tread of sainted feet. But there were assuredly in man relations and interests beyond the confines of this sacerdotal church; voices in nature which could not abide in silence, and the States of Italy, advancing in knowledge and in wealth, and achieving for themselves a history and position, created for their poets new themes, and gave to literature and art a wider sphere. There are certain writers who would seek to condemn this extended and enlightened movement, by the abused term "secularisation." They would appear to think that a Madonna and an infant on her knees, with St Joseph leaning over her shoulder, must necessarily be sacred, and that, beyond this subject and sphere, all the tenderness of a mother's love, all the innocence and beauty of infancy, and all the endearing affections of home, are merely secular. They forget that the technically sacred subject is frequently in conception and spirit merely secular; while, on the other hand, there is no topic which may not, by virtue of the relation in which it stands to the highest truths, acquire a sacred character. Of the technically sacred subjects, we confess we have seen in the galleries and churches of Europe more than sufficient. The world does not need any further multiplication of "The Death of Abel," "The Building of the Ark," or "The Overthrow in the Red Sea." We think that it always was, and will be, an office scarcely less sacred to proclaim by poem or picture the ways and workings of daily Providence-to register upon canvass or on the printed page the perpetual miracle of nature. Let it be acknowledged that a work is sacred only in proportion as the thought is noble and divine; and that in the enfranchisement of the intellect of Italy, in the extended sphere of civilisation, there came a time when the artist refused to be circumscribed by the narrow teaching of a dogmatic priesthood, and sought in the great deeds of history, in the relations of social and domes tic life, and among the grand and the beautiful scenes of nature, subjects worthy of his pencil. In the great revolution thus wrought, the study of classic works, as we have already said, was an important operative agent. They taught the divinity of naturalism, that beyond the cloister of monastic art, in the wide field of nature, the genius of a people called Pagan had discovered a beauty and truth so pure and so lofty as to become itself sacred. We will not undertake to justify all that followed. Great things, yea the very greatest, were done, but likewise it must be admitted things unworthy. The history of the decline and fall of medieval art we shall not now attempt to write. It would involve topics relating to the decay of states, the degeneracy of their people, considerations political and social, together with the laws of the development and the debasement of art itself. Upon these complex matters we do not enter-we are content to have shown that M. Rio, by the plausible use of words begetting favour or prejudice - by the rhetorical interweaving of "sacred" and "Christian," "naturalistic," "Pagan," and "profane," has involved himself and his readers in pernicious fallacy, and has failed in solving the real difficulties of the question. Four successive art-types have passed before us in review. The Classic, the Roman-Christian, the Byzantine, and the Medieval. Each of these has in turn fallen into extinction. During three hundred years no new art-type has arisen, and at the present moment we borrow and adapt, but do not create. This want of a governing type arises from the absence of a paramount idea, the non-existence of any great and ruling thought sufficient to mark with decisive character the literature and art of the people. The artproducts of the day are consequently desultory, fragmentary, and miscellaneous-a gallery of stray thoughts instead of the earnest yet manifold expression of one dominant idea. Four great types have, as we have said, sunk into extinction, and the coming type of the future awaits the manifestation of some phase of thought, some new ideal, which shall seek from art its fitting material form. It is right that the kingdom of Art should remain under the joint government of the " Spiritual," the Classical," and the "Naturalistic." These three distinct powers and authorities constitute "the three estates" in the administration of her empire. The Spiritual element, were it allowed undivided sway, would constitute an absolute theocracy, the tyranny of which, as advocated by M. Rio, we have been anxious to throw off. The Classical, the second of the three estates, is an aristocracy which, by ancestry and merit, we believe to be still entitled to weighty authority. Lastly, the Naturalistic element constitutes the democracy of art, the ". vox populi," which, as we have seen, is not necessarily, in art more than in politics, the "vox Dei.” It is, then, in these three elements, in their mutual co-operation and counteraction, that the well-government of art is to be sought in the spiritual element we obtain a divine sanction and authority; in the classic the wisdom of the ancients; and in naturalism actual truth, or what political theorists call honesty. The future Bentham in art-literature may doubtless show, to the satisfaction of his disciples, that such a constitution contains all the elements of the worst administration. We believe, however, that a government so constituted, although not a Utopia, might deliver the existing republic of art from threatened anarchy. : MACAULAY. to-precisely what Mr Macaulay pleases! We were greatly struck the other day, looking for a second time over Mr Tennyson's Maud-a poem which we were by no means disposed to be complimentary to-with the extreme and exquisite skill of its construction, the admirable fashion in which the story, poor and unworthy as that is, was told. We disliked and disapproved the book, but we could not deny ourselves