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men living, then?-well-how often would their greatest happiness consist in concession to their greatest errors.

In the dark ages (said once to me very happily the wittiest writer of the day, and one who has perhaps done more to familiarize Bentham's general doctrines to the public than any other individual), in the dark ages, it would have been for the greatest happiness of the greatest number to burn the witches; it must have made the greatest number (all credulous of wizardry), very uncomfortable to refuse their request for so reasonable a conflagration; they would have been given up to fear and disquietude they would have imagined their safety disregarded and their cattle despised-if witches were to live with impunity, riding on broomsticks, and sailing in oyster-shells;— their happiness demanded a bonfire of old women. To grant such a bonfire would have been really to consult the greatest happiness of the greatest number, yet ought it to have been the principle of wise, nay, of perfect (for so the dogma states), of unimpugnable legislation ? In fact, the greatest happiness principle is an excellent general rule, but it is not an undeniable axiom.

We may observe, that whatever have been the workings of English philosophy in this age, they have assumed as their characteristic a material shape. No new idealizing school has sprung up amongst us, to confute and combat with the successors of Locke; to counterbalance the attraction towards schools, dealing only with the unelevating practices of the world-the science of money-making, and the passionate warfare with social abuses. And this is the more remarkable, because, both in Scotland and in Germany, the light of the Material Schools has already waxed dim and faint, and Philosophy directs her gaze to more lofty stars, out of the reach of this earth's attraction.

But what is it that in Germany sustains the undying study of pure ethical philosophy ? and what is it that in Scotland has kept alive the metaphysical researches so torpid here? It is the system of professorships and endowments. And, indeed, such a system is far more necessary in the loud and busy action of a free commercial people, than it is in the deep quiet of a German state. With us it is the sole means by which we shall be able to advance a science that cannot by any possible chance

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remunerate or maintain its poorer disciples in all its speculative dignity, preserved from sinking into the more physical or more material studies which to greater fame attach greater rewards. Professorships compel a constant demand for ethical research, while they afford a serene leisure for its supply; insensibly they create the taste upon which they are forced, and maintain the moral glories of the nation abroad, while they contribute to rectify and to elevate its character at home.*

CHAPTER VII.

PATRONAGE.

Patronage as influencing Art and Science-Two sorts of Patronage-that of Individuals, that of the State-Individual Patronage in certain cases pernicious-Individual Patronage is often subserviency to Individual TasteDomestic Habits influence Art-Small Houses-The Nobleman and his two Pictures-Jobbing-What is the Patronage of a State? That which operates in elevating the people, and so encouraging Genius-The qualities that obtain Honours are the Barometers of the respect in which Intellect, Virtue, Wealth, or Birth are held-The remark of Helvetius-Story of a man of Expectations-Deductions of the chapter summed up.

BEFORE touching upon the state of science, and the state of art in England, it may be as well to settle one point, important to just views of either. It is this-What is the real influence of patronage? Now, Sir, I hold that this question has not been properly considered. Some attribute every efficacy to patronage, others refuse it all; to my judgment, two distinct sorts of patronage are commonly confounded: there is the patronage of individuals, and there is the patronage of the State. I consider the patronage of individuals hurtful whenever it is neither supported nor corrected by diffused knowledge among the public at large—but that of the state is usually be

* Since writing the above, I have had great pleasure in reading a Petition from Glasgow, praying for endowed Lectureships in Mechanics' Institutes. I consider such a Petition more indicative of a profound and considerate spirit of liberalism than almost any other, which, for the last three years, has been presented to the Legislative Assembly.

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DOMESTIC HABITS INFLUENCE ART.

neficial. In England, we have no want of patronage, in art at least, however common the complaint; we have abundant patronage, but it is all of one kind; it is individual patronage; the State patronizes nothing.

Now, Sir, I think that where the Public is supine, the patronage of individuals is injurious; first, because wherever, in such a case, there is individual patronage, must come the operation of individual taste. George the Fourth (for with us a king is as an individual, not as the state) admired the low Dutch school of painting, and boors and candlesticks became universally the rage. In the second place, and this has never been enough insisted upon, the domestic habits of a nation exercise great influence upon its arts. If people do not live in large houses, they cannot ordinarily purchase large pictures. The English aristocracy, wealthy as they are, like to live in angular drawing-rooms thirty feet by twenty-eight; they have no vast halls and long-drawn galleries; if they buy large pictures, they have no place wherein to hang them. It is absurd to expect them to patronize the grand historical school, until we insist upon their living in grand historical houses. Commodiousness of size is therefore the first great requisite in a marketable picHence, one very plain reason why the Historical School of painting does not flourish amongst us. Individuals are the patrons of painting, individuals buy pictures for private houses, as the State would buy them for public buildings. An artist painted an historical picture for a nobleman, who owned one of the few large houses in London; two years afterwards the nobleman asked him to exchange it for a little cabinet picture, half its value. "Your Lordship must have discovered some great faults in my great picture," said the piqued artist. "Not ⚫ in the least," replied the nobleman, very innocently," but the fact is, I have changed my house."

ture.

