pearance, may be easily conceived from what was stated in a former essay, with respect to the peculiar charm which sometimes accompanies the pleasures produced by its ideal combinations, when compared with the corresponding realities in nature and in human life. The eager curiosity of childhood, and the boundless gratification which it is so easy to afford it by well selected works of fiction, give, in fact, to education, a stronger purchase, if I may use the expression, over this faculty, than what it possesses over any other. The attention may be thus insensibly seduced from the present objects of the senses, and the thoughts accustomed to dwell on the past, the distant, or the future; and in the same proportion in which this effect is in any instance accomplished, "the man" as Dr. Johnson has justly remarked," is exalted in the scale of intel"lectual being." The tale of fiction will probably be soon laid aside with the toys and rattles of infancy; but the habits which it has contributed to fix, and the powers which it has brought into a state of activity, will remain with the possessor, permanent and inestimable treasures, to his latest hour. To myself, this appears the most solid advantage to be gained from fictitious composition, considered as an engine of early instruction; I mean the attractions which it holds out for encouraging an intercourse with the authors best fitted to invigorate and enrich the imagination, and to quicken whatever is dormant in the sensibility to beauty: or, to express myself still more plainly, the value of the incidents seems to me to arise chiefly, from their tendency to entice the young reader into that fairy land of poetry, where the scenes of romance are laid. Nor is it to the young alone that I would confine these observations exclusively. Instances have frequently occurred of individuals, in whom the power of imagination has, at a more advanced period of life, been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening as if from a trance, to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is "purged of its film," and things the most familiar and unnoticed, disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events which were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul; the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of the pleasures of vicissitude, conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man,

who, after having lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements, his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth:

"The meanest flowret of the vale,

"The simplest note that swells the gale,
"The common sun, the air, the skies,
"To him are op'ning Paradise."

"The effects of foreign travel have been often remarked, not only in rousing the curiosity of the traveller while abroad, but in correcting, after his return, whatever habits of inattention he had contracted to the institutions and manners among which he was bred. It is in a way somewhat analogous, that our occasional excursions into the regions of imagination, increase our interest in those familiar realities, from which the stores of imagination are borrowed. We learn insensibly to view nature with the eye of the painter and of the poet, and to seize those "happy attitudes of things" which their taste at first selected; while, enriched with the accumulations of ages and with the "spoils of time," we unconsciously combine with what we see, all that we know and all that we feel; and sublime the organical beauties of the material world, by blending with them the inexhaustible delights of the heart and of the fancy."

"And here, may I be allowed to recommend, in a more particular manner, the pleasures of imagination to such of my readers, as have hitherto been wholly engrossed with the study of the severer sciences, or who have been hurried, at too early a period, into active and busy life? Abstracting from the tendency which a relish for these pleasures obviously has to adorn the more solid acquisitions of the one class, and to ennoble, with liberality and light, the habits of the other, they may both be assured, that it will open to them sources of enjoyment hitherto inexperienced, and communicate the exercise of powers of which they are yet unconscious. It was said, with truth, by Charles XII. of Sweden, that he who was ignorant of the arithmetical art, was but half a man;-un homme à demi. With how much greater force a similar expression may be applied to him, who carries to his grave, the neglected and unprofitable seeds of faculties, which it depended on himself to have reared to maturity, and of which the fruits bring accessions to human happiness, more precious than all the gratifications which power or wealth can command! I speak not of the laborious orders of society, to whom this class of pleasures must, from their condition, be, in a great measure, necessarily denied; but of men destined for the higher and

more independent walks of life, who are too often led, by an ignorance of their own possible attainments, to exhaust all their toil on one little field of study, while they leave, in a state of nature, by far the most valuable portion of the intellectual inheritance to which they were born. If these speculations of mine, concerning the powers of the understanding, possess any peculiar or characteristical merit, it arises, in my opinion, chiefly from their tendency (by affording the student a general knowledge of the treasures which lie within himself, and of the means by which he may convert them to his use and pleasure) to develop, on a greater scale than has been commonly attempted, all the various capacities of the mind. It is by such a plan of study alone, that the intellectual character can attain, in every part, its fair and just proportions; and we may rest assured, that wherever these are distorted from their proper shape or dimensions, the dignity of the man is so far lowered, and his happiness impaired."

