In addition to these inestimable purchases by the government, we have, within these few years, made immense acquisitions. During the French revolution, England obtained the Orleans collection, with several other valuable collections, and a vast number of detached pictures from all parts of the Continent. This island has been for some years in possession of an inestimable treasure in fine paintings by "the great masters of the renowned ages!" She has had the Cartoons of Raphael for nearly two hundred years; and the Elgin Marbles, the works of Phidias, have been opened to the inspection of artists and the public, from Spring, in 1807 (see Report of the Committee, fol. 65).—With all these materials for improvement, with a Royal Academy to instruct, and a British Institution to encourage and reward, and each meritoriously active in the discharge of its duties, we might have reasonably expected, that the great historical or public style, by which the ancients attained to excellence and immortality, would have found patrons, and that a taste for that style would have been, in some degree, diffused. In the examination of the witnesses before the right honourable committee of the House of Commons on the Elgin Marbles, in Feb. 1816, the question was repeatedly put-" Do you think it of great importance to the improvement of art that this collection should become the property of the public?" The answers were all in the affirmative; and the spirit of the questions and answers shows, that the great style of art was the primary object of the committee and of the respondents, and not merely a school of landscape, cattle, familiar life, and elegant domestic embellishment, in which the British artists have already attained to unrivalled excellence.

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE's candid reply to the

following question put to him by the Committee on the Elgin Marbles, is decisive on this point. "In your own particular line, do you consider them of high importance, as (in) forming a National School? Answer.-" In a line of art which I have very seldom practised, but which it is still my wish to do, I consider they would, namely, HISTORICAL PAINTING. (Report, fol. p. 38.) This is the whole important truth: but as the church exclusion of paintings has walled up the great field of historical painting, of what use (until the Government opens a gate) can the Elgin Marbles be in that high department, from which the British students and British painters are excluded, by the non-existence of commissions, the non-existence of employment, and the non-existence of buyers, and a market?

After all the immense acquisitions of these last thirty years, for the advancement of the British School in the highest department of painting, what have been the results in that department? In every branch of the domestic style, where patronage has been duly afforded, the British artists have triumphantly borne away the palm of genius from their competitors; but in the public style of history, how is it? Look but a few years back, and behold BOYDELL, MACKLIN, and BOWYER going forth like husbandmen, who scatter their seed upon the rocks, where it only shoots forth in green blades, that perish long before the day of harvest, for want of a soil to nourish it. The various British galleries, formed by these enterprising printsellers, passed away without having taken any hold on the public mind, for the church exclusion of pictures had indurated and rendered steril the intellectual soil in which those exertions of British genius would otherwise have taken root. NORTHCOTE, the British Caravaggio, whose picture of the Two Princes smothered in the Tower, forty years ago,

furnished a hint for the Shakspeare Gallery, to Boydell, has long since been forced to yield to the taste of the age; but this veteran artist continues, occasionally, to make vigorous sallies, without a commission, into the province of history. His latest effects show that his pencil is still capable of sustaining the high reputation which he obtained in 1787, by his commanding picture of the death of Wat Tyler. Of the historical pictures which he has painted on commission, with a very few exceptions, the entire have been painted for commercial speculators.

The patriotic Directors of the British Institution, with a vigilant attention to the discharge of their duty, have this year purchased one of NORTHCOTE'S latest works, "The Entombing of Christ." In France or Italy, a capital painting like this, by a native artist, would have tempted a competition to possess it; but is it not a melancholy truth, that if the Directors had not wisely made the purchase, it might have remained (thanks to the church exclusion!) for years unsold in the artist's apartments?

We have already noticed the dispersion of the historic galleries of Boydell, Macklin, and Bowyer, without their having laid hold upon the public mind, through the want of a soil to take root in. It is well known that the sublime and beautiful flights of imagination in FUSELI'S Miltonic Gallery did not rescue that most extraordinary effort of Genius, without a patron or a commission, from a similar fate. We have also remarked, that the young artists who applied themselves to historical painting at the call of the British Institution in 1805, have gradually been obliged, perhaps with the exception of Hilton, to quit his tory painting, to suit their pencils to the taste of the time, and have fallen into more popular branches of practice. HILTON still acquires fresh laurels in the poetry of his art; but he no longer displays his powers on a grand scale, as

the painter of sacred history. HAYDON, a young champion of the public style, who went forth like a giant, glorying in his strength, in 1808 and 1809, after so many years of enthusiastic hope and arduous struggle, has been necessitated to take to portrait painting for a livelihood. The spacious exhibition rooms, containing the magnificent series of historical paintings by the late President, West, are wholly deserted by the public. Excepting the few fine specimens of this class, at the British Institution this year, we do not hear of any great public picture being now in hand, either upon a commission, an exhibitional speculation, or the precarious issue of a chance purchaser.

These facts show, that our inestimable acquisitions from Greece and Italy have hitherto unhappily failed to open a field of employment for the historical pencil in the highest department, or to diffuse a taste for that grand public style by which the ancients acquired their highest excellence.

Where does the cause of this failure lie? Not in his Majesty for the fine taste of that illustrious personage, and his gracious desire to patronise British genius, are well known and evinced by his munificent purchases of British pictures for the embellishment of the royal apartments: not in his Majesty's Government, or the Legislature: for the Government and Legislature have been liberal in amassing fine specimens of painting and sculpture for the advancement of the British School: not in the country, for the country has proved itself rich in genius: not in the Royal Academy, for the Royal Academy has sent forth a number of students who have reflected honour on its course of instruction: not in the British Institution, for that public-spirited body has rewarded merit by prizes, and by purchase: not in the young historical painters, for they have exhibited historical pictures upon a grand scale, which

have proved them worthy of employment in the public style, and capable of conferring reputation on the empire.

Where his Majesty, the Government, the Legislature, the country, the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the young historical painters, the veterans Northcote and West, the President of the Royal Academy, the venerable founder and father of British historical painting, have all pressed forward, with one noble impulse, to the same national object, what can have occasioned so untoward a conclusion? What-but the old rooted evil, CHURCH EXCLUSION, which nearly seventy years ago defeated the paternal efforts of his late Majesty, and the genius of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, Hogarth, and the one hundred and one associated artists? Although upon every other ground the best materials have been collected, and the best dispositions existed, CHURCH EXCLUSION, the great kill-genius of the age, neutralized all in the highest department. After the young candidate for historical fame had gained a prize and sold a picture or two, CHURCH EXCLUSION shut him out from further hope, from further employment and patronage; that appalling power forced him into the withering grasp of discontent, distress and poverty; beat down the bravery of his nature; and left him no prospect but that of flying from the high ground of his hopes, or of sinking, an heart-broken and deserted victim in the very field of his glory.

Let us imagine that the government of a foreign state has erected a vast machinery at a great expense of time, money, and labour, and has invited its people to invest their capital in a manufacture to be carried on by means of this machinery. If, after all, facts prove that there are no buyers in the proposed direction or field, and no market for the goods when fabricated,-what is to be done? Surely

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