strong a passion" as these lines contain; nor have they it in them to "endure to the end for liberty's sake." They can never hope to defend the political principles which they learnt from us, till they understand our poetry, both of which originate in the same cause, the strength of our livers and the stoutness of our hearts.

CHAPTER XI.

STATUARY does not affect me like painting. I am not, I allow, a fair judge, having paid a great deal more attention to the one than to the other. Nor did I ever think of the first as a profession; and it is that perhaps which adds the sting to our love of excellence, the hope of attaining it ourselves in any particular walk. We strain our faculties to the utmost to conceive of what is most exquisite in any art to which we devote ourselves, and are doubly sensitive to it when we see it attained. Knowledge may often beget indifference, but here it begets zeal. Our affections kindled and projected forward by the ardour of pursuit, we come to the contemplation of truth and beauty with the passionate feeling of lovers; the examples of acknowledged excellence before us are the steps by which we scale the path of distinction, the spur which urges us on; and the admiration which we fondly cherish for them is the seed of future fame. No wonder that the youthful student dwells with delight and rapture on the finished works of art, when they are to his heated fancy the pledge and foretaste of immortality; when at every successful stroke of

imitation he is ready to cry out with Correggio-" I also am a painter !"-when every heightening flush of his enthusiasm is a fresh assurance to him of congenial powers and when overlooking the million of failures (that all the world have forgot) or names of inferior note, Raphael, Titian, Guido, Salvator are each another self. Happy union of thoughts and destinies, lovelier than the hues of the rainbow! Why can it not last and span our brief date of life?

One reason, however, why I prefer painting to sculpture is, that painting is more like nature. It gives one entire and satisfactory view of an object at a particular moment of time, which sculpture never does. It is not the same in reality, I grant; but it is the same in appearance, which is all we are concerned with. A picture wants solidity, a statue wants colour. But we see the want of colour as a palpably glaring defect, and we do not see the want of solidity, the effects of which to the spectator are supplied by light and shadow. A picture is as perfect an imitation of nature as is conveyed by a looking-glass; which is all that the eye can require, for it is all it can take in for the time being. A fine picture resembles a real living man; the finest statue in the world can only resemble a man turned to stone. The one is an image, the other a cold abstraction of nature. leaves out half the visible impression. There is therefore something a little shocking and repulsive in this art to the common eye, that requires habit and study

L

It

to reconcile us completely to it, or to make it an object of enthusiastic devotion. It does not amalgamate kindly and at once with our previous perceptions and associations. As to the comparative difficulty or skill implied in the exercise of each art, I cannot pretend to judge: but I confess it appears to me that statuary must be the most trying to the faculties. The idea of moulding a limb into shape, so as to be right from every point of view, fairly makes my head turn round, and seems to me to enhance the difficulty to an infinite degree. There is not only the extraordinary circumspection and precision required (enough to distract the strongest mind, as I should think), but if the chisel, working in such untractable materials, goes a hair's-breadth beyond the mark, there is no remedying it. It is not as in painting, where you may make a thousand blots, and try a thousand experiments, efface them all one after the other, and begin anew the hand always trembles on the brink of a precipice, and one step over is irrecoverable. There is a story told, however, of Hogarth and Roubilliac, which, as far as it goes, may be thought to warrant a contrary inference. These artists differed about the difficulty of their several arts, and agreed to decide it by exchanging the implements of their profession with each other, and seeing which could do best without any regular preparation. Hogarth took a piece of clay, and succeeded in moulding a very tolerable bust of his friend; but when

Roubilliac, being furnished with paints and brushes,
attempted to daub a likeness of a human face, he
could make absolutely nothing out, and was obliged
to own himself defeated. Yet Roubilliac was a man
of talent, and no mean artist. It was he who, on
returning from Rome where he had studied the works
of Bernini and the antique, and on going to see his
own performances in Westminster Abbey, exclaimed,
that "
they looked like tobacco-pipes, by G-d!"
What sin had this man or his parents committed,
that he should forfeit the inalienable birth-right of
every Frenchman-imperturbable, invincible self-
sufficiency? The most pleasing and natural applica-
tion of sculpture is, perhaps, to the embellishment of
churches and the commemoration of the dead. I
don't know whether they were Roubilliac's or not,
but I remember seeing many years ago in Westmin-
ster Abbey (in the part that is at present shut up) two
figures of angels bending over a tomb, that affected
me much in the same manner that these lines of Lord
Byron's have done since-

"And when I think that his immortal wings
Shall one day hover o'er the sepulchre

Of the poor child of clay that so adored him
As he adores the highest, Death becomes

Less terrible!"

It appears to me that sculpture, though not proper to express health or life or motion, accords admirably with the repose of the tomb; and that it cannot