They have since been reinstated in power, not by a resolution of the Lords -not by a division in the Commonsnot by the voice of the country, or the value of their former services, but by a vote of confidence of three ladies of the Queen's household. The great Whig party, the pure and patriotic statesmen who disclaim all court influence, who despise all courtly attendants upon kings and queens, who shudder at the very thought of back-stairs influence or court intrigue-the noble, patriotic successors of Somers and Chatham, of Burke and Fox-censured by the Lords, east off by the Commons, despised by the people are driven to creep again into office, clinging to the tails of the petticoats of the ladies of the bed-chamber. Now, then, is the time-when such dangers threaten alike the monarchy and the institutions of the country-for the Conservatives to come forward and demonstrate, both by their language and their con duct, their steady adherence to their principles, and their resolution to separate the cause of the Queen and the monarchy from that of the Popish

faction, who would render her the unconscious instrument of their designs in subverting alike the Protestant religion and established institutions of the empire. Fortunately the real object of the plot will soon become apparent, and Lord Normanby and O'Connell will speedily stand forth as the real rulers of the empire, and the dreaded investigation of Irish misgovernment will be sought to be stopped by the establishment of a similar system in this country. Against such an attempt let the nation arouse all its moral energies, and pour them forth through every constitutional channel; but let them never forget that faction and intrigue are transient, but the durable interests of the monarchy are permanent; that maturer years and more enlarged experience will enlighten the mind of our youthful Sovereign; and that, however slender the chances are that the ladies about a palace will se lect fit men for the administration of public affairs, there is greater likelihood of their doing so, than of the favour of a democratic mob lighting upon a worthy statesman.

ON a former occasion, the particular character or sphere of sentiment of the genius of Michael Angelo, as exemplified in the picture of the Last Judgment, was so far attempted to be assigned; our present object shall be to endeavour, in some measure, to elucidate that of the works of his competitor for the sovereignty of painting -Raphael da Urbino.

The title, "Il Divino"-the divine -which has been bestowed upon Raphael, is not, as may have frequently been supposed, a mere synonyme of excellence, vaguely accorded in refer ence to those qualities, which each for himself may be most ready to perceive or appreciate; but a definite and discriminating appellation, which has originated in the impression or general sense of the nature and tendency of his works in their connexion with the great division of sentiment which gave birth to them, and which they embrace, in art.

The apprehension of the sublime, of the beautiful, of the graceful, of the terrible, and other qualities, which, on a wide view of art being taken, must be considered merely to be its adjective attendants, have generally been deemed the ultimate subjects of appreciation.† The perception of these has usually bounded the recognition of the purposes of art; they have been deemed the farthest limits of its aim; and each, on different occasions, has been held to be the great centre of its intention or object. But, in recognising these, we recognise merely qualities secondary to, or frequently dependant upon, those more ultimate relations of the mind, which recede into the absolute and final; and, in connexion with which, the purposes of art truly find their value. "In cycle and epicycle" the various arts move round the great centre of all to man-his own mental constitution. Their more or less extended connexion with, and inherence in this the intellection, the emotion,

the passion, which they express or signify, or of which they become suggestive, either in anticipation or in retrospection-the desire or the enjoy ment which they are identified with, marks the individual worth of each, and by the rank of those divisions of sentiment, which, in particular exemplifications, are enforced in the different arts according to their powers or medium, the station of those exemplifications must be assigned. From this standard there is no possibility of appeal. It sweeps down all those fortuitous partialities and fashions in respect to art, which are the growth of limited localities, and of the mode of a day; those particular peculiarities, which are not unfrequently set up as standards of judgment; those individual characteristics, which, instead of being merely regarded as integrant portions of the whole art of representative substitution, or imitation, as embraced by painting, have frequently been made the archetypes of all excellence. It embraces, in their dependant order, in the necessary subordination and connexion of style with sentiment-inseparable as heat and light in the rays of the sun-the material, the process, the component parts of the modes and practice of art-what may be styled its physiognomic features-which, not only in painting, but in the more amply discussed field of literature, have been frequently mistaken for their legitimate purposes, and upon which criticism has more endeavoured to find a basement for its constructions than to found itself a science, in relation to those ultimate objects, to arrive at which these are merely the means-less to build its decisions upon the nature of man's being, his desires, powers, and needs, rather than upon certain limited portions of the operation of that being, by substituting fragments for the whole, and adopting certain models, and partial purposes as

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meters-keys of the rivers of thought and sentiment, which have been held with too much Anubis-like sameness by their watchers.

