more than anything else, which has led the great mass even of cultivated persons in this country to regard all acquaintance with the higher art as a hopeless task. Again, as to engravings, in place of the present system of sending forth annually an issue of engravings of such a class as to be regarded as worthless by the great mass of those who receive them, we should propose that one work of art of acknowledged merit be engraved every year in the best style, and that the copies be distributed by lottery, as with pictures at present, a prize being allotted to every fifth or tenth ticket, as the expense might require. It seems to us that this method, in addition to its other advantages, would have the effect of acting as a greater stimulus to engraving than the mere employment which is given to it at present. We believe that by a judicious distribution of engravings more may be done for the culture of the public taste than by any other means whatsoever. One thoroughly good engraving fairly established and domiciled in a house, will do more for the inmates in this respect than a hundred visits to a hundred galleries of modern pictures. It is a teacher of form, a lecturer on the beautiful, a continually present artistic influence. Nor do we see any reason why the same system should not be extended to casts, which might be taken either after the antique, or some thoroughly good modern sculptor, such as Thorwaldsen or Kiss. If such a system were carried out, matters might soon be brought to a state in which there should scarcely be any family which did not possess within its own walls the means of forming a taste, and that a genuine and high one, both in painting and sculpture. One very important step towards diffusing a critical knowledge of art over a wider circle than could have been reached by more original writers, has been made by the publication and occasional translation into English of the very useful class of compilations known by the name of hand-books in Germany. Of these, probably the most serviceable are those of Professor Kugler of Berlin. The portion of his "Hand-Book of the History of Painting," which has reference to the Italian schools, has been "done" into very excellent English by "A Lady," and the second edition is now presented to the public under the able editorship of Sir Charles Eastlake. The circumstance of a book of this description having within the space of a very few years attained to a second edition, we cannot but regard as an unequivocal sign of very considerable interest in the subject being felt by a large class. We hope that the success which has attended this experiment will lead to a speedy publication of his larger work on the General History of Art, which with ourselves, we confess, has always been the favourite. Travelling as it does over a much larger space, it is more condensed than the History of Painting, whilst it furnishes almost all the information that can be desired short of a really learned treatment of the subject. Its arrangement is far simpler than that of most German works; it possesses the cardinal virtue of excellent indices, and if it had occasional notes and references to sources, it would come very near to perfection in its kind. A book of much higher pretensions, and unquestionably far more satisfactory for special reference in the department of which it treats, is Müller's "Ancient Art and its Remains," which, in its English dress, has likewise attained to the honours of a second edition. In the thorough manner in which the Archæology of Art is here treated, we have an instance of the effect which the modern school of philology in Germany has produced on all kindred studies. Whatever we may think of the recent art of our neighbours, as to the importance of their artistic criticism, there can be but one opinion. But whilst the work before us possesses the virtues, it must be admitted that it partakes also of the vices of a German book. The arrangement, though simple in appearance, is not so in reality, the same subject being often treated of in several places from several points of view. There are too many divisions, and the large type being unintelligible without the small type, and the small type without the large, they seem as if they were intended to be read simultaneously by two eyes of different ranges of vision. When well marked before hand, however, it is an excellent companion to a sculpture gallery, and it is in this way that we would chiefly recommend its use. The very complete set of engravings indeed which accompany the German editions, both of this and of Kugler's works, but more particularly Müller's, go as far as anything of the sort can do to supply the place of casts, though the proper light in which to regard them is rather as a means of preparation before, and of revisal after a visit to a gallery. There is one institution for the cultivation of artistic taste, and the dissemination of artistic knowledge among the higher classes, the want of which has long been felt, and often deplored, -we mean a professorship of the history of art in the University. We believe there is scarcely a university in existence out of this country in which such a chair does not exist; and in Germany there are usually two or three professors in each university lecturing on the subject of æsthetics in its different phases. The history of art is there regarded as a constituent portion of the history of civilisation; it being thought, and, as it seems to us, thought justly, that history would be but imperfectly represented by a system which takes no cognizance of the manner in which men of different races, in different stages of advancement, have endeavoured to express to the senses their ideas of the beautiful VOL. XVI. NO. XXXI, H and the good. We know no subject which can be more satisfactorily taught by lectures, and none, which by the aid of illustration by pictures, casts, and engravings, may be rendered more attractive. Were such a chair endowed, the local galleries of painting and sculpture would of course be placed at the service, perhaps under the superintendence, of the professor, and it would be his interest, and probably would be in his power, to contribute to their improvement. The person who held the chair, in our view of the matter, ought rather to be an æsthetic. scholar than an artist. His function being that of the acknowledged representative of the literature of art, he ought to be the friend and counsellor, rather than the rival of artists; and, were such the case, he might reckon on the friendly co-operation of those who were more directly engaged in cultivating the special departments of art." It is not accidentally that we have given to the cultivation of artistic tastes among the public, a priority of place even to the education of artists themselves. We are persuaded that the former once secured, the latter will follow as an inevitable consequence. By raising the taste