the writer), is instantly communicated to all eyes that behold and all hearts that can feel them? It is many years ago since we first saw the prints of the Cartoons hung round the parlour of a little inn on the great north road. We were then very young, and had not been initiated into the principles of taste and refinement of the 'Catalogue Raisonné.' We had heard of the fame of the Cartoons, but this was the first time that we had ever been admitted face to face into the presence of those divine works. "How were we then uplifted!" Prophets and Apostles stood before us, and the Saviour of the Christian world, with his attributes of faith and power; miracles were working on the walls; the hand of Raphael was there, and as his pencil traced the lines we saw godlike spirits and lofty shapes descend and walk visibly the earth, but as if their thoughts still lifted them above the earth. There was that figure of St. Paul, pointing with noble fervour to "temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens ;" and that finer one of Christ in the boat, whose whole figure seems sustained by meekness and love; and that of the same person, surrounded by the disciples, like a flock of sheep listening to the music of some divine shepherd. We knew not how to enough to admire them. If from this transport and delight there arose in our breasts a wish, a deep aspiration of mingled hope and fear, to be able one day to do something like them, that hope has long since vanished; but not with it the love of art, nor delight in works of art, nor admiration of the genius which produces them, nor respect for fame which rewards and crowns them! Did we suspect that in this feeling of enthusiasm for the works of Raphael we were deficient in patriotic sympathy, or that, in spreading it as far as we could, we did an injury to our country or to living art? The very feeling showed that there was no such distinction in art, that her benefits were common, that the power

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of genius, like the spirit of the world, is everywhere alike present. And would the harpies of criticism try to extinguish this common benefit to their country from a pretended exclusive attachment to their countrymen ? Would they rob their country of Raphael to set up the credit of their professional little-goes and E. O. tables— cutpurses of the art, that from the shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in their pockets"? Tired of exposing such folly, we walked out the other day, and saw a bright cloud resting on the bosom of the blue expanse, which reminded us of what we had seen in some picture in the Louvre. We were suddenly roused from our reverie by recollecting that till we had answered this catchpenny publication we had no right, without being liable to a charge of disaffection to our country or treachery to the art, to look at nature, or to think of anything like it in art, not of British growth and manufacture!

No. XXXVI.

The same Subject continued.

THE catalogue writer nicknames the Flemish painters "the Black Masters." Either this means that the works of Rubens and Vandyke were originally black pictures -that is, deeply shadowed, like those of Rembrandt, which is false, there being no painter who used so little shadow as Vandyke or so much colour as Rubens; or it must mean that their pictures have turned darker with time—that is, that the art itself is a black art. Is this a triumph for the Academy? Is the defect and decay of art a subject of exultation to the national genius? Then there is no hope (in this country at least) "that a great man's memory may outlive him half a year." Do they calculate that the decomposition and

gradual disappearance of the standard works of art will quicken the demand and facilitate the sale of modern pictures? Have they no hope of immortality themselves, that they are glad to see the inevitable dissolution of all that has long flourished in splendour and in honour? They are pleased to find, that at the end of near two hundred years the pictures of Vandyke and Rubens have suffered half as much from time as those of their late president have done in thirty or forty, or their own in the last ten or twelve years. So that the glory of painting is, that it does not last for ever; it is this which puts the ancients and the moderns on a level. They hail with undisguised satisfaction the approaches of the slow mouldering hand of time in those works which have lasted longest, not anticipating the premature fate of their own. Such is their shortsighted ambition! A picture is with them like the frame it is in, as good as new; and the best picture, that which was last painted. They make the weak side of art the test of its excellence; and though a modern picture of two years' standing is hardly fit to be seen, from the general ignorance of the painter in the mechanical as well as other parts of the art, yet they are sure at any time to get the start of Rubens or Vandyke, by painting a picture against the day of exhibition. We even question whether they would wish to make their own pictures last if they could, and whether they would not destroy their own works as well as those of others (like chalk figures on the floors) to have new ones bespoke the next day. The Flemish pictures then, except those of Rembrandt, were not originally black; they have not faded in proportion to the length of time they have been painted. All that comes then of the nickname in the catalogue is, that the pictures of the old masters have lasted longer than those of the present members of the Royal Academy, and that the latter, it is to be pre

sumed, do not wish their works to last so long, lest they should be called the "Black Masters." With respect to Rembrandt, this epitaph may be literally true. But, we would ask, whether the style of chiaroscuro, in which Rembrandt painted, is not one fine view of nature and of art?-whether any other painter carried it to the same height of perfection as he did?-whether any other painter ever joined the same depth of shadow with the same clearness ?-whether his tones were not as fine as they were true?—whether a more thorough master of his art ever lived?-whether he deserved for this to be nicknamed by the writer of the catalogue, or to have his works "kept under, or himself held up to derision," by the patrons and directors of the "British Institution for the support and encouragement of the Fine Arts"?

But we have heard it said by a disciple and commentator of the catalogue (one would think it was hardly possible to descend lower than the writer himself), that the directors of the British Institution assume a consequence to themselves hostile to the pretensions of modern professors, out of the reputation of the old masters, whom they affect to look upon with wonder, to worship as something preternatural-that they consider the bare possession of an old picture as a title to distinction, and the respect paid to art as the highest pretension of the owner. And is this then a subject of complaint with the Academy, that genius is thus thought of, when its claims are once fully established?—that those high qualities, which are beyond the estimate of ignorance and selfishness while living, receive their reward from distant ages? Do they not "feel the future in the instant"? Do they not know that those qualities which appeal neither to interest nor passion can only find their level with time, and would they annihilate the only pretensions they have? Or have they no conscious affinity with true genius, no claim to the

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reversion of true fame, no right of succession to this lasting inheritance and final reward of great exertions, which they would therefore destroy to prevent others from enjoying it? Does all their ambition begin and end in their patriotic sympathy with the sale of modern works of art, and have they no fellow-feeling with the hopes and final destiny of human genius? What poet ever complained of the respect paid to Homer as derogatory to himself? The envy and opposition to established fame is peculiar to the race of modern artists; and it is to be hoped it will remain so. It is the fault of their education. It is only by a liberal education that we learn to feel respect for the past or to take an interest in the future. The knowledge of artists is too often confined to their art, and their views to their own interest. Even in this they are wrong—in all respects they are wrong. As a mere matter of trade, the prejudice in favour of old pictures does not prevent, but assists, the sale of modern works of art. If there was not a prejudice in favour of old pictures there could be a prejudice in favour of none, and none would be sold. The professors seem to think, that for every old picture not sold one of their own would be. This is a false calculation. The contrary is true. For every old picture not sold one of their own (in proportion) would not be sold. The practice of buying pictures is a habit, and it must begin with those pictures which have a character and name, and not with those which have none. "Depend upon it," says Mr. Burke in a letter to Barry, “whatever attracts public attention to the arts will in the end be for the benefit of the artists themselves." Again, do not the Academicians know, that it is a contradiction in terms that a man should enjoy the advantages of posthumous fame in his lifetime? Most men cease to be of any consequence at all when they are dead; but it is the privilege of the man of genius to