not seem native to our climate, which is too cold for sculpture, and too dull for painting. But it may be cultivated, though exotic, and with care may be to some extent naturalised. As a people we are made up of too many elements-have too wide a diversity of powers-wholly to fail in anything to which we apply with earnestness; and in the matter of Art the country which has produced a Reynolds and a Flaxman need not despond. Though we cannot congratulate ourselves upon our advance in painting since the time of Sir Joshua, of Gainsborough, and Wilson, the retrograde movement has ceased, and for some years there has been a steady advance. As we have stated, we cannot consider that it has kept pace with the progress of the public sympathies in the direction of Art; but it has commenced, and wants only such aids and appliances as may certainly be, to a considerable extent, afforded, to increase its rate of forward movement.

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Taste cannot be fitly cultivated except by the study of what is best in that which has hitherto been effected. It cannot be formed by precept. And to pursue that study it is necessary that examples be before us. Without them records are of no avail; criticism can convey no distinct ideas. The arts of design are unteachable, untaught." There are those, indeed, who hold that a national school in painting or in sculpture should grow up by a principle of self-development, and without extraneous aids; and some, applying a similar axiom to the individual labourers in the fields of invention, think that originality and independence are only to be looked for in the efforts of self-taught and unaided genius. There are no doubt orders of genius which are most advantageously developed in an unadvanced age. But genius "flames in the forehead" of its period, whatever that period may be. It moves in the van of the army of men's minds; and to place itself there must pass among the ranks. Homer may have had no models may have made no formal study of poetry; but he was acquainted with the songs of the bards that had gone before him, and familiar with the knowledge of his time.

The fear that originality or vigour should be lost in any department of mental activity by an extensive acquaintance with precedent efforts, is utterly without ground. The instinet of imitation is indeed strong in the minds of most. But the elements of thought are alike in all; and it is only from the varying proportions in which they are combined that originality results. Those whom we notice as imitators are persons of limited knowledge or

of narrow sympathies. To be acquainted with many models, and to imitate them all, is where that genius exists which can introduce fresh materials from its own resources, and combine all into harmonious unity, not to resemble others, but to create with judgment, decision, and facility. Of course we speak here of imitation not as a deliberate object, but as an unconscious process the mere application of collected stores, without consideration of the separate sources from which they have been gradually drawn together.

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Whatever may be the case with purely mental processes, no one will question the importance in regard to mechanical ones-of learning what others have been able to accomplish, and the means by which they have done so; and in the practice of the Fine Arts there is so much that is mechanical, that this applies to them in its full force. Manipulation must be studied in the works of others, however independent we might wish to be in the matter of design. To have devoted exclusive attention to a single model, whether for the conceptions realised, or the means by which this is effected, is to have risked falling into the manner of another becoming an imitator. But to have examined extensively the most diverse originals is to be prepared with abundant resources for the easy development of one's own idiosyncracies of fancy, thought, and feeling.

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The practice of Art, then, would be facilitated and improved by increasing the opportunities possessed by students of familiarising themselves with what has hitherto been done. Those opportunities, in London, are not great; and in the provinces, to persons of narrow pecuniary means, they are extremely limited. From the provinces, it must be remembered, our artists are chiefly drafted, and from among such as fall within that category. By the same means improved taste would be diffused among the public, and demand stimulating supply, and supply producing fastidiousness, the spirit of progress would be fairly awakened, and put in possession of its fullest energies.

It has long been a subject of complaint, or of regret, that in this country there are few exhibitions of any kind, whether of objects of Art or of Science, which are open to the public free of expense. Of the former class there are but two of any considerable importance that are easily and to all accessible. We have a National Gallery, containing a choice, though but a small collection of pictures; and we have a gallery of sculpture at the British

Museum, wherein are found some of the beautiful idealisms which the genius of the Greeks bequeathed to all time, in marble. Hampton Court, too, may be seen after a fashion, and the Dulwich Gallery more satisfactorily, by those that have leisure and means to visit them. But the opportunities possessed by the people of London, of familiarising themselves with works of classic excellence, whether of the pencil or the chisel, are almost limited to these. A gallery of engravings our metropolis does not boast; and we are not aware of any provincial town where a collection of works in any department of Fine Art is open to the public gratis. The case is different abroad. In Italy the people live in an atmosphere of Art. Her greatest painters and sculptors were nurtured in such an atmosphere. They were familiarised with what was excellent in their respective professions, even from the cradle. The tendencies of the mind are determined in early youth. Its growth is modified by the food then supplied; and the natural diversities of its individual types are harmonised by surrounding circumstances of place and period. Therefore it was that in Art the Italians eventually attained to so great excellence. The same, in a much more limited degree, is true of Spain, of some parts of Germany, of the Netherlands, of France. But in England taste is acquired as we learn a foreign language-by the formal study of our riper years: it does not come to us, like our vernacular, by a process unconsciously gone through.

