or he may like them as furniture to fill his shelves with gay binding and accredited names; and even so may a man collect pictures for their beauty, or their rarity, or their antiquity, or hang them upon his walls as mere ornamental furniture. No doubt such collections are a great, an allowable source of pleasure to the possessor and to the observer; but considered as productions of mind addressed to mind, this is not the highest advantage to be derived from pictures. As I have said, we should be able to read a picture as we read a book. A gallery of pictures may be compared with a well-furnished library; and I have sometimes thought that it would be a good thing if we could arrange a collection of pictures as we arrange a collection of books. In the ordering of a library with a view to convenience and use, we do not mix all subjects together. We have different compartments for theology, history, biography, poetry, travels, science, romances, and so forth; and we might consider pictures in a similar order. THEOLOGY in that case would comprise all sacred subjects, whether taken from the Holy Scriptures, or having any religious significance; they may be the representation of an event, such as the Elevation of the Serpent in the Wilderness,' the Raising of Lazarus, the Worship of the Magi; or they may be the expression of an idea, such as the Dead Saviour mourned by his mother and the angels, or those most beautiful and inexhaustible subjects, the Human 1 Rubens, Nat. Gal., 59.

3

2 Sebastian del Piombo, Nat. Gal., 1.

3 Paul Veronese, Nat. Gal., 268.

4 Francia, Nat. Gal., 180.

Mother nursing her Divine Son,' and the Divine Son crowning in heaven the Mother who bore him on earth. Such ideal subjects bear the same relation to sacred events as the Psalms and prophecies bear to the book of Kings.

4

In the category of theological pictures may be classed those which represent the effigies and sufferings of the holy Martyrs, who perished for their faith in the early ages of Christianity-as the noble Roman soldier St. Sebastian; the Great Doctors and Teachers of the Church-as St. Jerome, who made the first translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue (thence called the Vulgate); and those personages who became ideal types of Christian virtues: thus we have the valorous angel Michael, the conqueror of the powers of evil;" the benign angel Raphael, the guardian of the young; the learning and wisdom of St. Catherine, the fortitude of St. Antony, the chivalrous faith of St. George. Some knowledge of these personages, their characters and actions, historical or legendary, and the manner in which they were represented by various artists for the edification of the people, will add greatly to the interest of a gallery of pictures; and we class such subjects as sacred art, just as we should class Milton's Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress as sacred poetry.

All would range as theology, and nothing is more Ghirlandajo, Nat. Gal., 296.

2 Andrea Orcagna, Nat. Gal., 569. Pollaiuolo, Nat. Gal., 292.

Perugino, Nat. Gal., 288.

1 Raphael, Nat. Gal., 168.

4 Nat. Gal., 11, 227, 281.

6 Ibid.

8 An. Carracci, 198.

9 Tintoretto, Nat. Gal., 16.

interesting than to observe the very different manner in which the self-same scene and subject has been conceived and represented by different artists.

1

But to continue our parallel between a library and a picture gallery. HISTORY Would comprise all pictures representing such actions and events as have been recorded by uninspired writers-classical and modern. Such are "the Family of Darius at the feet of Alexander" (from Grecian history), "the Romans carrying off the Sabine Women" (from Roman history), "the Death of Lord Chatham "3 (from English history), and so on; and portraiture stands in the same relation to historical painting that biography bears to history. Is not the picture of Ippolito de' Medici and Sebastian del Piombo a piece of biography? and Julius the Second, that resolute old pope ?5 and Julia Gonzaga?" and Zurbaran's Monk?' and Rembrandt's Rabbi ?® We are ignorant indeed, darkly ignorant, of history as of character, if we cannot read such pictures.

POETRY would comprise all subjects from the poets ancient and modern. Such are the Bacchus and Ariadne, the Venus and Adonis, 10 Mercury teaching Cupid to read," the Judgment of Paris (all taken from the classics); Erminia and the Shepherds12 (from Tasso); the Rescue of Serena's (from Spenser). These

13 Hilton: this picture, and Copley's Death of Chatham, are now in the English school at the Kensington Museum.

3

1

are poetry, if they be not rather each in itself a poem. Then, correlative with fiction and the drama, domestic or romantic, we have that style of painting, called Genre, which deals with the scenes and incidents of familiar life, which may be of a very high moral significance, as the Marriage à-la-Mode; or of the lowest, as the Woman peeling Carrots," or the "Drinking Boors; but whatever the significance, it may be ennobled by the perfect execution. Some modern novels, in which the most commonplace events of every-day life are treated with the most exquisite grace, delicacy, and knowledge of human nature, may be likened to those Dutch pictures in which two misers counting their gold, a lady reading a letter, or a woman bargaining for a fowl, shall be treated with such consummate elegance of execution, and even power of character, that they delight at once the eye and the fancy.

But genre painting was unknown in the early schools of Italian art; the concerts and conversazioni of Giorgione and the other Venetians are too poetical to come under this designation, so I shall say no more of it here. And animal-painting, as a special class of art, such as Rubens, and Snyders, and Landseer have made it, was also unknown. At the same time we must acknowledge that, when the old Italians did introduce animals into their pictures, they showed themselves capable of excelling in imitative as well as ideal art. What can exceed the little birds on the steps of the throne in Benozzo Gozzoli's Madonna, or the fish in

'Hogarth.

2 Maas, Nat. Gal.

3 Teniers, Nat. Gal.

4 Nat. Gal., 283.

2

Perugino's picture of Raphael and Tobit, for exquisite truth of nature? To be sure we cannot say the same of Paolo Uccello's horses. Yet it is interesting to observe the first efforts in this way of a school which afterwards produced Andrea Verrocchio's equestrian statue of Colleone, and Lionardo's "Battle of the Standard."

3

Landscape-painting, which may be likened to books. of travels and descriptions of scenery, was unknown as a separate class of art till the middle of the sixteenth century; but some of the early painters, particularly the Venetians, give us lovely bits of background to their religious scenes. That intense sympathy with natural scenery which we find in the works of Thomson and Wordsworth as poets, Cuyp and Hobbema as painters, seems to have been the growth of modern times.

Lastly, to continue our parallel, we have a scientific class of art as of books. Painting, when called in to illustrate the discoveries and triumphs of science, as geology, botany, architectural elevations, and the like, may be called scientific art; and a collection of this kind of pictures, where beauty of treatment is combined with exact truth, might be made very attractive as well as interesting and profitable. In these days scientific art is chiefly employed in illustrating books, and is the handmaid rather than the priestess and interpreter of nature. But photography is teaching us all 1 Nat. Gal., 288.

2 In the

Battle of St. Egidio, Nat. Gal., 583.
At Venice. There is a fine cast in the Crystal Palace.

4 See page 173.