most for the cause of art. What he likes, another of similar taste may like; what affects him as an individual, may affect all the members of a community, the people of an entire city-the inhabitants of a mighty kingdom. To works so imagined, and in that spirit produced, let artists turn more than hitherto their attention: obey public feeling as the truest index of the wants of the mind of the people: and it seems the only sure way of obtaining that confidence by which you may in your turn influence and direct public taste, and work in your own spirit as well as that of the nation.

We have private patronage in this land to an extent which no other nation possesses. Let us encourage this market by supplying it with excellence rather than choking it with abundance: husband it in every way; let not its importance be underrated. To this class of patrons we owe the chief works of art in our land. The whole range of landscape-painting, scenes of familiar life, all our portraiture, and a great proportion of our historical works, are the offspring of individual encouragement. The palaces of Rome, of Florence, of Bologna, and of Venice were filled with works from the like source. It was by this, and this alone, that the great families of the Doria, the Colonna, and the Altieri acquired their magnificent specimens of Claude Lorrain and of the Poussins: it was by this that the Farnese, the Farnesina, the Rospigliosi, and the Ludovisi were decorated; by this the family of Orleans became possessed of the Sacraments of Poussin; and by this has the burgomaster Six been handed

down to our day as the friend and benefactor of Rembrandt.

All who desire to distinguish themselves and grow into eminence in art; all who begin to plume, as it were, their wings for an unessayed flight in the higher or the humbler regions of art, must hope for success through patronage such as this a patronage which surpasses far that of many foreign governments, and has been established here both by patriotism and generosity. To this source all that the genius of our school has produced must stand indebted for origin and support. This is a feature in our art, as well as a proof of the increasing taste and growing wealth of the empire. Activity of mind in the artist, a variety and diversity of subject, an originality of style, splendour in colour, a happy adaptation of the theme to the feeling of every variety of being: an observance of these ruling points has enabled English art to penetrate and become an object of demand in every country in the world.

Instead, therefore, of damping the ardour of young enthusiasm by holding out unreasonable fears, or expatiating on the manifold causes of depression which genius, through its sensibilities, seems doomed to suffer, I would rather conclude with relating a story which came to me through the historian of one of the English settlements of America. A devout community of respectable settlers, too weak to protect themselves, and too humble to purchase the protection of others, held in their misery a day of fast and humiliation, to render themselves worthier of the favour of Providence: but their distresses still con

"A

tinued, and they again consulted about the propriety of another fast, as an atonement for their sins. fast!" exclaimed one who had not hitherto spoken, "a fast would be ungrateful to God for the many mercies he has shown us; let us rather appoint a day of thanksgiving:" the proposal was carried with shouts, and the little colony was prosperous ever after.

SECTION II.

On the Choice and Handling of Subjects.

IF private patronage be, as I believe it is, the ruling and guiding power of art in this country—a power to whose influence the labours of the artist must be addressed it has this difference, compared with the less scattered and more concentrated patronage of the state, that, although it may not require works of great extent and vast magnificence, yet it surpasses it far in the variety of its demand, calling alike on art to decorate the dwelling of the noble, and embellish the abode of the peasant -to pour a ray or two of its light on the thick darkness of sullen ignorance, and mingle its fuller and brighter beam with the sunshine of learning and taste. While art, thus fostered, has become, as it were, the offspring of the island soil, borrowing neither shape nor hue from alien lands, it is of importance to ascertain upon what principle it is cherished and directed. This is capable of a ready solution-art depends for both aim and character, on the taste and wish, ef the individual who visits the picture market, and may feel

the desire to purchase a solitary work, or establish a gallery. Such patrons visit the artist's studio, saying, "we are not judges of the article, but we know what pleases us;" and they order a picture—be it portrait, landscape, domestic scene, or poetic painting -accordingly. To know, then, the taste of the public to learn what will best please the employer -is to an artist the most valuable of all knowledge, and the most useful to him whose skill and fancy it calls into exercise.

It is true the employer may not be a good judge of art; he may have notions and fancies which no labour can realise - may be insensible of the limits which control both sculpture and painting; unacquainted with fine examples, and little conversant in the technical language of our art. Yet, with all these discouragements, he may be naturally alive to the effects and the powers of genuine talent, and sensible to the impressions which the canvas reflects of forms and groups, and scenes existing in his own mind. With such qualifications, he is probably a far better judge of what art should perform than the professor who, like the actor on the stage, must be content to receive the fiat of success or failure from an audience who, to form judgment of the illusion, must necessarily be excluded from behind the

scenes.

If in estimating the character and importance of a work of art, the materials of which it is composed are considered to have much value or virtue in themselves: or if the mode by which they are fashioned and combined enjoyed an interest beyond the

mere mechanism through which the impression of thought is conveyed to the eye, then would the experience of the artist be as necessary to its appreciation as his labour is to its production; but the process of thought, like the language of the artist, may appear arbitrary and conventional, and the expressions so familiar to him of the flowing outline-the breadth of form, the expressive touch, the gorgeous surface, the varied texture with a multitude of phrases, which like terms of perspective, or names of tints, however necessary in explaining the construction or in reasoning on technical merits, yet form no part of the enjoyment a picture gives as a work of the mind, and if present to the thoughts of the spectator will only help to divert him from its true character or destroy its illusive effect.

To one who knows art only by the impression it makes, and to whom the mode of speech and thought of the artist are as dark as the book of the Sybils, a picture should be as a mirror held up in which he might see the true impress of nature, preserving the glow of youth and beauty, the wisdom and the gravity of matron looks, and fixing in unfleeting outline and colour the choicest images which appear in our waking dreams or in the visions of a fine imagination.

The unprofessional observer, if truly affected by a picture, regards it not as a thing for amendment or criticism, but as a fixed page of history, a theme for moral reflection. The adjustment of grouping, the expedient of contrasts, the connected chain of incidents, the repetition of lines, of forms and of