practice above their precepts. Theirs, too, was the school of the "Naturalists." Ludovico is particularly praised for his solemnity of hue, most suited to his religious subjects—"that sober twilight, the air of cloistered meditation, which you have so often heard recommended as the proper tone of historic colour." If the recommendation has at our Academy been often heard, it has entirely lost its influence; our English school is—with an ignorance of the real object of colour, or with a very bad taste as to its harmony—running into an opposite extravagance, destructive of real power, glaring and distracting where it ought to concentrate through vision the ideas of the mind. Annibal Caracci had more power of execution, but not the taste of Agostino. In their immediate scholars, the lecturer seems little disposed to see fairly their several excellences. They are out of the view of his bias. They are not Michael Angelesque. His judgment of Domenichino—a painter who greatly restored the simplicity and severity of the elder schools, and greatly surpassed his masters—is an instance of blindness to a power in art which we would almost call new, that is very strange to see. "Domenichino, more obedient than the rest to his masters, aimed at the beauty of the antique, the expression of Raphael, the vigour of Annibal, the colour of Ludovico; and mixing something of each, fell short of all." Nor do we think him just with regard to Guercino, or even at all describing his characteristic style, when he speaks of his "fierceness of chiaroscuro, and intrepidity of hand." We readily give up to him "the great but abused talents of Pietro da Cortona," a painter without sentiment, and the "fascinating but debauched and empty facility of Luca Giordano."

The German schools here come under consideration, which, simultaneously with those of Italy, and without visible communication, spread the principles of art. "Towards the decline of the fifteenth century, the uncouth essays of Martin Schön, Michael Wolgemuth, and Albrecht Altorfer, were succeeded by the finer polish and the more dexterous method of Albert Durer." His well-known figure of "Melancholy" would alone entitle him to rank. The breadth and power of his wood engravings are worthy of admiration. Mr Fuseli thinks "his colour went beyond his age, and as far excelled, in truth and breadth of handling, the oil-colour of Raphael, as Raphael excels him in every other quality. His influence was not unfelt in Italy. It is visible in the style of even the imitators of Michael Angelo—Andrea del Sarto, particularly in the angular manner of his draperies. Though Albert Durer had no scholars, he was imitated by the Dutch Lucas of Leyden. Now it was that the style of Michael Angelo, spread by the graver of Giorgio Mantuano, brought to Italy "those caravans of German, Dutch, and Flemish students, who, on their return from Italy, at the courts of Prague and Munich, in Flanders and the Netherlands, introduced the preposterous manner, the bloated excrescence of diseased brains, which, in the form of man, left nothing human; distorted action and gesture with insanity of affectation, and dressed the gewgaws of children in colossal shapes." But though such as Golzius, Spranger, Heyntz, and Abach, "fed on the husks of Tuscan design, they imbibed the colour of Venice, and spread the elements of that excellence which distinguished the succeeding schools of Flanders and of Holland." So it was till the appearance of Rubens and Rembrandt—"both of whom, disdaining to acknowledge the usual laws of admission to the temple of Fame, boldly forged their own keys, entered, and took possession, each of a most conspicuous place, by his own power." Rubens, with many advantages, acquired in his education at Antwerp, and already influenced by the gorgeous pomp of Austrian and Spanish superstition, arrived in Italy rather as the rival than pupil of the masters whom he travelled to study. Whatever he borrowed from the Venetian school—the object of his admiration—he converted into a new manner of florid magnificence. It is just the excellence of Rubens—the completeness, the congruity of his style—that has raised him to the eminence in the temple of fame which he will ever occupy. A little short of Rubens is intolerable: the clumsy forms and improprieties of his imitators are not to be endured. Mr Fuseli excepts Vandyck and Abraham Drepenbeck from the censure passed upon the followers of Rubens. As Drepenbeck is not so well known, we quote the passage respecting him:—"The fancy of Drepenbeck, though not so exuberant, if I be not mistaken, excelled in sublimity the imagination of Rubens. His Bellerophon, Dioscuri, Hippolytus, Ixion, Sisyphus, fear no competitor among the productions of his master." Rembrandt he considers a genius of the first class in all but form. Chiaroscuro and colour were the elements, in fact, in which Rembrandt reveled. In these he was the poet—the maker. He made colour and chiaroscuro throw out ideas of sublimity: that he might throw himself the more into these great elements of his art, and depend solely on their power, he seems purposely not to have neglected form, but to have selected such as, without beauty to attract, should be merely the objects of life, the sensitive beings in his world of mystery. That such was his intention we cannot doubt; because we cannot imagine the beautiful but too attractive figures of the Apollo or the Venus adopted into one of his pictures. Excepting in a few instances, we would not wish Rembrandt's forms other than they are. They appear necessary to his style. Mr Fuseli speaks very favourably of art in Switzerland; but says there are only two painters of name—Holbein, and Francis Mola. The designs of the Passion and Dance of Death of the former, are instanced as works of excellence. Mola, we are surprised to find ranked as Swiss; for he is altogether, in art, Italian. The influence of the school and precepts of the Caracci, produced in France an abundant harvest of mediocrity. In France was the merit of Michael Angelo first questioned. There are, however, names that rescue France from the entire disgrace of the abandonment of the true principles of art: Nicolo Poussin, Le Sueur, Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, and Pierre Mignard. The Seven Works of Charity, by Seb. Bourdon, teem with surprising, pathetic, and always novel images; and in the Plague of David, by Pierre Mignard, our sympathy is roused by energies of terror and combinations of woe, which escaped Poussin and Raphael himself." Of Spanish art he says but little, but that "the degree of perfection attained by Diego Velasquez, Joseph Ribera, and Murillo, in pursuing the same object by means as different as successful, impresses us with deep respect for the variety of their powers." Art, as every thing else, has its fashion. The Spanish school have, of later years, been more eagerly sought for; and a strange whim of the day has attached a very extraordinary value to the works of Murillo—a painter in colour generally monotonous, and in form and expression almost always vulgar.

Art in England is the next subject of the lecture. He takes a view of it from the age of Henry VIII. to our own. No great encouragement was here given to art till the time of Charles I.: Holbein, indeed, and Zucchero, under Elizabeth, were patronized, but "were condemned to Gothic work and portrait painting." The troubles and death of Charles I. were a sad obstacle to art. "His son, in possession of the Cartoons of Raphael, and with the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, suffered Verio to contaminate the walls of his palaces, or degraded Lely to paint the Cymons and Iphigenias of his court; whilst the manner of Kneller swept completely what might yet be left of taste under his successors. Such was the equally contemptible and deplorable state of English art, till the genius of Reynolds first rescued from the mannered depravation of foreigners his own branch; and, soon extending his