fine picture in the Louvre, which contains no particular objects but a bird-catcher and some men sawing timber? The forest illuminated by the rays of the sun to be seen at Munich is a noble work of art; but the beholder must be in a morally excited state before he could either feel to kindle within him a sense of admiration of the beauty of the divine works, or a thought of gratitude for eyes, and for the unspeakable advantage of light. In another of Rubens' landscapes, also at Munich, one sees fourteen cows with two women and a man. One can, however, witness the reality any day, which is far more calculated to quicken our moral sentiments, and excite the feeling of gratitude that so many of the animal tribes minister to the wants of mankind. Nay, even let us look at the work which is numbered 169 in Rubens' catalogue, and is called the Prodigal Son. What do we observe there beyond a miserable shed, and as miserable and forlorn a peasant, which, however, are by no means calculated to enforce the sin of prodigality, and the folly of inexperienced impulses for liberty, with half the energetic effect that the Scriptural account of the same story does. One meets with specimens of Rubens' landscapes almost wherever there is to be found a first-rate collection of works of art, but whether one contemplates his 'Prarie de Lacken' in her Majesty's rooms, or the waggon and people who are harvesting in Lord Grosvenor's collection, or the Shepherd and his Flock' of Lord Farnborough, or the 'Huntsman and his Dogs,' belonging to the Earl of Mulgrave, we see but the commonest aspects of nature; and if the realities themselves fail to inspire a noble sentiment of moral tuition, we do not see how it can be expected from a pictorial exhibition, however exquisite. The same remarks apply with equal force to Wouvermans,' Zingbaback's, and Everdingen's landscapes, though it must be admitted that the first almost always produces finer specimens of nature, and the last principally abounds in scenes from a more mountainous country. Nor is the case at all mended if we were to choose the finest landscapes that ever left the easel of Bergham, of Adrian Vandevelde, or that soul-stirring master of light and shade, Rembrandt, or the as beautiful productions of Both and Cuyp, or even the more humane views of David Teniers.

We are aware that it may be said that the Dutch landscape-painters are less likely to excite the mind of the student with their moral suggestiveness and spiritual ideas than some of the authors of the French, the Italian, and the Spanish school. We do not see why the Flemish masters of landscapes should be thus set aside; but we will consent to try the merits of the question on the best works which these alleged superior masters have at any time produced. Let us then begin with Claude, several of the very best of whose landscapes we possess in our own National Gallery; and we would seriously ask the advocate of the opinion that the arts deserve national countenance on account of their tendency to improve the moral sentiments of the country, in what way or degree the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, or the Embarkation of the Virgins from a magnificent sea port, is likely to impress the beholder in favour of any

of the morals of our nature by contemplating those two marvellous landscapes to which we have referred. Claude has always been admitted to stand at the head of the French school of landscape artists, but we much doubt whether one gross soul has been ever sublimated by the sight of his landscapes since the day that he produced one to the present moment. Salvator Rosa has done more for the grand landscapes of the Abruzzi in Italy than all its other painters, and yet we confess that while we have looked on some of the happiest of these works of the pencil, we never remember but once when our own soul was elevated above this sordid world, and that was in contemplating Peter preaching from the stump of an old tree to an interesting mass of about two hundred peasants, beggarmen and cavaliers (in our own possession), every eye of whom is fixed upon the preacher; but even in this instance we believe the effect is more owing to the struck audience and the commanding preacher than to the magnificent landscape in which the painter has drawn out his company. Mere landscapes are rarely seen alone without some additions of human history, but even with those additions it is very rare to find any of them raising the soul above the transitory pleasures of society, and even that gorgeous landscape by Velasquez that hangs in the National Gallery would be looked at frequently by ten thousand beholders without touching the conscience of half-a-dozen, or perhaps not even one visitor. It is in vain, therefore, to cite any of the other great masters of Italian or Spanish landscape to prove that they exert a moralizing influence on the intellectual life of the beholder; for if Claude's and S. Rosa's works fail to produce the effect, those of Titian, of Giorgiono, of Corregio, and even of Raphael and M. A. Buonarotti themselves would also fail, especially as the bulk of these artists merely introduced the landscape to heighten the effect of their story, though we may venture to affirm that not one of them ever contemplated that society would ever become so foolish as to imagine that, instead of appealing to the sense of artistic beauty, they were to be regarded as teachers of right morals and of true doctrines.

