ridiculous than the ravings of admiration with which this catalogue is described, and with which the reader in general is little disposed to sympathise. Without attempting, therefore, to enumerate the great works which were there to be met with, we shall confine ourselves to a simpler object, to the delineation of the general character by which the different schools of painting are distinguished, and the great features in which they all differ fro

ction of these works into one museum, however much to be deplored as the work of unprincipled ambition, and however much it may have diminished the impression which particular objects, from the influence of association, produced in their native place, was yet calculated, we conceive, to produce the greatest of all improvements in the progress of the ar

ably enhance the veneration with which they will severally be regarded, may not perpetuate the defects which particular circumstances have stamped on their school of composition; and whether the continuance of them in one vast collection, however fatal to the implicit veneration for the works of antiquity, was not calculated, by the comparison of their excellencies and the exhibition of their defects, to form a new school, possessed of a more general character, and adapted for the admiration of a more unbiassed public. It is in the despotic reign of arbitrary governments, if we may be allowed, in a discussion on matters of taste, to borrow an illustration fr

the best opportunity of displaying his knowledge of the human frame, or the varied expression of the human countenance. In the pictures of the modern school of French painting, this peculiarity is pushed to an extravagant length, and, fortunately for the art, displays the false principles on which the system of their composition is founded. The moment seized is uniformly that of the strongest and most violent passion; the principal actors in the piece are represented in a state of phrenzied exertion, and the whol

is a delicacy of colouring, an unity of design, and a harmony of expression in his works, which accord well with the simplicity of the subjects which his taste has selected, and the general effect which it was his object to produce. In the repre

ntment. There is an unity of effect in the engravings which can never be met with amidst the distraction of colouring in the original pictures; and the imagination clothes the beautiful shades of the copy with finer tints than even the pencil of Claude has been able to supply. "I have shewn you," said Corinne to Oswald, "St Peter's for the first time, when the brilliancy of its decorations might appear in full splendour, in the rays of the sun: I reserve for you a finer, and a more profound enjoyment, to behold it by the light of the moon." Perhaps there is a distinction of the s

d to that t

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discover other sources of pleasure than those which the merit of the art itself afforded. They did not pretend, in general, to aim at the exhibition of passion or powerful emotion: their paintings, therefore, are free from that painful display of theatrical effect, which characterises the French school; their object was not to represent those deep scenes of sorrow or suffering, which accord with the profound feelings which it was the object of the Italian school to awaken; they want, therefore, the dignity and

alities are so well known in this country, as to render any observation on them superfluous. There is a very great collection here preserved of th

in the most striking manner, the real object to which painting should be applied, and the causes of the errors in which its composition has been involved. His works, for the most part, are crowded with figures; his subjects are in general battle-pieces, or spectacles of military pomp, or the animated scenes which the chace presents; and he seems to have exhausted all the efforts of his genius, in the variety of incident and richness of execution, which these subjects are fitted to afford. From the confused and indeterminate expression, however, which the multitude of their objects exhibit, we turn with delig

t. He attempts what it is impossible for painting to accomplish-he aims at telling a whole story by the expression of a single picture; and seems to pour forth the profusion of his fancy, by crowding his canvas with a multiplicity of figures, which serve no other purpose than that of shewing the endless power of creation which the author possessed. In each figure there is great vigour of conception, and admirable power of execution; but the whole possesses no general character, and produces no permanent emotion. There is a mixture of allegory and truth in many of his greatest works, which is always painful; a grossness in his conception of the female form, which destroys the symmetry of female beauty; and a wildness of imagination in his general design, which violates the feelings of ordinary taste. You survey his pictures with astonishment-at the power of thought and brillian

y that boldness of conception, fidelity of execution, and coldness of colouring

most unrivalled, and it is from its character that the general tendency o

, or the multiplied persecutions which the early fathers of the church had to sustain, inevitably prescribed the object to which their genius was to be directed, and the peculiar character which their works, were to assume. They have all, accordingly,

cted, are the cells of monks, the energy of martyrs, or the sufferings of the crucifixion; and the dark-blue coldness of his colouring, combined with the depth of his shadows, accord well with the gloomy character which his compositions possess. The Caraccis, amidst the variety of

