the countenance.

to me,

This is the ideal, passion blended with thought and pointing to distant objects, not debased by grossness, not thwarted by accident, not weakened by familiarity, but connected with forms and circumstances that give the utmost possible expansion and refinement to the general sentiment. With all my admiration of Hogarth, I cannot think him equal to Raphael. I do not know whether if the portfolio were opened, I would not as soon look over the prints of Hogarth as those of Raphael; but assuredly, if the question were put I would sooner never have seen the prints of Hogarth than never have seen those of Raphael. It is many years ago since I first saw the prints of the 'Cartoons' hanging round the old-fashioned parlour of a little inn in a remote part of the country. I was then young: I had heard of the fame of the 'Cartoons,' but this was the first time I had ever been admitted face to face into the presence of those divine works. "How was I then uplifted!" Prophets and apostles stood before me as in a dream, and the Saviour of the Christian world with his attributes of faith and power; miracles were working on the walls; the hand of Raphael was there; and as his pencil traced the lines, I saw godlike spirits and lofty shapes descend and

walk visibly the earth, but as if their thoughts still lifted them above the earth. There I saw the figure of St Paul, pointing with noble fervour to "temples not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;" and that finer one of Christ in the boat, whose whole figure seems sustained by meekness and love; and that of the same person surrounded by his disciples, like a flock of sheep listening to the music of some divine shepherd. I knew not how enough to admire them. If from this transport and delight there arose in my breast a wish, a deep aspiration of mingled hope and fear to be able one day to do something like them, that hope has long since vanished; but not with it the love of art, nor delight in the works of art, nor admiration of the genius which produces them, nor respect for fame which rewards and crowns them! Later in life, I saw other works of this great painter (with more like them) collected in the Louvre, where Art at that time lifted up her head, and was seated on her throne, and said, "All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me!" Honour was done to her and all hers. There was her treasure, and there the inventory of all she had. There she had gathered together her pomp, and there was her shrine, and there her votaries came and worshipped as in a temple. The crown she wore

was brighter than that of kings. Where the struggles for human liberty had been there were the triumphs of human genius. For there, in the Louvre, were the precious monuments of art; there "stood the statue that enchants the world;" there was 'Apollo,' the 'Laocoon,' the 'Dying Gladiator,' the head of the 'Antinous,' 'Diana with her Fawn,' the 'Muses and the Graces' in a ring, and all the glories of the antique world:

"There was old Proteus coming from the sea,

And wreathed Triton blew his winding horn."

There, too, were the two 'St Jeromes,' Corregio's and Domenichino's; there was Raphael's 'Transfiguration,' the 'St Mark' of Tintoret, Paul Veronese's 'Marriage of Cana,' the 'Deluge' of Poussin, and Titian's St Peter Martyr.' It was there that I learned to become an enthusiast of the lasting works of the great painters, and of their names no less magnificent: grateful to the heart as the sound of celestial harmony from other spheres, waking around us (whether heard or not) from youth to age; the stay, the guide and anchor of our purest thoughts; whom, having once seen, we always remember. and who teach us to see all things through them; without whom life would be to begin again, and the earth barren; of Raphael,

who lifted the human form half-way to Heaven; of Titian, who painted the mind in the face, and unfolded the soul of things to the eye; of Rubens, around whose pencil gorgeous shapes thronged numberless, startling us by the novel accidents of form and colour, putting the spirit of motion into the universe, and weaving a gay fantastic round and bacchanalian dance with nature; of Rembrandt, too, who "smoothed the raven down of darkness till it smiled," and tinged it with a light like streaks of burnished ore; of these, and more than these, of whom the world was scarce worthy, and for the loss of whom nothing could console me-not even the works of Hogarth!

LECTURE VIII.

ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF THE LAST

CENTURY.

THE question which has been often asked, "Why there are comparatively so few good modern comedies?" appears in a great measure to answer itself. It is because so many excellent comedies have been written, that there are none written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out-destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to nature, and men seeing their most striking peculiarities and defects, pass in gay review before them, learn either to avoid or conceal them. It is not the criticism which the public taste exercises upon the stage, but the criticism which the stage exercises upon public manners that is fatal to comedy, by ren