There may be some, however, who, yielding to our arguments in reference to the landscape-painters, would be still inclined to maintain their doctrine as illustrated by the painters of shipping and the sea. We admit that the sea is much less known by men in general than the land; that the sight of a storm on water is less familiar than one among the trees and buildings of the continent or the islands; and as it is our wish neither to shirk nor do injustice to any part of the argument, we will select two or three of those aquatic artists whose names stand at the very height of their respective schools, such as Backhuysen, Wm. Vandervelde, jun., and old Peters. Backhuysen, whose love of the arts was illustrated in his early life by his neglecting his own mercantile profession to follow the impulses of his taste, has never been equalled by an artist of any country for the accuracy and grandeur with which he has exhibited the horrors of shipwreck, or the tempest sweeping the largest vessels before it as if they had been only paper toys; and whether he has chosen to exhibit the storm on the

Lake of Galilee or on the coast of Amsterdam, he has thrown into his canvass as vivid and as vast a view of the agitated water as possible. The extraordinary prices which his works now bring proves how general in all civilized countries the productions of this master are valued, but we defy any artist to name the painting, or even the drawing, of Backhuysen-not excepting the finest one known in our own Print-room-which would justify the claims made by so many artists and amateurs in favour of the moral instructions derivable from the fine arts. Nor do the works of Wm. Vandervelde succeed better in making out the point in dispute, for while we cheerfully concede to this master the same relation to the water-painters as Raphael sustains to the artists in history, and admit with how much skill he groups his vessels, and with how finished a perfection he turns out the figures on board, or the rigging and the position of the ships and boats, and that no one has better succeeded in painting the green transparent sea, we are obliged to deny that they contain any of that moral impulse which so many writers impute to them. And while we mention these principal painters of the sea, we ought not to overlook old Peters, whose rougher but more energetic pictures present the ocean-tempest so impressively to the connoisseur, that he can scarcely help hearing the moan of the wind and the loud surges of the billows against the rock, while in some of his sea-storms one can hardly avoid believing in the reality of that foundering ship at a distance, or fail to hear the enthusiastic thanksgiving of the naked few who have succeeded in reaching the rock, from which they with difficulty seem to believe that they cannot be washed back by the next billow. But in which of these paintings shall we look for its aptitude to impress moral and religious instruction?

If the argument has thus far succeeded in proving that the fine arts must depend for support on the taste of their admirers, without claiming for them, what they can never maintain, a kind of silent ministration to society of moral instruction, it will be all the stronger if we turn our attention to that department of the arts which we may denominate the mythologically historic. It is to be regretted that painters have done perhaps more than any other class of men to continue the knowledge of Roman and Grecian mythology, not only in our schools, where it becomes the means of debauching the juvenile mind, but among our educated families, which can scarcely be supposed to form an acquaintance with mythology without suffering some damage to their moral feelings. It may be that the pagan deities mentioned in this history did once absorb the homage of nations, who also believed in the existence of Parnassus, of the gardens of Alcinous, and the other rabble of imaginary and sensual localities, of which the mythological poets furnish the history. But why should we be made so familiar as we are by the best painters with a life-time in which men and women lived without marriage, when mind was the mere slave to the animal passions, when mankind had neither laws for life in this world, when history was all quenched into voluptuous fable, when the ignorant, the sorrowful, and the unfortunate, were pitied by

no one, and when the heaven of mythology was only represented as a higher brothel, and the abodes of the damned were caves of undignified and unbated suffering for crimes committed against no law, and for infirmities which no one could help? Because the Greeks and the Romans degraded their own spirits and polluted those of their children and servants by believing this horrid time of mental and moral outlawry, is it not better that we should allow this infectious intelligence to be unacquired and neglected, or must we be for ever called barbarians because we will not teach the filthy history of Pan, though he may have been originally a mere personification of the laws of agriculture? Are there not wise men enough in the world, bone of our bone,' who have actually suffered and performed their more than heroic parts, worthy both of gratitude and imitation, without defiling my young daughters and their artless brother with the knavish and filthy achievements of Apollo? I know how beautiful some of these histories are, but as they are a lie, and therefore can never instruct, so it appears undesirable to commend them to the knowledge of society, and most of all to set our best artists on their cultivation.