This was, however, yet more eminently the case

"In our young years, when George the Third was king ;'

and when the woodcuts of Mavor's spelling-book, the ornamental borders of "Christmas pieces," and the caricatures in the shop windows, very different in their artistic character from those of Punch, were the principal works of Art that gladdened youthful eyes. Our children, indeed, are brought up in a world of woodcuts and lithography, of an order greatly superior to what belonged to those days: and for this reason, independently of others, it may be expected that they shall advance beyond their fathers in respect to taste in Art: but we must furnish them with other facilities before considerable.results can be expected.

What we would propose, in furtherance of this object, is the establishment, not in London only, but in the provinces, of Galleries of Art for the people. We are not so visionary as to believe that it would be practicable to form collections of high-class paintings

for this purpose; and still less that the temples of Greece and palaces of Italy can supply Apollos and Venuses for our Liverpools and Birminghams. But let us at least have what we may have cheaply and easily, and in its kind truly excellent.

Half a loaf—it is unfortunate this proverb should be musty-is better than no bread : and where it is impossible to have paintings and sculpture, there might yet be formed galleries of engravings and choice casts. Nay, to us it appears extraordinary, that in those places where the greatest facilities exist for the public to make themselves acquainted with Art in its highest departments, so little attention has been given to afford the subsidiary aids that may be derived from such sources. Engraving indeed, as an independent art, is well worthy of study for its own sake; and as illustrative of painting, there can be no gallery so rich that it should scorn the service this is capable of rendering.

Our National Gallery possesses but four works that bear the name of Raffael: for the cost of one of them we might have a series of the best prints from his designs, with frames and exhibition room complete. And who but would wish an opportunity of forming a more extensive acquaintance with the designs of Raffael than the National Gallery, Hampton Court, and Mr. Colnaghi's window can afford? It is true that his works may be studied at the Print Room of the British Museum: but the trouble of getting admission, the delay in obtaining the engravings, and the inconvenient situation of the building itself, virtually exclude the mass of the intelligent public from the advantages of such an institution.

It would seem that the very facility with which galleries of the kind we advocate might be formed, has been the impediment to their introduction. It would seem to have been thought that works which might be procured at so small a comparative expense, were too insignificant to be allowed a draw upon "the pocket of the nation." It may indeed have been considered, that to arrange an extensive collection would require a building on a scale of expense out of all proportion to the objects to be exhibited. But it is not held beneath the dignity of the nation's pocket to purchase high-class engravings, even at fancy prices, for the purpose of storing them away in portfolios of the British Museum; and, though we are far from disapproving this investment of the public money, we think the more advantage the people can derive from their expenditure the better. It is very agreeable to know, that at no other cost than that of trouble and time, we may inspect our

property in the great Bloomsbury building; though of a large proportion of the public even this is not true. But it would be much more agreeable to have our purchases framed and hung up w where we could examine them at any leisure moment, without preliminary ceremony or delay. And, as well-framed engravings are as safe. under glass as in portfolios, it might be well if a selection of the. very best prints in the Museum were made for this purpose; so that, being themselves admirable works of Art, as well as representations of admirable works in another department of Art, they should be submitted to the inspection of "the million," instead of being reserved for that of the occasional visitor.

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If the example were set in the metropolis, of the formation of a gallery of engravings, we doubt not it would soon be followed in many provincial towns. Not to revert to the more important. objects we have already considered, what honest burgher, in a country town, when visited by a friend from another part of the country, but would be glad of some show-place," to which he might cheaply introduce his guest, and gently drop him there during the hours of business? And what friend from afar but would be glad of any aid to help him over some of the slow hours of a provincial town? Should this paper meet the eye of any obese alderman who may be anxious to purchase to himself, at the cost of a few thousands, an enduring fame in his native city, we assure him, that he could not more surely, or more sensibly, accomplish his object, than by presenting to his townsmen a gallery of engravings, rich in its illustrations of Raffael and Corregio.

We will not here consider what rules might be advisable, to guide in the choice and arrangement of subjects for a purpose like this. No doubt, if galleries of the kind became common, they would differ widely from one another in the degrees of prominence given to particular departments, according to the particular tastes of those who governed the selections.

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In some committees there might be an overbalancing influence... in favour of Italian, in some of German or Flemish, in some, perhaps, of English Art. Some might more willingly collect the... works of an early, some of a later period. In this collection, we should find a preponderance of historical subjects; in that, of landscapes; in a third of portraiture. The illustration of the art of engraving might be the leading object in one case; of one or more schools of painting in another. And the dissimilarity between individual collections would add greatly to their aggregate