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should have a certain number of pupils, to whom he is to impart all the knowledge of materials and means which he himself possesses, as soon as possible; so that, at any rate, by the time they are fifteen years old, they may know all that he knows himself in this kind; that is to say, all that the world of artists know, and his own discoveries besides, and so never be troubled about methods any more. Not that the knowledge even of his own particular methods is to be of purpose confined to himself and his pupils, but that necessarily it must be so in some degree; for only those who see him at work daily can understand his small and multitudinous ways of practice. These cannot verbally be explained to everybody, nor is it needful that they should, only let them be concealed from nobody who cares to see them; in which case, of course, his attendant scholars will know them best.

The art of the thirteenth century is the foundation of all art,-nor merely the foundation, but the root of it; that is to say, succeeding art is not merely built upon it, but was all comprehended in it, and is developed out of it. Passing this great century, we find three successive branches developed from it, in each of the three following centuries. The fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of Thought, the fifteenth the age of Drawing, and the sixteenth the age of Painting.

Observe, first, the fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of thought. It begins with the first words of the poem of Dante--and all the great pictorial poems-the mighty series of works in which everything is done to relate, but nothing to imitate-belong to this century. I should only confuse you by giving you the names of marvellous artists, most of them little familiar to British ears, who adorned this century in Italy; but you will easily remember it as the age of Dante and Giotto-the age of Thought.

The men of the succeeding century (the fifteenth), felt that they could not rival their predecessors in invention, but might excel them in execution. Original thoughts belonging to this century are comparatively rare; even Raphael and Michael Angelo themselves borrowed all their principal ideas and plans of pictures from their predecessors; but they executed them with a precision up to that time unseen. You must understand by the word "drawing," the perfect rendering of forms, whether in sculpture or painting; and then remember the fifteenth century as the age of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Raphael,-pre-eminently the age of Drawing.

The sixteenth century produced the four greatest Painters, that is to say, managers of color, that the world has seen; namely, Tintoret, Paul Veronese, Titian, and Correggio. I need not say more to justify my calling it the age of Painting.

Part 6.

POETRY.

"Poetry is the expression of the beautiful-by words-tie beautiful o the outer and the inner world; whatever is delectable to the eye or the ear the every sense of the body and of the soul-it presides over veras dulcedines rerum. It implies at once a vision and a faculty, a gift and an art. A thought may be poetical, and yet not poetry; it may be a solution containing the poetical element, but waiting and wanting the precipitation of it, the crystallization of it."-North British Review

Part 6.

POETRY.

I AM writing at a window which commands a view of the head of the Lake of Geneva; and as I look up from my paper, I see, beyond it, a blue breadth of softly moving water, and the outline of the mountains above Chillon, kathed in morning mist. The first verses which naturally come into my

mind are

"A thousand feet in depth below

The massy waters meet and flow;

So far the fathom line was sent

From Chillon's snow-white battlement."

Let us see in what manner this poetical statement is distinguished from a historical one.

It is distinguished from a truly historical statement, first, in being simply false. The water under the castle of Chillon is not a thousand feet deep, nor anything like it.* Herein, certainly, these lines fulfil Reynolds's first requirement in poetry, "that it should be inattentive to literal truth and minute exactness in detail." In order, however, to make our comparison more closely in other points, let us assume that what

* "MM. Mallet et Pictet, se trouvant sur le lac auprès du château de Chillon, le 6 Août, 1774, plongèrent à la profondeur de 312 pieds de un thermomètre," &c.-SAUSSURE, Voyages dans les Alpes, chap. ii. § 33. It appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer was "au fond du lac."

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