367

An Essay on the History of Painting, translated from the French.

"Painting felt the fire

Burn inward. Then ecstatic she diffus'd

The canvas, seiz'd the pallet, with quick hand
The colors brew'd; and on the void expanse
Her gay creation pour'd, her mimic world.
Poor was the manner of her eldest race,
Barren and dry; just struggling from the taste
That had for ages scar'd in cloisters dim
The superstitious herd: yet glorious then

Were deem'd their works; where undeveloped lay
The future wonders that enrich'd mankind,
And a new light and grace o'er Europe cast.
Arts gradual gather streams. Enlarging this
To each his portion of her various gifts
The goddess dealt, to none indulging all;
No, not to Raphael. At kind distance still
Perfection stands, like happiness, to tempt
Th' eternal chase. In elegant design
Improving nature; in ideas fair

Or great, extracted from the fine antique;
In attitude, expression, airs divine

Her sons of Rome and Florence bore the prize.

To those of Venice, she the magic art

Of colors melting into colors gave,

Theirs too it was by one embracing mass

Of light and shade that settles round the whole,'
Or varies tremulous from part to part,

O'er all a binding harmony to throw,
To raise the picture, and repose the sight.

The Lombard school succeeding, mingled both."

THOMSON.

THE Greeks to whom we owe almost every thing, excelled no doubt as much in painting, as in sculpture; but time which has spared a considerable number of the ancient statues, has left us no celebrated monument of the painters of antiquity. We have but the productions of some inferior artists of the last age, which, however, although they must then have been considered as below mediocrity, and were unquestionably no more than copies or imperfect imitations of the works of the great masters, display, for the most part, great correctness and nobleness of design, much grandeur of thought, and a strong expression of passion. These qualities are more or less remarkable in the paintings discovered at different periods, such as those of the grottoes, the Aldobrandine nuptials, the frescoes of the pyramid of Cestius, and particularly those of Herculaneum still more numerous and diversified. Many of the last exhibit, moreover, an admirable vivacity, a freshness of coloring,

which has withstood the test of twenty centuries, and which renders credible all that the ancients relate, concerning the wonderful illusion produced by the works of some of their great painters. It appears that this beautiful art after having attained its highest point of perfection, about the era of Alexander, began then to degenerate, and continued to decline without intermission, during the succeeding ages; for from that period, until the total subjugation of Greece by the Romans, and subsequently, until the irruption of the barbarians, we do not find a single name of any celebrity in painting. Sculpture, more fortunate, and perhaps more liberally patronized, produced, at distant intervals, some specimens which awakened the remembrance of the golden age of the art. The group of the Laocoon belongs, according to Pliny, to the second century of the christian era. The testimony of this great writer is confirmed by the observation of many of the most eminent of the modern statuaries, who remark in these figures, and some others equally perfect in the execution, less severity of style, less naiveté and sublimity of form, than in those which are truly Grecian, and of which the number is exceedingly small. The Venus of Medicis, for instance, the two Antinouses, the two Gladiators, belong, in the opinion of the most able connoisseurs, to the same era to which Pliny ascribes the Laocoon. The Apollo of Belvidere is itself supposed to be but a copy executed about the same time, and of which the Greek original must have been in bronze. These conjectures are undoubtedly supported by very plausible arguments.

The fine arts, after their expulsion from Rome by the barbarians, took refuge in the eastern empire, where they languished amid the civil wars, and the disorders of every description by which it was incessantly distracted, and finally crumbled into small fragments. Painting nevertheless was not wholly neglected, since some Greek painters invited by the senate of Florence, restored it to Italy in the year 1240. Cimabue studied under them, and was the first who acquired reputation in the art. Giotto was his disciple and formed several himself. All these artists painted in fresco, and in water colors. It was not until the commencement of the fifteenth century that the art of painting in oil was discovered; a discovery which by affording new materials, opened a new and vast career, to the labours of the pencil. In fresco and in water colors, the light shadows were too crude,-the dark not sufficiently vigorous and deep-toned. Oil, on the contrary, mellows the former and renders them soft and fleshy; it gives energy . and effect to the dark shades, and relief to the figures.