chiefly choose their subjects. Poetry, in short, is now becoming metaphysical. Search our current literature, and then say if it be not so.

Such is the cycle in which the Mind of Nations moves, and such the peculiar phase of Poetry which the present age has reached. Far be it from me, in a spirit of one-eyed wisdom, to depreciate this school. On the contrary, it possesses greater attraction for me than probably for most people. Nevertheless, I venture to affirm, that this metaphysical poetry is Poetry in its last stage. It cannot travel much farther into the cold clear regions of pure Thought, without becoming attenuated, chilled, dead. The present analytic spirit of the age-the spirit which searches into, and takes to pieces everything, in order to know it-is the death of poetry; for it supersedes Imagination and Emotion, which give to poetry its bright shapes and glowing spirit. Moreover let it be borne in mind, that the more poetry turns from the objective to the subjective, the more it turns from the idealising of Action to the beautifying of Thought, or in one word, the more metaphysical it becomes, the less hold it takes on the public mind, and the narrower its circle of appreciators. All men understand energetic action, and its appropriate emotions; but as soon as the poet forsakes Narrative and takes to Reflection, he loses half or three-fourths of his readers. Man looks everywhere sooner than within and of all the phenomena of the world, those of which ordinary mortals know least are the phenomena of their own mind. Poets should remember this. All the masters of the lyre-in perfect accordance with our theory, which holds that an objective state of Sensation and Emotion is the true soil for poetry,-all the poets whom the world has pronounced Great, have dealt chiefly with action and narrative; and their works, accordingly, appeal almost as strongly to the illiterate as to the learned, -to the humble as to the high in station. Homer, Tasso, Byron, Scott, and we may add,

Aytoun and Macaulay, have done this, and done it unconsciously, instinctively. But the vast majority of our contemporary poets-catching the reflective spirit of the age-compose very differently. The cry so often heard nowadays"Oh, this is a poem for the closet,—or a drama for the closet," is just a confession that the works in question do not appeal, like those of the great masters, to the catholic feelings of our nature, but to faculties developed only in a few. Some of the best poetic writers of the day, in fact, are rather beautiful thinkers than poets. They do not create, so much as beautify, illustrate, and expound. All honour to them!-they have few greater admirers than myself; but, be it confessed, until the Age turns over a new leaf, we shall have few more names of great poets to inscribe in our annals.

And when Poetry languishes, Fine Art dies! Thanks to the eccentric development of the human mind, which ever and anon throws us a Genius-a Noel Paton, or any other name that the reader may prefer to redeem the barrenness of the age, such a calamity has not yet befallen us,-although most certainly Fine Art is at a low ebb. But-mark this, the tide is on the turn; although the next generation, and not we, must be the spectators of the result. On the face of Europe there are signs of coming change, and war, and the tossing of the mind of nations more fervently than even during the last grand struggle. The curtain of the Future is rising upon a gigantic strife between Liberty and Despotism,-Liberty combating for life with the battalions of Autocracy. But when that Storm shall have rolled past,-when the Nations spring once more to their feet, and a breaking of fetters is heard all over Europe, when the peoples split themselves no more into artificial kingdoms and princedoms, but unite in enduring communities of Race; and over the length and breadth of the renovated land goes up a Pæan of joy and triumph,—a Psalm of the free-a song like that of Miriam and the Israel

ites on the shores of the Red Sea; may we not expect that then, as ever before, Poetry and the Arts will burst forth in splendour, as brightly and joyously as when united Greece rolled back the myriad billows of the Persian Invasion; or as the Muse of Europe sprang rejuvenated from her long sleep, to listen to the bursting clarion and sweeping chivalry of the Crusades.

1853.

BATTLE OF THE STYLES*

ARCHITECTURE

As an art-critic Mr Ruskin is most generally right, but as a theoriser upon art, he is almost as invariably wrong. We make neither of these statements, it will be observed, unqualifiedly, but we believe them true in the main. As an art-critic, his only defect and it is a great one-is his bigotry. He is utterly intolerant of any school of art, or kind of beauty, save that which (we do not say erroneously) is deemed by himself the best. In his praises we delightedly agree, but from his censures we have often to dissent. He cannot hold the truth in moderation, and in its integrity. It will not satisfy him to hold that his own favourite schools of art are excellent, but he must prove that every other is utterly and essentially bad.

The most remarkable proof of this æsthetic bigotry is his wholesale condemnation of Greek architecture. Now, that Mr Ruskin's favourite Gothic architecture, in its best form, is not finer than the Greek, we will not assert. It is certainly superior in this-that it is more expressive than the Greek, more full of life and variety: but there are other points in which the inferiority of the Gothic is equally apparent. The Greeks, following the bent of their national temperament, sought pre-eminently for pure symmetry in their works, and cared little

* Written on the delivery of Mr Ruskin's Lectures in Edinburgh.

for that profusion of ornament and endless variety so much esteemed by the northern Mediæval nations. The great and characteristic difference between the Greeks and the so-called Goths consists in the different use which they made of that negative but most important element of Beauty,-Discord. The Greeks admired beauty pure, with little intermixture of discord or relief,-in other words, with little departure from Symmetry. Pre-eminently intellectual, they desired a beauty which addressed itself peculiarly to the understanding,-whereas the Gothic nations were more taken up with the heart. Intellect predominated in the temperament of the one,-Emotion in that of the other. Hence the pure symmetry of Grecian art was not lifeful and expressive enough for the Gothic nations. For the effect of Symmetry on the mind of the beholder is perfectly to satisfy the intellectual instincts of our nature, and, accordingly, to produce a feeling of repose. A perfectly symmetrical object is understood and admired at once, and, as a drawback, has a tendency to become in course of time insipid; whereas Expression is gained by breaking up this symmetry,-by sacrificing a complete balancement of parts for the sake of obtaining variety, -and thus giving more life and expressiveness to the composition. The tendency of the one is to delight and satisfy the mind; the tendency of the other is to delight and move it. The same qualities distinguish Greek and Gothic literature, as well as art: Romance, or the picturesque and emotional in fiction, being as characteristic of the literature of the so-called Gothic nations, as symmetry is of the classic compositions of Greece.

Catholic in our tastes, we find no difficulty in admiring both styles,—or, we may add, in condemning both, when existing in imperfection, or out of place. Mr Ruskin ought to bear in mind that both styles may be-are-excellent of their kind; and that the style and expression of Art, like those of Thought, vary according to the country that gives them birth. This most certainly does not prevent one national style from being actually better than another; but a neglect of this truth is apt