As far back, however, as the history of the arts extends, we find the artists distinguished their works by taking the subjects of their best paintings, drawings, and engravings, from mythological personages. Take, for instance, that great master of the pencil, Andrea Montagna, the master of Correggio, and who, for the perfection of his productions, was knighted by the Duke of Mantua, and who was himself the scholar of Baldini, of Fineguerra, and of Squarcione, how few of his remaining works do we possess that are not mythological? Besides the splendid set in the Court of Hampton Palace, we have from this master the piece called the 'Bacchanals,' which consists of ten figures, drawn with every lascivious accompaniment, and calculated rather to throw off from the thoughts of our youthful gazers all moral considerations than to encourage them; or another Bacchanalian subject by the same hand, where Bacchus sits in a fuddled state of half intoxicated jollity on the edge of a tun, with twelve appropriate companions, employed in different acts of their ideal buffoonery; or, by the same master, we may also object to his 'Combat of Marine Monsters,' fighting in the marshes of the Mantuan pool with bones, reeds, fishes, and other weapons, one of them bearing for a shield a cow's skull. This production, which by the amateurs is called 'a sublime and poetic composition,' contains two horses' heads, one of which is inexpressibly exquisite for its representation of equine rage, only displays how this early master of the arts prostituted his genius; for, beyond the mere expression of it, we should indeed be hard pressed to guess in what conceivable manner works of this nature can serve the cause of morals. Or, to illustrate still further how far the mythological works of the painters are from serving the moral influences of society, we may mention the engraving by Marco Antonio Raimondi, of the Loves of the Pagan Gods,' which seems to have been the compound designs of the infamous Peter Aretine and Julio Romano, and which exceeded in libidinous extravagance every production of that or of any subsequent

age. In short, so disgusting was this set of engravings, that Pope Clement VII. was officially obliged to commit Marco Antonio to prison, and to drive both his colleagues out of the Papal States, who made no better a defence of their vile impurities than that they amused the poet when he was sick, and afforded him relaxation! And so far was the imprisonment of Marco from being sincere, that when he had finished the fine engraving of Baccio Bandinelli, which represents the roasting of St. Lawrence on a gridiron, he obtained his liberty from that very pope whose moral proprieties had been outraged by the lascivious Loves of the Pagan Gods.' We should be glad to know which of the moral precepts, even from the laws of nature, is to be served by representing Venus in a state of nudity, newly risen from the bath, drying one of her feet in a style that is designed to show off the better the points of her person. Or how can the Judgment of Paris' emulate our young men and women, whether the painter have accompanied the persons with other ideal figures from classical story, or, like the simpler style of Nicholas del Abati, have confined himself to the additional presence of Cupid and one of his hunting dogs? We will make an exception in favour of the arts suggesting a moral influence by the two stories, which are probably by Raphael, of a woman representing virginity, carrying snow in her basket, exposed to the sun, and of the picture entitled 'Love Wounding the Female Bosom ;' but even these are commonly neutralized by the nude state of the women and their ill-assorted companions in the painting. But what moral could the shrewdest deducer draw from the mythological picture of the Hours' by Guido, in which we have the finest forms, male and female, all nude, or nearly so, attending a chariot drawn by the fabulous horses of the sun, and in every attitude of unmixed delight, displayed as well by Apollo Belvidere as by those feminine attendants of the gods, which are there drawn together to represent the blessing of daylight to our world? Or how will these artistic moralists proceed to draw lessons of improvement from the Fall of Phaeton,' in which Jupiter is exhibited angrily darting his thunderbolts at the reckless youth, the four horses which draw the car plunging in as many different directions, and Phaeton himself already dead with alarm? Artists may affirm that when this subject is painted well on a ceiling, it is astonishingly full of splendour and sublimity, the 'beau ideal in perfection,' as Cumberland has had the daring to express; but we, on the other hand, who think the whole a piece of imaginative extravagance, can neither see in it the punishment of mortal ambition, nor even the power of the gods. We regret to find the magnificent genius even of Michael Angelo trifling with such ridiculous fables as Ixion embracing Juno,' in which he represents the former praying to Jupiter, the husband of the latter, while, to turn the whole into a caricature, he exhibits a satyr riding on a tree across a gulph! We do not, indeed, know that this artist ever painted or drew the 'Elysium of Lovers,' where we see Apollo descending from the clouds, Love, drawn in a car by two unicorns, is rising, and, in a lake, Venus and Cupid are visible, who beckon the lovers to come over to them.