ment, as well as the artist; the manner and effect on the spectator: place and time. Lastly, the commemorative signs, whether oral, graven, or monumental; all modes of expression, of different powers, but which respectively contribute to fix thought, to stop transient existence-disposing of, or annihilating at pleasure, distances of space and duration; embodying, and giving a finite immortality to what is spiritual, and making the whole chorus of the creation ring in harmonious chaunt to our ears. This historic relation unfolds the action and passion of human life, with all their circumstances and modes of existence, discovered or revealed. And the whole categories of Aristotle are, thus, historical. The carrying on this relation, whether in the active scenes of life, in the recollection, or in the written memorial of it-constitute that unity with progression, spoken of in the CYCLOPEDIA METROPOLITANA, but in words that other. wise convey a vague, or no meaning.

Lord Bacon's above-mentioned division of human knowledge is into Philosophy, Poetry, and History. But how can Poetry be knowledge, unless it is historical? Where it is regularly descriptive, there is no ques tion that it is so. And when it professedly deals in fiction, if the fiction be natural (and otherwise it is good for nothing) it is hypothetical history -or in the nature of history. I leave to the advocates of poetry (and the burden of proof lies on them), to make out its claim to rank as knowledge in any other manner?

If Philosophy be, as it has been called, the root and branch of knowledge-poetry, the flower-and morals, the fruit: the historic relation is the whole tree-it includes them all; they are only parts or modes of it.

All the moods and tenses of the verb in grammar, are historical: the indicative is, was, will be: the imperative, what, as dependents, we pray to be; or, as masters, judges, and legislators, we command, decree, or ordain to be the subjunctive, a fact conjectured to be-supposed to be already, or a thing that might be; the optative-what we wish and are desirous should be, what ought to be: when desirous that ourselves, or another should cast the historical mould anew, dissatisfied with the actual one.

Hence the pretended poetical justice which would forcibly over-rule the eternal analogies of nature, perceptive and revealed. The infinitive and participles relate to attention, expectation, and suspense of mind, about a thing doing (in fieri), or only not yet perfectly done. All these relate to some action, incident, event. Now, all the parts of speech, even the substantive itself, are derived from resolutions of the verb: and all the parts of this, from the indicative present tense, an historical fact. Is, (with its essential modes, and circumstances of substance, person, time, qualities, and place:) was will be: might, would, or may be, could be: wished for, or prayed-commanded to be-to have and to do such, and no less, is the extent of the historic relation.

In

The only difference between science and history properly, in this point of view, is, that history gives the whole in one simple result: the component parts, in the meanwhile, the foundation, rafters, pins, and joists (numerous and complicated as they are) are overlooked, or covered over. science and the arts, the scaffolding and the materials (with the whole detail of putting them together) strike the view; the ingredients lie asunder, piled up each in its kind: the analysis and details, here, are only the anatomy of the synthesis, of composition we find entire and united there.

The aspect any artist, whether mechanical or liberal, takes of his subject, the medium through which he views it; the result, or whole, he frames by the combination of its parts; the model and purpose, and use of all these, What, I ask, is their guiding principle and archetype?

The very formation of his skill is progressive: it results from the mere repetition of some one very simple operation, under a master, first sepa rating and then combining the application of his apprentice in historical order. The progress of any art, or science itself, is the result of some very simple and elementary application, in the same order. As are the applications of each art, to each particular case, the numeration in arithmetic, the synthetic method of surveyors, the elevation and successive stories in architecture, &c. &c.

What we mean by the word Nature, is nothing but the historical order of

with all their shades, the whole address went no farther than drawing the costumes of the figures in black, with water colours, and hatching their draperies after the same manner, on glasses of the colour of the object intended to be painted. For carnations the painters chose glass of a bright red, on which they designed the principal lineaments of the face in black. At length the taste for this sort of painting being considerably improved, and the art being found applicable to adorning churches, basilicas, &c. they found means to incorporate the colours with the glass itself, by exposing them to a proper degree of fire after the colours had been laid on. This improvement was carried to its height by Albert Durer, and Lucas, of Leyden.

It has been erroneously imagined that the old secret of staining glass bas been lost in the lapse of ages; be cause in ancient churches we sometimes meet with the most brilliant and lively colours, far exceeding any thing of the kind now witnessed.The fact is, that the moderns in general have not been willing to employ the same expence and labour which brought to perfection those astonishing hues.

Among the last proficients of the art in England, were Isaac Oliver, who painted the windows of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1700; William Pain, who painted the window in Merton Chapel; and William, his son, who painted Queen's, New College, and Magdalen. Mr. Walpole says of the latter, that his colours and his drawings were equal to the antique.

