a youth who had just received the completed training of the gymnasium. His hair is short and curling, in allusion to the custom of cutting off the hair at this period of life, and dedicating it to a god. The expression of the countenance in this form of the Mercury is mild and intelligent.

"4th, In connexion with these there exist statues similar in other respects, but having the right hand elevated, as indicating that he is to be regarded as the god of oratorical skill, ('Eguйs óyios).

"5th, As the messenger of Jove, he is seen half sitting and half springing up in order to hurry on the mission of his master. In bronzes he is frequently represented in this character audaciously darting through the air; sometimes also reposing after a long journey.

"6th, In smaller works of art he often occurs as the minister in sacrificial rites, an office which formed part of the duties of the Herald; as the protector of cattle, especially sheep; the inventor of the lyre; and finally, as the conductor of souls to Hades."

Nor is it in an historical point of view alone that such modes of representation as we have here recounted are important. In every one of these forms, even the rudest, it is obvious that the idea of the god is taken up in such a manner as to raise the imagination of the spectator above ordinary life, and that thus something is added by the artist to the popular thinking of his time. Even if he took the prevalent idea as he found it, by clothing it with a form he gave to it a precision and clearness which it could not otherwise have had to the many, and he probably enabled them to see in it a meaning which they had never seen before. In addition to this, when he arrived at the point of familiarizing their eyes with a perfect human form, he gave them a glimpse of the principle on which Nature works in her most perfect organisms. He expounded nature whilst he raised them above her. But it is not in this general manner alone, that the author of a generic work of art adds to the intelligent thinking of his time. In his own special department, he communicates to every one who beholds his work, some portion of that artistic vision by which he himself had been guided in its execution. If public taste is ever to be developed to the extent of becoming a safe tribunal for artists to appeal to, it must be cultivated by artists themselves, and the means which they must employ, are none other than those to which they were indebted for their own culture. If it be by a study of the antique that the road to original artistic production is to be shortened, it will be by rendering the public more, and more generally, familiar with works of art of the same class, that a genuine criticism will be most expeditiously and surely evoked. So long as criticism has no other foundation than natural feeling, it too often is nothing more than an expression of individual caprice, and he whose fate it is to wait upon its changes, will

have a hard taskmaster. Even where a principle can be traced in its action, it scarcely presents to the aspiring artist a brighter prospect, for its preferences are invariably for works of a low class. "It is certain," says Sir Joshua, "that the lowest style will be the most popular, as it falls within the compass of ignorance itself; and the vulgar will always be pleased with what is natural, in the confined and misunderstood sense of the word." Now, if there be one respect in which artists of the present day sin more conspicuously than another, not only against the dignity of their calling, but against what never can be separated from it their own true interest, it is by the anxiety with which they conform to public taste. Instead of endeavouring to diminish the numbers of the vulgar, and to swell the ranks of those from whom they might look for a consistent and intelligent patronage, their constant endeavour is to gratify the former, whilst to the complaints of the latter, the comparative insignificance of their numbers is considered a sufficient answer..

As a counterpoise to the many advantages which have arisen in modern times, from the transference of patronage from the few great to the many small, must be regarded the want of judgment with which it is occasionally exercised. Where the question is one of fact, there can be no better tribunal than an ordinary jury of impartial men; but a special jury alone can do justice where it is one of skill, and to a special jury the artist cannot afford to appeal. It is the voice of the people alone which can decree him an immediate substantial reward, and with this reward he is rarely in a condition to dispense. Aristotle says that demagogues are the sycophants of the people, and it is in this capacity that too many of our artists are forced to appear. Unless their pictures are popular, they know that their means of subsistence are gone, and Sir Joshua Reynolds has already named the cost at which popularity is to be gained. But what is to be done? The tendencies of modern society have once for all decided that the public are, and must continue to be, the dispensers of success. Our answer is a simple one. You must endeavour to communicate to the many, or at least to as many as will be able to make their voice heard, the qualities which hitherto have been the exclusive property of a few. You must educate the public taste if you would either improve the condition of the artist, or have a school of art in any of its branches worthy of the name.

We here come upon the more practical part of our present Article, and we trust that the honest interest which we feel in the subject will form a sufficient bond of union between our readers and ourselves, to prevent the novelty of the few observations and suggestions which we shall offer, from depriving them of the benefit of a patient hearing.

The Public the Arbiters of Artistic Success.

109

The truth of the proposition, as we have laid it down, viz., that if the arts are to be safe the arbiters of artistic success must be educated for their task, will not, we believe, be disputed, but as to the means which must be adopted for the attainment of this end very considerable difference of opinion may possibly arise.

In the first place, however, it seems to us pretty plain that no such result can be looked for from exhibitions of works of art which do, and for the reasons which we have already hinted at must represent the actually existing taste. It will never be by contemplating works the very end and object of which is to shadow forth their own imaginings that the imaginations of the people will be elevated to a higher sphere. So long as popular taste is to set a limit to a school its influence at best will be negative. It may disseminate the prevailing taste more widely, it may perform the duties of an efficient minister, but the office of a guide and a leader it has renounced. Nor can a school thus stationary be trusted to beyond a very limited extent, even as a means of disseminating the existing taste. A principle which we advanced and illustrated at some length in a former Article, when pleading for the higher instruction generally, viz., that in civilisation rest is equivalent to retrogression, here comes into play. Each time an idea, or class of ideas, is repeated, it loses something of its force, till what was once a truth becomes a truism. What was a plus sign to one generation becomes a minus to the next. If the art of the present day tells the same tale which it did twenty years ago, that tale, depend upon it, will not produce the same effect. In literature we are familiar with this fact. The critical opinions of the Edinburgh Review are no longer the same, even to those who never heard of its existence, that they were to the generation in which they first appeared. If equal effects are to be produced it must be by other means, by doing as its authors did, that is, by outrunning their age, not by doing what they did, which would be to lag behind our own. Nor let it be supposed that this view is irreconcilable with what we formerly said of the necessity of an acquaintance with the works of the ancient masters. What we

