The Venetian painters dealt much in allegory ;but in some instances their meaning is obscure; and of one of the finest subjects of this class by Titian the key seems to be entirely lost. It is called, for want, as I think, of the true name, "Sacred and Profane Love," and is a striking proof of what I have insisted on that the Poetry of Art is something wholly independent on subject: for in this beautiful work the Poetry is spread all over the canvas.

Had Titian intended the picture for what it is called, I am confident that he would have felt no difficulty in characterising the personifications more clearly. But his meaning is more evident in a lesser work, the "Ages of Human Life," in the possession of the Earl of Ellesmere. On the right of this picture two children are asleep close to a road (the road of Life). One has been gathering flowers by the wayside, which are dropping from his hands, while a third child, who is the only one winged, is climbing the stem of a withered tree. In the middle distance an old man sits on the ground in deep meditation, with a skull in each hand. Age has brought convictions that are unthought of by a young shepherd and shepherdess in the foreground. She is yet but little more than a child, and the youth seems for the first time to regard her with love, while she, wholly unconscious of this, looks innocently in his face. Nothing can be more charming than the expression of this pair, though they might have had more of personal beauty; and I remember when I first saw the picture I felt this as a drawback, which has long ceased to be one with me, for it is with pictures as in real life,- -we cease to think

of the absence of beauty in those with whom we have become interested by long acquaintance.

In looking at such pictures, however, the allegory is apt to be forgotten in the actors. In the fine Paul Veronese, belonging to Mr. Hope, the painter has represented himself between Virtue and Vice, and choosing Virtue. Yet he looks back, and no wonder, for Vice is beautiful to the eye, and the almost invisible talons that he has placed at the ends of her fingers do not interfere with the exact symmetry of her hands and arms. Many other instances might be mentioned of allegoric invention, in which the moral intention, to say the least, is rendered nugatory by the mode of treatment. And even where this is not the case, we can hardly suppose that any man has been made better because Hercules (on canvas) prefers good to evil; or less ambitious of worldly honours, or less greedy of wealth, because a personification of wisdom tramples crowns, and sceptres, and jewels, under her feet.

The truth is, such subjects have probably been rather chosen with a view to the picturesque than with any very serious aim, by Paul Veronese and by Rubens. The picturesque was, indeed, always uppermost in the mind of the latter, when the choice of his subject was left to him. In the autograph letter, preserved at Cologne, he gives as a reason for selecting the "Crucifixion of St. Peter" as an altar-piece for the church in which he was christened, that the circumstance of the head of the Saint being downward made a novel and fine incident for a picture. This is the ruling principle also of his magnificent history of

Mary de Medicis, in a series of subjects which he was fortunately allowed to treat entirely in his own way ;— for, however our individual tastes may object to this or that mode of treatment, it is best always that the painter should do that which he can best do. When Reynolds expressed great admiration of a style of Art unlike his own, Northcote asked him why he did not attempt it, and the reply was, "A painter cannot always do what he may wish, he must content himself with doing what he can."

But here I must notice the wide difference between allegory, in the hands of Paul Veronese and of Rubens, and the noble use to which it may be applied, as in the example I have taken from Orcagna's "Triumph of Death," where it is paramount, and so simply and earnestly expressed as to be intelligible to every mind.

At present I say nothing of the powers of invention and expression displayed by the Dutch and Flemish painters, as I have devoted a section entirely to the varied excellences of the great masters of these schools.

SECTION X.

Invention and Expression.

INSTANCES TAKEN FROM THE BRITISH SCHOOL.

IN invention and expression, the only master whose works, taken altogether, I would compare with those of Raphael, is Hogarth. Nor is the transition from the one to the other so sudden as it may at first sight appear. They were both pre-eminently the painters of mankind, though the range of subject they each took, and the peculiar patronage of Raphael, and the no-patronage of Hogarth, made a wide separation between them. Raphael has given us an endless variety of images of all that is most dignified, most pure, and most graceful in our nature, yet never at the expense of probability; while Hogarth, the boldest satirist who ever held a pencil, has deeply "sounded the base string of humility," and by the exposure of vice illustrated virtue. Yet there is a common ground on which they meet, the wide field of negative character.

Hogarth has been called "a writer of comedy with the pencil," but there is as much of the deepest tragedy in his works. Most of his subjects are entirely of his own invention; and in the story of

what may be called his dramas, he adheres more closely to nature than the generality of even the best dramatic writers. His profligates and villains never reform unnaturally at the conclusion of the story, but die as they have lived, villains and profligates; nor are there to be found in his conceptions of character any of those inconsistencies by which dramatic authors appeal to the passing prejudices of the time, or seek to propitiate a mixed multitude,-in the majority of which the moral taste is never of the highest standard. He does not give his prodigals generous and noble qualities, nor is trickery ever countenanced in his stories by the practice of people he means to represent as respectable. In truth, though the stage seems to have suggested to him the species of Art of which he may be considered the inventor, yet his views of life were much too sound to allow him to adopt the loose notions of stage morality.

Wit was ever at the point of his pencil, and his humour is inexhaustible, and as rich as the humour of Shakspeare himself. Extreme as are his incidents, there is no exaggeration, and the enduring truth of his representations of life is confirmed by the occurrences of every day. Some of his scenes, from change of manners and fashions, may not be exactly acted now, but his characters are eternal. He has been charged with caricature, and the City volunteers attending the Lord Mayor's Procession, the slight etching called "France," and one or two other instances from among his numerous productions, may fairly be given up as caricature; but, taken altogether, nothing can be more distinct than the