There was no longer any room for the historical picture, and the ornament in one house had become lumber in the other.

Individual patronage in England is not therefore at this time advantageous to high art: we hear artists crying out for patronage to support art; they have had patronage enough, and it has crippled and attenuated art as much as it possibly could do; add to this, that individual patronage leads to jobbing; the fashionable patron does every thing for the fashionable artist.

And the job of the Royal Academy at this day, claims the National Gallery as a jobbing appendix to itself!—Sir Martin Shee asks for patronage, and owns, in the same breath, that it would be the creature of "interest or intrigue." But if it promote jobbing among fashionable artists, individual patronage is likely to pervert the genius of great ones-it commands, it bows, it moulds its protégé to whims and caprices; it set Michael Angelo to make roads, and employed Holbein in designs for forks and salt-cellars.

No! individual patronage is not advantageous to art, but there is a patronage which is-the patronage of the State, and this only to a certain extent. Supposing there were in the mass of this country a deep love and veneration for art or for science, the State could do nothing more than attempt to perpetuate those feelings; but if that love and veneration do not exist, the State can probably assist to create or impel them. The great body of the people must be filled with the sentiments that produce science or art, in order to make art and science become thoroughly naturalized among us. The spirit of a state can form those sentiments among its citizens. This is the sole beneficial patronage it can bestow. How is the favour of the people to be obtained? by suiting the public taste. If therefore you demand the public encouragement of the higher art and loftier science, you must accordingly train up the public taste. Can kings effect this-can individual patrons? They can at times, when the public taste has been long forming, and requires only development or an impetus; not otherwise. It has been well observed, that Francis 1., a true patron of art, preceded his time; he established patronage at the court, but could not diffuse a taste among the people; therefore his influence withered away, producing no national result; fostering foreigners, but not stimulating the native genius. But a succession of Francis the Firsts, that is, the perpetuating effect and disposition of a State, would probably have produced the result at last of directing the public mind towards an admiration of art; and that admiration would have created a discriminating taste, which would have made the people willing to cultivate whatever of science or art should appear amongst them.

Art is the result of inquiry into the Beautiful; Science into that of the True. You must diffuse throughout a people the

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INFLUENCE OF PATRONAGE.

cultivation of Truth and the love of Beauty, before science and art will be generally understood.

This would be the natural tendency of a better and loftier education-and education will thus improve the influence of patronage, and probably act upon the disposition of the State. But if what I have said of endowments be true, viz. that men must be courted to knowledge-that knowledge must be obtruded on them: it is true also that Science should have its stimulants and rewards. I'do not agree with Mr. Babbage, that places in the Ministry would be the exact rewards appropriate to men of science. I should be sorry to see our Newtons made Secretaries for Ireland, and our Herschels turned into whippers-in of the Treasury. I would rather that honours should grow out of the natural situation in which such men are placed, than transplant them from that situation to one demanding far less exertion of genius in general, and far less adapted in itself to the peculiar genius they have displayed. What I assert is this, that the State should not seem insensible to the services and distinction of any class of men-that it should have a lively sympathy with the honour it receives from the triumphant achievements either of art or science, and that if it grant reward to any other species of merit, it should (not for the sake of distinguishing immorality, but for the sake of elevating public opinion) grant honours to those who have enforced the love of the beautiful, or the knowledge of the true. I agree with certain economists-that patronage alone cannot produce a great artist or a great philosopher; I agree with them that it is only through a superficial knowledge of history, that seeing at the same time an age of patrons and an age of art and science, vain enthusiasts have asserted that patronage produced the art; I agree with them that Phidias was celebrated through Greece before he was honoured by Pericles; I agree with them that to make Sir Isaac Newton Master of the Mint was by no means an advancement to Astronomy; I agree with them that no vulgar hope of patronage can produce a great discovery or a great picture; so poor and mercenary an inspiration is not even present to the conceiving thought of those majestic minds that are alone endowed with the power of creation. But it is not to produce a few great men, but to diffuse throughout a whole country a respect

that