One of the best indications to demonstrate the progress which the art has now made, is to draw the attention to the difficulties conquered. Mr. Dihl offers Paintings not piecemeal, nor in mosaic-nor meagrely pellucid, with a total absence of warmth and depth of tone-nor in colours barbarously shaded and badly designed but in glass, uniform in its surface as canvas, and with the same perfection of body colouring, drawing, and execution. And to those who know the expense and risks of founding paintings in glass of the size exhibited, as well as the difficulties of finding colours fit for the work, even this merit, small as it is in comparison with what remains unnoticed, will appear

neither trifling nor unworthy of eulogium. For the difficulty is to find such colours, as, by the admixture of other bodies, may promote the vitrification and fusion-such as are capable of being connected with glass, and melting in that state with less heat than is sufficient to melt such kinds of glass as are chosen for the ground or body painted. Next to temper the colours, so as to make them proper to be worked by the pencil, and to reduce them to a due heat by a state of fusion, without melting the glass which forms the body.

And if the surmounting these ob. stacles, so as to charm the eye by a proper mixture of light and shade, has been deemed so worthy of admi ration in mere church paintings, which make uo pretension of vieing with the perspective, the composition, and the variety of oil painting, can too much be said of a discovery which, as its least merit, has conferred on glass paintings all the delicacy, the precis sion, the harmony, and tone, of paintings upon canvas?

But this is its least merit; for, by employing the light of the atmosphere to embellish the scenery of a landscape, a reality of view is obtained which nothing but eye-sight can conceive. It is not so much an imita. tion of Nature which requires an excitement of imagination to aid the delusion, as Nature herself illuminated by her own pure element. A view thus painted resembles, in fact, more the effect of a convex mirror which reflects a landscape, or rather the coup d'œil of a country through an open window. Nor is it too much to say, that it would be unfair to place the most brilliant effort of artificial light and shade beside the paintings in glass-for what deception of a dirty mineral colour can vie with the inpalpable efflux of eternal light?

"How pure its essence, how unclogg'd Beyond the blazon of a mortal pen.”

its powers,

Nor must this eulogium be understood to be passed on the paintings themselves, separately considered from the new effect given by the glass; for, though they are beautiful in themselves, and curious to the connoisseur, as marking the difference between the English and the French school-they

may

may be criticised, and subjected, like any other imitation of Nature, to animadversion. But the invention of vivifying objects, by their natural light, comes not within the pale of ordinary criticism. The distinct merit of the drawing, and the exactitude of the resemblance, is not here so much to be considered as the vista the Exhibition opens to the great art of painting; for not only may the modern artist paint his own works upon glass as upon canvas, but the works of the greatest masters of the Italian and Dutch schools may be accurately copied.

"Whate'er Lorrain light touch'd with soft'ning hue,

Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew."

What a new zest to those beautiful productions! What a new world for the connoisseur! The angelic beings of a Raphael would then start to light and life, such as his divine imagination conceived them round him-not Hike a lovely soul, enveloped in a torpid and inanimate body-not wedded to imperfect and gross colours, which cheat and baffle the master mindnor consigning the duration of a superhuman conception to the guardianship of evanescent and too perishable materials *.

Mr. URBAN,

May 11.

THE HE following is copied from a paper without date, of the time of Queen Elizabeth or James I. Sir Edward Sackville, who is mentioned in it, was a Knight of the Bath so early as 1616, so that he must then be more than twenty-one, and he became Duke of Dorset in 1624; so that it must be of a date prior to that time. According to your vol. LXXXVIII. i. p. 591, coaches were introduced by the last Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1579; this will allow of a coach-house being in this place. A. A P'ticular of Dacre Hospetal in Tuthil.

neere Westminster.

On the first Storie-A hall, a buttery, a seller, a kitchen, a larder, a washe howse, a chamber for servants, a cole howse, and a place for poultery.

Many of the colours of Raphael's Cartoons have faded. His shading is particularly defective, having been apparently effected with a kind of printer's ink, which has acquired an asby hue by

time.

On the upper Storie-xiiij chambers, whereof sixe wth chimnies.

howse, a place for haye over the stable. Without the House-A stable, a coach A garden walled about. An orchard, containing with the garden, about 2 acres of ground set wth very good fruite trees. A large yard wthout the howse, in wch there is plenty of water, as also in the orchard. There is a lease of the premisses for xxxij yeres paying xxxli yerely to S Edward Sackvele. The price of wch lease is three hundred pound, or otherwise the rent of the howse, garden, and orchard, lxxli yerely.