On taking an extended view of that sphere of painting, the value of which is based in its moral significance, two grand divisions present themselves. To one of these belongs Michael Angelo; to the other Raphael: and the more that the ultimate relations of art are taken into cognizance, the further do these become separated from those around them who belong to the same circle. Michael Angelo, like his youth ful Victory, under whom the aged warrior bows in support, rises above all the labours of his predecessors: Raphael, as the radiance from the angel in his St Peter conducted from prison dims the torches and the moonlight, absorbs the efforts of his; both with an extended certainty of purpose, which renders those labours (although in some instances their importance can only be affected by comparison with those of Buonarotti, and Raphael), and also those of their successors, limited and partial. But setting aside their common mode of addressing the mind-pictorial representation there is no resemblance betwixt them. The order of sentiment which the one enters into, is altogether different from that of the other. They operate towards their final purpose or bearing with distinct separateness. They have frequently been compared; but there is no mutual ground of comparison betwixt them. The efficiency of the nature of their labours, in connexion with their ultimate object, and the extent to which cach has entered into, or become identical with, the sphere of mind to which his works belong, are grounds of contrast, not of comparison; and were the superiority of the one to the other

attempted to be assigned, it would depend upon the decision of these questions. The genius of Michael Angelo exhibits or announces the effort of will and desire in man. Its reference centres in the fate of the genus; he seems constantly to question,-shall humanity be dignified or abased-shall its energy triumph or suffer defeat? He designed a representation of venerable Age placed in a go-cart, and wrote underneath, Anchora imparo-I still learn. His prophets and sibyls are impressive of mental power beyond the nature of material being. His statue of Lorenzo de Medicis is altogether unapproached, in its centred and commanding reference to a past and a future individuality. His region is the intellectual. That of Raphael is different-it is the moral. The one operates through an elevated and abstract bearing on human emotion; the other, by virtue of moral reliance, raises emotion to the abstract and intellectual. But, before proceeding further, it may be necessary to remove several theoretical constructions that have been put upon the nature or purposes of painting, which may appear to interfere with what may be advanced.

One of these is the limitation which has been attempted to be put to expression in painting and sculpture. It has been considered that they should be confined to the adoption of particular phases of emotion, or rather to the nearest approach to the total negation of emotion. A hypothetic demarkation has been endeavoured to be pointed out as the true bounds of their field, to the implied exclusion of some of their grandest productions. But the existence of these productions (the statue of the gladiator, or the cartoon of Pisa, ‡ for example), and their effect on the mind-the true cri

terion of what is right and wrong in art-is a conclusive answer to this critical solecism. There is, however, a limitation of a different kind which has been made, the examination of which will include the reply to this.

Painting and poetry have been frequently compared or paralleled. Muta poesis, et pictura loquens, has assumed the station of a sententious definition of both; but if poetry is to be regarded to consist in what even the meanest verses attempt to pursue the expression of sentiment under the influence of enthusiasm or of imagination, the parallel is altogether defective. But if this, the legitimate distinction of what is poetical, is not to be regarded, and the recurrence of certain sounds, or a particular measure of syllables, be deemed distinctive of written poetry, there might appear to be some grounds for the comparison, inasmuch as there may be measured verse and recurring rhymes (not rhythm, from which these originate, but which is essentially and inherently part of verbal poetry), where there is no excited feeling, or virtual poetry. Were measure and rhyme considered to belong alike to the expression of every species of emotion, or of sentiment, or of detail, the parallel might hold; but on regarding poetry to be what it really is -a particular state of sentiment, which in language is most frequently expressed in measured verse, and not confined to oral or to written language, but likewise extending throughout all the arts, as one division or form in which expression is given to thought, at the same time that it is recognised to hold no connexion with other states of mental activity, which are also expressed in the different liberal arts (and, in a descending scale, in various ways in the mechanical arts)-the comparison must at once be recognised to be altogether defective. But while painting and poetry cannot be com pared, painting and literature may; and, by keeping such a comparison in view, much misunderstanding on the subject may be avoided. Painting is the