of the public, you raise the requirements for their service; and as the means of rewarding must remain in their hands, you render it the interest of artists to prepare themselves for their newly imposed duties. The principle, that the supply follows the market, is still that to which we trust; and the only change which we would propose, would be so to constitute the market as that its demands should influence the quality as well as the quantity of the commodity. We believe that a salutary dissatisfaction with the article usually offered has already been created in many quarters by the wider acquaintance with the principles of artistic criticism which has resulted, partly from the study of such works as those of Kugler and Müller, and partly from the influence of increased travel; and we confess that it is this circumstance more than any other which we are disposed to regard as a hopeful sign in the present condition of art. So soon as the public cease to regard art as a mere amusement, they will cease to be satisfied with the form in which it is usually presented to them at present, and then we doubt not, more liberal institutions for the instruction of artists at home, and for supplying them with the means of study abroad, will spring up on all sides; and a school of art will arise possessing all the qualities which an enlightened and thorough instruction can secure. But before we finally take leave of the We have been told that the endowment of such a chair is one of the objects which some of the most intelligent members of the Scottish Architectural Institute have most at heart, and there is no part of their scheme in which they have our best wishes more sincerely. What can Teaching do? 115 subject, there is one grand and leading objection of the opponents to learned artistic culture, and thorough artistic instruction, which we must endeavour to meet. It will be said that though the doctrines which we have here advanced, when considered a priori, seem plausible enough, it is impossible to set them up empirically, that experience has shewn that artistic eminence is a boon which God bestows but on a few generations of men, and that though the experiment has often been tried, no important results have ever followed from an attempt artificially to secure it. Now our answer to this is, that it is but half true, and that the half of it which is true no more furnishes an argument against the cultivation of art than of any other department of mental endeavour. It is certain that no training will ever call into being a strongly and originally productive mind; you cannot create genius; but in the present case, as in every other, you can supply the conditions of its working so soon as it shall be sent into the world; nay, what is more, you can secure the nearest approach to its energizing which is consistent with the comparative weakness of ordinary minds. Now, if we place ourselves in the most favourable position for the reception of genius when it arrives; whilst in the meantime we turn the ordinary staple commodity of talent to the best advantage, we accomplish all that we aimed at, and it is no fair reproach against a system that it does not do more. "But can you shew us an example even of this minor success?" We answer, 66 many;" and as the instances are not only more numerous, but far more important than seems usually to be supposed in this country, we shall select two or three of them by way of example. The first we translate from Kugler : "In Greece itself, after the age of Alexander the Great, art experienced a gradual decline, and during the whole of the last period of its indigenous existence, we scarcely encounter a single distinguished name. At the close of this period, however, towards the middle of the second century (B. C.), a restoration of art was brought about at Athens by means of a renewed study of the works of the great masters, and an endeavour thus to rise again to a higher region. At this period, indeed, works of wonderful perfection were produced, but in which might be remarked a certain coldness and deficiency in naïveté which invariably characterizes periods of restoration."— (P. 223.) What will such of our readers as are new to the subject think, after this rather cold commendation, when we tell them that it was this school which produced the Venus de Medici, the Farnese Hercules, the Torso of the Vatican, the Barberini Faun, the Diana of Gabii in the Louvre, the Venus of the Bath, and the Venus Kallipyge! It is to this school of the revival, indeed, that we are indebted for by far the larger share of exist ing Greek statues; and it was this school which, when transplanted to Italy, for two hundred years longer, flourished as a vigorous exotic, to delight the eyes, and refine the manners, of a hard, unimaginative, practical people! Such is our first example of an artificial school; and we shall be contented with one more, which shall be taken from more modern times. Raphael had not been dead much more than a quarter of a century, and Michael Angelo was still living in a green old age, when Ludovico Caracci was born, and yet on him was laid the task of reviving art in Italy from a state of the basest degradation into which it had sunk in the hands of the so-called Naturalisti, an artistic sect whose tenets very closely resembled those which the advocates of license so eloquently support in our own day. The principles on which, in the first zeal of his opposition, he attempted to found what has been called the Eclectic School, were sufficiently absurd. They are embodied in the following sonnet by Agostino Caracci : "Chi farsi un buon pittor cerca, e disia, Il disigno di Roma abbia alla mano, La mossa coll'ombrar Veneziano, Di Michel Angiol la terribil via, Del Correggio lo stil puro e sovrano, Che qui lasciocci il nostro Niccolino." "This patchwork ideal," says Kugler, "constituted only one transition step in the history of the Caracci and their school. In the prime of their artistic activity they greatly threw off their eclectic pretensions; they neither needed the decorum of Tibaldi nor the invention of Primaticcio; they had attained an independence of their own. The imitation of the great masters, where it is apparent, is no longer of a soulless, superficial character, but is a thoroughly understood and artistic appropriation of their highest qualities, bearing the character rather of rivalry than of imitation. It is true that the eclecticism they originally professed left its traces in a coldness, stiffness, and academical consciousness, which offends the spectator; but we are inclined to moderate even this criticism, when we consider the difficulty of opposing fresh ideas to the exaggerated mannerisms then existing, and when we consider also that it was the individual energy of these painters which forced them a way through the trammels of imitation. They possessed a true and a great feeling for the representation of |