SCULPTURE IN FRANCE. (Continued from p. 323.) CLOSE this cursory view of Sculp

ture in France with the names of Jean Baptiste Pigalle, Renè Michel Slodtz, and Nicholas Sebastian Adam. The two last-mentioned gained considerable celebrity by their mausolea of the Cardinals Auvergne and Fleury and that of the Queen of Poland. These are complex designs, abounding in allegorical or accessory figures and personifications which relate to the individual character of the deceased. Pigalle far exceeded them, and particularly prided himself upon his anatomical precision. His statues of Mercury and Venus at Berlin, are emulous of the antique, which he had diligently studied; and his last work was a Nymph drawing a thorn from her foot, of great simplicity, of beautiful outline, and the highest finishing.

He rendered himself famous by the mausoleum of M. Saxe, in which he has introduced classical figures of Hercules and Cupid. He excelled in giving an air of truth and nature to his busts, upon which he was much engaged. When Voltaire was become old and decrepid, Pigalie went to Ferney, and despaired of doing justice to that extraordinary genius, until he thought of the expedient of desiring him to repeat some favourite passages in "La Pucelle," which roused him to a great degree of animation. students of the French academy, of which he had been, during many years, the Director, requested him to leave to posterity what he should consider as a model of anatomical perfection.

The

He

He readily complied, and at length finished a Statue of Voltaire, which the Literati intended to erect to him in his life time, but which Pigalle would not undertake, unless he were allowed to divest it of drapery. He executed this figure scrupulously from the life, the leanest, the ugliest, and the most disgusting that can be imagined; but rivaling the flaying of Marsyas with respect to anatomical expression. The Countess Harcourt employed him for a mausoleum to her deceased husband; and so profound was her grief, that three different models were designed by Pigalle, neither of which, she presumed, would sufficiently shock the spectators. The following was adopted, consisting of four large figures, the Count and Countess Harcourt, their Guardian Angel, and Death. The angel, with one band, removes the slab which covers the tomb where the Count is laid, and with the other holds a torch to him to recall him to life. The Count, reanimated by the celestial heat, disengages himself from his shroud, and extends his hand to his wife. She advances toward him as eager to be reunited, when Death standing behind the tomb, repulses her, and holds out his hour-glass, to tell her that the last moment is arrived. Then the Countess ascends the steps of the monument in haste, tearing off her clothes, as if impatient to become his partner in death. This description is translated from D'Argenville*, as the best calculated to convey an idea of the extreme love of dramatizing and allegory which pervaded the French School before the revolution. Those sculptors by whom its fame was supported in the last century were assiduous rivals of each other in boldness of invention; and to form groupes of the dead and the living, celestial beings and genii, and to embody even death itself, combining them all in a single dramatic action, was the utmost excellence to which the art of Sculpture was deemed capable of attaining. To express the passions of grief, surprize, and adoration, was their ultimate object, both in the countenance and attitude of the figures. The draperies are too frequently fluttering, as if supported by the air, in order to convey an idea

Vies des plus fameux Sculpteurs, tom. II. p. 406, 8vo.

of extraordinary lightness, but seldom with much success. The limbs are,

in general, exquisitely turned and po lished. In short, a style so peculiar, must be examined, merely by comparing one specimen of it with another in the works of these rival and contemporary artists, totally distinct from the antique, or the Italian schools of Sculpture. To appreciate their merit without prejudice, they must, in fact, be examined by the relative scale of nature and art, and as if no other criterion existed, to be drawn from the works of their predecessors in other countries.

Paris, during a short period, became the repository of the most admirable relics of antique sculpture. Discoveries which many ages were required to effect, and which, when made, were dispersed in various collections, were then described in one catalogue, and were exhibited, under one roof; and we can scarcely imagine that any palace of the Roman Emperors, not even of Hadrian, the great admirer and patron of Sculp ture, could have exhibited such a dis play of all that is excellent in the art.

It will be inquired, whether an advantage, so singular in its circumstances, and so important in the His, tory of Sculptare, produced all that might have been reasonably expected, in expanding the genius, or improving the skill of the French Artists? It merely made them MANNERISTS. Buonaparte was impatient to observe the promised improvement, and the annual exhibitions which he patronized gave him frequent opportunities of being disappointed.

The great work, during bis domination over France, was his Triumphal Column, modelled from that of Trajan at Rome. Not only the plan, but the dimensions, were exactly imitated. It is of bronze, and the figures in spiral groupes are each three feet high. It was designed by Bergeret, and executed by Denon.

The idea of placing an empty triumphal car behind the horses, now taken back to their former station at Venice, was not happy, and the execution was not more successful.

Canova, whom the French Nation cannot claim, was employed by Buonaparte for several statues of himself and his relatives. Though they discover his hand and his taste, yet they

are