language of form and colour, and one general and extended means of expressing and inculcating thought. Literature, or written language, with a more varied capacity of specifying and also of conveying ideas, but with less universality or immediate oneness with nature (its medium being conventional, and not alike addressed to those of different times and countries), pursues the same end. The parallel betwixt poetry and painting, substitutes written poetry for the extensive sphere of all written knowledge-literature; and those who have made it must have experienced the necessity of not being baffled by difficulties in respect to its congruity. Instead of being confined to the enunciation of the poetic element, painting embraces (to the extent that its medium is fitted to recognise, and communicate or convey) every diversity of sentiment. From the lyric to the historic, and from that descending through various grades of the specialties of the art-the exhibition of styles of drawing, effect, and colour, made ultimate objects; and through a numerous diversity of transcriptions of, and allusions to, the fluctuating modes of life and individual pursuit; through all the variety of descriptive scenery in landscape, to the literal nomination or repetition of fact, in the lowest grade of visible existence-painting finds its subjects and field. The most poetic, and the most unelevated or prosaic, come within its range. Regarding it in any less extended view, what place can be assigned to the works of hundreds of names, which, by no refinement of analogy, can be considered to belong to poetry; and to those instances in the works of almost all the greatest painters, wherein the intention which was pursued, denied, or was not consistent with, poetic treatment? many of these, the dramatic element becomes so strong, that the poetic has no place in others, a narrative mode, rather than what can properly be styled dramatic, predominates; and again, historical severity does not ad

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mit poetical elevation. Of the first of these, Raphael himself not unfrequently furnishes exemplifications, Andrea del Sarto, in the Life of S. Philip Benizzi, in the cortile of the Church of the Annunziata at Florence, and the Communion of St Jerome by Domenichino, may serve to instance the second: while the historical is largely exemplified in Poussin, almost the only one among the old masters who can be said to have rendered historical subjects in a historical spirit, divested of conventionalities and extraneous concomitants, either in method or in style. To descend from these, and seek poetry throughout the works of Gerhard Douw, Netscher, and Terburg, or in Teniers, Jan Steen, and Ostade, might certainly be an exercise for ingenuity, but its reward would be scanty. The attempt would be almost as vain, as were the diver to plunge in search of coral into one of their country's canals. They have it not; but they make no pretensions to it. These qualities are other, and different, and consummate in their sphere; but, by the endeavour to throw a false illumination over them, their just character is misunderstood the appreciation of their real nature or worth is lost sight of, and confused notions in respect to them are originated. Hence they are at one time treated with contemptuous disregard; and at another with jealous partisanship, asserted to realize the highest excellence in painting.

Painting, then, in a just signification, is reiterative of whatever impressions may be conveyed by the most subtle and extensive of the sensessight. The external world presents a continued tablet. Every visual sensation is a picture; and it is only by means of other senses that it becomes more. Every arrangement of objects is a picture to the eye; of which there is not a line, or a colour, or gleam of light, or dimness of shade, which virtually does not at once, and ever after, constitute part of the mental relations of the perceiver; and the art of painting, in its proper acceptation, re-impresses, re-presents them, in their collected tendency. It strives to create a world recognizable by the sense of

sight, which will present things, or more properly mental impressions, divested of those circumstances which link with purposes aside from their more important or ultimate endresting upon that alone which is most valuable in relation to mind. This is the essence of painting, and it is needless to say, after what has been observed, that its application extends to a very varied scale. In one instance it becomes connected with abstract intellection; in others it is limited to a mere reproduction of an impression of sense. Hence that variety which constitutes the taste of different periods, and necessarily diversity, or fitness to various grades of mind: from whence, by some particular branches of the art gaining the ascendency, while no invariable standard of greatness or worth has been recognised, and while the general sense (never wrong if operating freely) of the true or absolute value of the various produetions of painting has been lost sight of, or denied, by prejudice or individual preferences, much confusion and discrepancy of opinion has originated.

The supposed oneness of the object of painting, or the language of form and colour, with that of the particular portion of written language designated poetry, must have arisen from the very extensive influence of the lyric mode of imitation in Greece, and its almost universal adoption in the early Roman Catholic art of Italy and of other countries. Under this mode, literature, painting, and sculpture, have at particular epochs been one in poetry; but it was at periods which present these under a much more circumscribed development than their history now exhibits. Thus (setting aside the exemplification of this in other times) for centuries, the revived arts of painting and sculpture in Europe were poetic. From the attempts of the Greeks of the middle ages, to those of Chimabue, which, in forms half-human that never could have possessed human faculties, fearful gropings to imitate what they render malcreated and hideous, to the time of the still cramped, but more organized efforts of Mantegra, and Domenico