WHILE the works of Michael Angelo and Raphael, in their peculiar or essential characteristics, announce the influence and operation of different constituents of the mind, a third, and very distinct portion of its perceptions, furnishes the foundation and reference of those of Titian, which occupy a station at once elevated and degraded -elevated by the extent of their relation or reference, and the exemplification of power or genius which they present degraded (to use the general language in respect to the sphere of mind or being to which they will be found to belong) in their basis and final tendency.

But it is only by a discrimination of those ultimate qualities with which the greater names in art should be seen to be synonymous, that those distinctions which we have already made in regard to Michael Angelo and Raphael, and in this instance shall endeavour to establish in respect to Titian, may be arrived at and apprehended. Surrounded, as all the masters of the great era of Italian painting were, by an almost common atmosphere, mental and physical; and each confessing the influence of those prevailing peculiarities, both of thought and style, which run through out every department of art; with the same data or materials, and in a great measure with a like overt or professed purpose in their exercise, (setting aside all consideration of their general bond of unity-the nature of the art itself,) there is necessarily much which is common among them. But beyond this common surface, (dependent upon their being of one time, and the similarity of the subjects of their works,) lying beneath the immediate effect of those influences from the combination of which the peculiar animus of revived civilisation sprung, there are radical distinctions, which are not to be apprehended or characterised without a reference to the constitution of the mind; of which painting, in carrying forward its purpose-the explication or reproduction of the amassed tendencies of life

through the operation of emotion and passion, the legitimate and distinguishing end of all the arts-presents one diversified evolution. This is the view under which it should be regarded, in attempting to discriminate the character of different periods, schools, and masters. The primary distinctions in every art must be sought for, and found, in the relation which their separate productions hold with the different elements of the mind: not in reference to the necessary and obvious exercise of these the condition of every intelligential act, from the simplest to the most complex-but by their being immediately manifested or exponed in different combinations, which should be recognised to constitute the ultimate distinctions of signification and style.

Of this manifestation, the works of Titian are among the most prominent examples. They originate from, and are addressed to, one great range of perception. The sphere to which he belongs, by its engrossing influence, "contends for mastery" with that of Michael Angelo and that of Raphael, to neither of which it is inferior in extent; but the nature of the tendency of his works separates him by a wide gulf from both.

Venetian painting, of which Titian must be considered to be the great representative, has been designated the school of colour. Thus, as in the instance of the Roman and other schools, the method of using or adopting a particular portion of the material, or means of signification, has been held to be ultimately distinctive of its character. The spirit-the vivida vis animi_which distinguishes different periods and different schools of art, one from the other, has been placed in lines and in tints; and its law, w, which led to the adoption or rejection-the selection and combination ofthese-has remained unnoticed. Its vehicula, like the cover of an Egyptian two thousand years dead, have been looked to for all that was to characterise it-the chrysalis shell mistaken for the living psyche, which floated unobserved