f the Magdalene. While, in common with all their brethren, they have aimed at the expression of emotion, it was an emotion of a softer kind than that which arose from the energy of passion, or the violence of suffering; it was the emotion produced by more permanent feelings; and less turbulent affections; and from the character of this emotion, their exe

on, because they consist for the most part of portraits, and our object is not to dwell on the richness of colouring, o

so peculiarly delighted. In the foreground is the ruins of an old temple, with its lofty pillars finely displayed in shadow above the summits of the horizon;-in the middle distance the battle is dimly discerned through the driving rain, which obscures the view; while the back ground is close

of his compositions. Their general character is that of tenderness and delicacy: there is a softness in his shading of the human form which is quite unrivalled, and a harmony in the general tone of his colouring, which is in perfect unison with the characteristic expression which it was his object to produce. You feel a want of unity, however, in the composition of his figures; you dwell rather on the fine expressio

exceeds Correggio himself; and the dark-blue colouring which prevails over the whole, is in perfect unison with the expression of that rest and quiet which the subject requires. The sleep of the Infant is perfection itself-it is the deep sleep of youth and of innocence, which no care has disturbed, and no sorrow embittered, and in the unbroken repose

figures, to multiply the effect which his composition might produce. Like all the rest, he has failed in effecting what the constitution of the human mind renders impossible, and in this very failure, warned every succeeding age of the vanity of the attempt which his transcendent genius was unable to effect. It is this fundamental error that destroys the effect, even of his finest pieces; it is this

gin and Child; in the unbroken harmony of the Holy Family; in the wildness and piety of the infant St John;-scenes, in which all the objects of the picture combine for the preser

art, there is every reason to believe that it ultimately will rival the celebrity of foreign genius; And it is in this view that the continuance of the gallery of the Louvre was principally to be wished by the English nation-that the English artists might possess, so near their own country, so great a school for composition and de

l character, accordingly, of the school, is the expression of passion or violent suffering; and in the prosecution of this object, they have endeavoured to exhibit it under all its aspects, and display all the effects which it could possibly produce on the human form, by the different figures which they have introduced. While this is the general character of the whole, there are of course

tate of repose; and the expression which the finest possess, is invariably that permanent expression which has resulted from the habitual frame and character of mind. Their figures seem to belong to a higher class of beings than that in which we are placed; they indicate a state in which passion, anxiety, and emotion are no more; and where the unruffled repose of mind has moulded the features into the perfect expression of the mental character. Even the countenance of the Venus de Medicis, the most beautiful which it has ever entered into the mind of man to conceive, and of which no copy gives the slightest idea, bears no trace of emotion, and none of the

there is a "human meaning in their eye," and they bear the marks of that anxiety and tenderness which belong to the relations of present existence. The Venus displays the same beauty, f

ed all which it is possible for human imagination to produce upon the subject. The commanding air, and advanced step, of the Apollo, exhibit Man in his noblest aspect, as triumphing over the evils of physical nature, and restraining the

their sex no

, and contemp

, and sweet at

nly, She for

to hold in the scale of nature; but the idea had been expressed in a still finer manner two thousand years before, by the sculptors of antiquity; and amidst all the degradation of ancient manners, the

es at first less effect, but gains upon the mind at every renewal, till it rivets the affections even more than the greatness of its unequalled rival-emblematic of the charm of female excell

ance is deformed by the tumult of passion; it is the moment of expiring nature, when the figure is relaxed by the weakness of decay, and the mind is softened by the approach of death; the moment when the ferocity of combat is forgotten in the extinction of the interest which it had excited, when every unsocial passion is stilled by the weakness of exhausted nature, and the mind, in the las