the technical and professional admiration of a craftsman towards the marvels of constructive skill implied in its making. Of the same kind, though by no means of so high an order, is the admiration with which we regard the knack of Mr Macaulay. Here you perceive, most excellent reader, that it is not of the very smallest importance what that good extinct individual far away in the extreme end of the seventeenth century intended to say; and from this you may draw the comfortable reflection, that a future Mr Macaulay, in the middle of the twenty-first, may prove, by your own honest words, in your own innocent domestic letters, anything whatever which the said unborn historian inclines to establish. Known opinions, known facts, a longassured and oft-proved certainty, can make no stand (for the moment) before the gifts of such a writer, combined with this remarkable knack of his. To call it dishonesty is to be at once uncivil, libellous, and wrong. Mr Macaulay, we pledge our critical word for it, has the most honourable intentions, and means nothing but the honest truth; but he has a natural and workmanlike delight in finding the very corner-stone of his structure among the remains of some old belligerent, who, alive, would have pulled the fabric down with both his hands-and glories in making his witnesses prove the very reverse of hat they intended and meant fe. And herein lies the kr Macaulay. He knows wh res himself that is the firs nd having dew, he skims THERE were, without doubt, many advantages in that ancient style of argument, which, on the strength of a differing opinion, could comfortably set down its opponent as a blockhead or a villain. In these days we are not permitted so great a satisfaction; and on the whole it is decidedly much less agreeable to disprove the words or doubt the motives of one whom we are obliged to be polite to, or even compelled to admire, than it is to overthrow an adversary with whom no terms need to be held. Parliamentary language is of itself a restriction; yet worse than parliamentary language is the applause and honour which we cannot in sincerity withhold from a writer whom, notwithstanding, it is our present purpose to prove (if we can) very much, and rather unhandsomely, in the wrong. The present most notable historian of these three kingdoms is a man of very high distinction in literature; a politician, yet one who takes no shabby advantage of his political opponents-a member of a party, yet not a factionist. Let us pause over again, that every one may be sure that we do full justice to Mr Macaulay. We feel perfectly convinced that he has no malevolent motives towards any man or class of men, and as little partiality as can be expected from one who shares the common feelings of humanity. He has taken pains, he has made admissions, he has been very fair towards many individuals, and many measures opposed to his own views; yet with all this Mr Macaulay has a certain knack-what shall we call it?-a most adroit and admirable cleverness in the selection of his materials. He can fish you out a damning sentence out of pages of panegyric as skilfully as your accomplished London reader can pick a morsel of amiable criticism out of the most disparaging comments of Spectator or Athenaeum. In fact, we are justified in saying that a witness, when once fairly into Mr Macaulay's hands, says-in his own bona fide words, morenor his veritable utterant to be over his accumulated store of material with the practised eye of a much practised reader, writer, and critic. Here it is, hurra! never mind the half-dozen pages which give quite a different view of the matter; here, in half-a-dozen words, is everything the historian can desire. So up comes good Bishop Burnet, red and embarrassed-up comes old Earl Crawford, confused and slumbrous-up comes the ancient Cameronian, gaunt and doubtful. These are their own words; every syllable could be sworn to--the triumphant historian has not tampered with a line; so the unhappy witnesses stand down, and the audience bursts into a shout of admiration-due admiration, well won and loudly expressed. The matter is not very accurate that is probable-but the skill is above praise. We ourselves yield to no one in a professional admiration of Mr Macaulay's knack; but we cannot help admiring besides the glorious uncertainty of this system of probation, by aid of which we freely undertake to establish, from his own works, and the general press of the country, that Mr Macaulay himself is one of the dullest and least able writers upon record; that his Ballads are doggrel; his Essays turgid; his History too heavy and too accurate for anything but a class-book. All these, and as many other facts of the same kind as he has a mind for, we readily undertake to prove to, we trust, the entire satisfaction of the historianall by a judicious use of his own knack of historical interpretation; or if that should not content him, anything else in this universal world which it may please him to choose. An educated eye is almost as good as an additional sense. Your artist hurries over a hundred scenes of beauty which we take double time to look at. Why? not because his admiration is less, but because he takes in at a glance what we travel over in detail bit by bit, and only gain a harmonious idea of when time has made it familiar to us. So of ourselves in our own department: do you suppose the critic plods over every line and every page, as you do, most conscientious reader? But the practised eye glances along the sheet ke an arrow; sees by an instinct what it wants; possesses itself of manner and matter without once alighting steadily upon its subject, and carries off its gleanings before the slower public is done with its paperknife. In this panoramic survey it is quite marvellous to the unpractised imagination to realise how little real injustice we do to any one, unless we intend