all character and expression, to be adequately represented, must be perceived by the mind, and not by the eye only. The French painters give only lines and precise differences, the English only general masses and strong effects. Hence the two nations reproach one another with the difference of their styles of art,-the one as dry, hard, and minute, -the other as gross, gothic, and unfinished; and they will probably remain for ever satisfied with each other's defects, as they afford a very tolerable fund of consolation on either side.

Much has been said of historical portraits, and I have no objection to this phrase, if properly understood. The giving historical truth to a portrait means, then, the representing the individual under one consistent, probable, and striking view; or showing the different features, muscles, &c. in one action, and modified by one principle. A portrait thus painted may be said to be historical; that is, it carries internal evidence of truth and propriety with it; and the number of individual peculiarities, as long as they are true to nature, cannot lessen, but must add to, the strength of the general impression.

It might be shown, if there were room in this place, that Sir Joshua has constructed his theory of the ideal in art upon the same mistaken prin

ciple of the negation or abstraction of a particular nature. The ideal is not a negative, but a positive thing. The leaving out the details or peculiarities of an individual face does not make it one jot more ideal. To paint history is to paint nature as answering to a general, predominant, or preconceived idea in the mind, of strength, beauty, action, passion, thought, &c.; but the way to do this is not to leave out the details, but to incorporate the general idea with the details; that is, to show the same expression actuating and modifying every movement of the muscles, and the same character preserved consistently through every part of the body. Grandeur does not consist in omitting the parts, but in connecting all the parts into a whole, and in giving their combined and varied action; abstract truth or ideal perfection does not consist in rejecting the peculiarities of form, but in rejecting all those which are not consistent with the character intended to be given, and in following up the same general idea of softness, voluptuousness, strength, activity, or any combination of these, through every ramification of the frame. But these modifications of form or expression can only be learnt from nature, and therefore the perfection of art must always be sought in nature. The ideal properly applies as much to

the idea of ugliness, weakness, folly, meanness, vice, as of beauty, strength, wisdom, magnanimity, or virtue. The antique heads of fauns and satyrs, of Pan or Silenus, are quite as ideal as those of the Apollo or Bacchus; and Hogarth adhered to an idea of humour in his faces, as Raphael did to an idea of sentiment. But Raphael found the character of sentiment in nature as much as Hogarth did that of humour, otherwise neither of them would have given one or the other with such perfect truth, purity, force, and keeping. Sir Joshua Reynolds' ideal, as consisting in a mere negation of individuality, bears just the same relation to real beauty or grandeur, as caricature does to true comic character.

It is owing either to a mistaken theory of elevated art, or to the want of models in nature, that the English are hitherto without any painter of serious historical subjects, who can be placed in the first rank of genius. Many of the pictures of modern artists have evidenced a capacity for correct and happy delineations of actual objects and domestic incidents only inferior to the masterpieces of the Dutch school. I might here mention the names of Wilkie, Collins, Heaphy, and others. We have portrait-painters who have attained to a very high degree of

excellence in all the branches of their art. In landscape, Turner has shown a knowledge of the effects of air, and of powerful relief in objects which was never surpassed. But in the highest walk of art-in giving the movements of the finer or loftier passions of the mind, this country has not produced a single painter who has made even a faint approach to the excellence of the great Italian painters. We have, indeed, a good number of specimens of the clay figure, the anatomical mechanism, the regular proportions measured by a twofoot rule;-large canvasses, covered with stiff figures, arranged in deliberate order, with the characters and story correctly expressed by uplifted eyes or hands, according to old receiptbooks for the passions; with all the hardness and inflexibility of figures carved in wood, and painted over in good strong body colours, that look "as if some of nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well." we still want a Prometheus to give life to the cumbrous mass,-to throw an intellectual light over the opaque image,-to embody the inmost refinements of thought to the outward eye,to lay bare the very soul of passion. That picture is of little comparative value, which can be completely translated into another lan

VOL. II.

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guage, of which the description in a common catalogue conveys all that is expressed by the picture itself; for it is the excellence of every art to give what can be given by no other in the same degree. Much less is that picture to be esteemed which only injures and defaces the idea already existing in the mind's eye: which does not come up to the conception which the imagination forms of the subject, and substitutes a dull reality for high sentiment; for the art is in this case an incumbrance, not an assistance, and interferes with, instead of adding to, the stock of our pleasurable sensations. But I should be at a loss to point out, I will not say any English picture, but certainly any English painter, who, in heroical and classical composition, has risen to the height of his subject, and answered the expectations of the wellinformed spectator, or excited the same impression by visible means as had been excited by words or by reflection.* That this inferiority in English art is not owing to a deficiency of English genius, imagination, or passion, is proved sufficiently by the works of our poets and dramatic writers, which, in lofti

If I were to make any qualification of this censure, it would be in favour of some of Northcote's compositions from early English history.