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all the peculiarities of local circumstances; they have been rescued from that inevitable degradation to which art is uniformly exposed, by taste being confined to a limited society; they have assumed, in consequence, that general character, which might suit the universal feelings of our nature, and that permanent expression which might speak to the hearts of men through every su

e of marble greatness which the Louvre presents, stopt involuntarily at the sight of the Venus, or clustered round the foot of the pedestal of the Apollo;-indicating thus, in the expression of unaffected feeling, the force of that genuine taste for the beauty of nature, which all the rudeness of savage manners, and all the ferocity of war, had not been abl

arts of Painting and Sculpture, which we shall presume to state, as what suggested themselves to us on the contemplation of the greatest assemblage of the works

rfection; to realise the expression of that character of mind which they imputed to the deities whose temples they were to adorn: It was grace, or strength, or majesty, or the benignity of divine power, which they were to represent by the figures of Venus, of Hercules, of Jupiter, or of Apollo. Their artists accordingly were led to aim at the

assion, of suffering, and of temporary emotion; to aim at rousing the pity, or exciting the sympathy, of the spectators; and to endeavour to characterise their works by the representation of temporary passion, not the expression of permanent character. Those beautiful pictures in which a different object seems to have been followed-in which the expression i

icial expressions on which their admiration was founded. The vehemence of their manner on the most ordinary occasions, rendered the most extravagant gestures requisite for the display of real passion; and their drama accordingly exhibits a mixture of dignity of sentiment, with violence of gesture, beyond measure surprising to a foreign spectator. The same disposition of the people has influenced the cha

taste advanced in no proportion to their riches, and who were capable of appreciating only the merit of minute detail, or the faithfulness of exact imitation. It is hence that their painting possesses excellencies and defects of so peculiar a description; that they have carried the minuteness of

subjects of the Italian school were the incidents of Sacred History, adapted to the devotional feelings of a religious people. In all, the subjects to which painting was applied, and the character of the art itself, was determined by the peculiar

tures, those made the deepest impression which approached nearest to the character by which the Grecian statuary is distinguished. In the prosecution

hich varies with all the changes which the mind undergoes; it is it which marks the difference between joy and sorrow, between love and hatred, between pleasure and pain, between life and death. But the eye, with all the endless expressions which it bears, is lost to the sculptor; its gaze must ever be cold and lifeless to him; its fire is quenched in the stillness of the tomb. A statue, therefore, can never be expressive of living emotion; it can never express those transient feelings which mark the play of the living mind. It is an abstraction of character which has no relation

ctual being, alive to the impressions of present existence, and bound by the ties of present affection. It is in the delineation of these affections, therefore, that the powers of the painter principally consists; in the representation, not of simple character, but of character influenced or subdued by emotion. It is the representation of the joy of youth, or the repose of age; of the sorrow of innocence, or the penitence of guilt; of the tenderness of parental affection, or the gratitude of f

omposition; they fix the mind to the observation of what is particular in the separate parts, and prevent that uniform and general emotion which arises from the perception of one uniform expression in all the parts of which it is composed. It is in this very perception, however, that the source of the beauty is to be found; it is in the undefined feeling to which it gives rise, that the delight of the emotion of taste consists. Like the harmony of sounds in musical composition, it produces an effect of which we are unable to give an account; but which we feel to be instantly destroyed by the jarring sound of a different note, or the discordant effect of a foreign expression. It is in the neglect of this great principle that the defect of many of the first pictures of modern times is to be found-in the confused multitude of unnecessary figures-in the co

painful or a ridiculous effect; it does not even convey any conception of the passion itself, because its character is not known by the expression of any single moment, but by the rapid changes which result from the perturbed state into which the mind is thrown. It is hence that passion seems so ridiculous when seen at a distance, or without the cause of its existence being known, and it is hence, that if a human figure were petrified in any of the stages of passion, it would have so pa

has been made; when straining against an invincible power has given to the figure the aspect at last of momentary repose; and when despair has placed its settled mark on the expression of the countenance. The Fighting Gladiator is not represented in a state of actual activity, but in that moment when he is preparing his

that is great or dignified in moral nature remains; and the greatest works of modern art are those which approach nearest to the same principle. It is not Hercules in the moment of earthly combat, when every muscle was swollen with the strength he was exerting, that they represent; but Hercules in the moment of transformation into a nobler being, when the exertion of mortality has passed, and his powers seem to repose in the tranquillity of Heaven: not Apoll