it. Mr Macaulay possesses in perfection this vision and faculty not divine. His eye is educated to the nicest pitch; he lights upon the minute oasis, in a wide wilderness of hostile matter, with flight as rapid and unerring as it is graceful, and seizes with rare skill upon the word that suits him, though it be shrined in the very heart and centre of a thousand words which suit him not, All, or almost all, that Mr Macaulay has done in the way of misrepresentation is done after this fashion, and an extremely convincing fashion it is, at the first glance, and scarcely to be disputed. At the first glance, Mr Macaulay's delightful volumes carry everything before them; but true history has a longer and severer trial to stand. The biggest personage assailed by Mr Macaulay is without doubt our own "respected mither"--Scotland, who has borne about as much abuse in her day as any country under the sun. Our historian is unquestionably an "ill bird;" but holding that he has forfeited all claims to the nest thus defiled, we prefer cutting off Mr Macaulay from our national charities, to throwing once again his name and descent in his teeth. Somebody says, the remote grandfather of our author was an expelled member of the Society of Friends, and deduces from this uncertain tradition reason good for his attack upon Penn; but this is by no means an elevated style of argument, nor one which we choose to adopt. For our own part, we confess freely, much disposed as we have been in the days of our youthful fervour to claim for Scotland every distinguished mind in any way belonging to her, it has never occurred to us to lay claim to Mr Macaulay. We are perfectly willing to count his name an accident, to forget one side of his lineage, and to receive his report as calmly as if he had never had a grandfather. The qualities we desire in him, as he surveys our especial country, are not those of a partisan, a son, or a lover; we are perfectly indifferent to the question whether Scotland has or ought to have any endearing ancestral claim upon the historian. We are concerned only with the justice of his judgment, the truth of his picture, the extent and breadth of his general view. We speak in the interests of a nation which has held and holds no inconsiderable place in Christendom and in the world; and when we consider Scotland, we intend to consider her not as the probable grandmother of an undutiful Macaulay, but as a country rich in all the greatest gifts of nature-a people among whom great thoughts have arisen and great events have come to pass; and with this intention, we beg to assure our historian beforehand that we do not count him for a renegade, but are honestly persuaded that he is no Scotsman, and never was. It is hard to comprehend and harder to explain how the national character of the Scottish people should have assumed so many distinctive and individual features, separating it from the other national character of England, to which in its origin it was so closely allied. How Norman knights and Saxon exiles grew and welded with the original Celt into "that unanimous heronation" which turned English bows and foreign riders to flight at Bannockburn, seems to us one of the most remarkable problems which are in history. The Celtic portion of the race has never been even a dominant minority, and the blood of the Lowland Scot is nearer akin to the Englishman than to the Highlander even now. Yet an impalpable but most real boundary-line, deeper than the Tweed, more distinct than the March, has risen for centuries between these brothers born. The question is as curious and interesting as it is difficult-how did this national distinction come about? It is, however, impossible to look either at the past or the pr without acknowledging it, an thing seems worthy a philoso inquiry; there are in the matter, which, explain them as you will, every one acknowledges. After the earliest centuries of authentic history, in which she appears the impersonation of a unanimous unconquerable national independence, this people, unprompted by crown or government, becomes seized with a sudden unexplainable frenzy of religion. This mysterious and incomprehensible inspiration, according to many people, was the death of mirth and of art in Scotland, and gave her over straightway to a most lugubrious and unlovely fanaticism. Very well; let every one explain it as he will--the fact stands beyond controversy. Deep down into a heart full of subdued heroic passion came this fire, be it from heaven, be it from another region. The richer and the greater nation, devout and pious in her own big heart withal, suffered herself to be tossed about for several generations in a right royal game of legerdemain between king and pope, without even an attempt to assert any spiritual independence of her own. Scotland, on the contrary, stood forth upon her faith, unanimous, fervid, and absorbed with the might of this one Idea which possessed her national soul. She destroyed her cathedrals-that was a pity; but she did things still more important in the way of overthrow. She it was who gave the electric touch of fate to the grand general drama as events went on; and neither the momentary triumph nor the eventual failure of her Covenant that singular bond of unanimity, which it was vain to expect could be adopted by any save an optimist like herself; neither the distracting influence of the great usurpation, nor the horrors of these eight-and-twenty dismal years of persecution, which, full as they are of heroic incidents, are too frightful, too cruel, too sickening to dwell upon, moved the nation a hair'sbreadth from her original glow of unanimous "fanaticism." Then came the Revolution. This great fanatic immediately settled her Kirk after her own fashion, established her educational system, and rabbledor souls!-the most wise, learned, Worthy curates in the west who had kept their place |