are to learn from them is the art of doing as they did, i.e., of treating our age and its ideas as they treated theirs. A Mercury with a pointed beard, a staff in his hand, and wings to his feet, would no longer be a fitting emblem of trade; but still it may be possible to give artistic expression to the idea as it exists in modern times, and a mode of doing so may be suggested by a knowledge of the manner in which it was effected then.*

One instance of an attempt to take up a national subject in an ideal form which we have lately seen, we must not pass over without bestowing upon it our mite of commendation: we refer to Mr. Park's statue of Wallace. The manner in which the idea of a Scottish hero has been seized is worthy of the highest praise, and

Such is our first ground for doubting the beneficial influence of Exhibitions as at present conducted; and in some measure it involves our second. It is constantly said that by their means a market for works of art is created, and that, on the soundest principles of political economy, it can be shewn that by no other means can you so surely encourage production. Our answer is, that they do not create a market for works of art of the better class. A supply of such works as they demand they unquestionably call forth, but let a work of another class, which they do not demand, appear, and it will speedily be seen that for it no market has been provided. The late David Scott, it is now beginning to be admitted, was the greatest artist whom Scotland has yet produced, and yet for years his works were unappreciated and unpurchased-a subject of terror to the timid and of merriment to the gay, and this not by any means entirely in consequence of the tinge of something more than eccentricity which unquestionably pervaded them, but too often simply because they did not fall in with prevailing tastes, and customary modes of thinking. He viewed his subjects differently from people in general; and as patronage was dispensed in accordance with their views, it came not to his door. The cry was constantly, "Why does he not conform?" which being interpreted, means simply, "Why does he attempt to lead where he ought to follow? Why does he insist on being a devotee to art as he understands it, instead of an humble expounder of our ideas? Why will he persevere in teaching us when he knows that we hate to be taught?" Though Scott had been far less perversely eccentric than he was, we believe that the fate which he experienced in his lifetime would have been substantially the same.

But if our objections to the Exhibition itself be well founded, it is obvious that they apply equally to any gallery of art which could be formed by purchasing the works exhibited, or any efforts to disseminate the thoughts which they embody by means of engraving. If the institution itself be so constituted as that the prevailing public taste shall, of necessity, set a limit to the art which it calls forth, then it must by the merest accident if a picture appears which has any value beyond that of illustrating the history of the time. In no circumstances can the preservation and dissemination of works of this class be productive of any important artistic working; for, even if art should sink still

gives promise of a bolder school of art than any which we have yet seen in this country. The execution, in some respects, we confess, did not appear to us faultless. The same amount of character, if we mistake not, might have been given to the countenance though the treatment had been more purely generic, and we fear there is a slight attempt at something like the expression of a "mixed emotion," which Sir Joshua Reynolds has stigmatized in painting, and which in sculpture is altogether inadmissible.

lower than it is, far more efficacious means than the contemplation of the art of our day will be at hand to raise it, whereas, if it rises, the only use which could be made of them then, would be to gratify the vanity of our children, by enabling them to contrast their creations with ours. It is not enough that works of art be preserved, if they are not worth preserving. There is scarcely an architectural monument erected since the time of Charles II., which is not now in existence, and we are very certain that they, at all events, have had nothing to do with the recent revival of architecture. At Versailles there is a whole gallery of national heroic pictures, but no school that we know of, either in France or elsewhere, has yet been reduced to the condition of learning from them. Still, if we were asked to name the means by which we conceive artistic taste might best be cultivated in public, and genuine encouragement of art secured, those that we should fix upon would be precisely the formation of a gallery of pictures, and the dissemination of engravings. But then we should propose that the gallery should be brought together, not by the purchase of a certain number of the best works exhibited annually, whether their absolute value be great or small, but by an annual purchase of a work or works better than any which are exhibited, if possible originals, if not, first-rate copies. We believe that, by means of the mechanical processes to which we referred in the beginning of our Article, copies so accurate as, for the purposes of instruction, to possess almost every quality of originals, can now be produced; and we see no reason why every town of note, particularly such a town as our own, should not possess a small Pitti Palace for the instruction of its artists, and the cultivation of artistic tastes among its people. In the existing gallery of ancient pictures, we have already a very respectable nucleus around which such a collection might be formed, and one half of the sums annually expended on the purchase of pictures which, for either of the ends we have mentioned, are utterly valueless, would bring it into a very fair workable condition in not many years.

A gallery of casts of no contemptible character we already possess, but why, we would ask, is it not arranged according to schools, and furnished with a catalogue? To the student of form, when the casts can be seen, which, from the manner in which they are huddled together, is not always the case, it may be of some service in its present condition; but to the student of the history of art it is utterly useless, unless he be possessed of means which do not lie at the beck of every one, and time to use them, which all do not possess. We believe that it is the want of such simple aids as systematic arrangement, complete catalogues, and perhaps a few elementary but not altogether superficial lectures,