not style; but as these are often confounded, it is well that we should understand the difference. Style in form, in character, in expression, in colour, and in light and shadow, is the result of the choice of the best of these with reference to the subject. It is, therefore, synonymous with the ideal, and abstractedly considered. is natural, but almost always above individual Nature. Manner is a departure from Nature, sometimes resulting from a dissatisfaction with her ordinary forms without the ability of correcting them by comparison and selection, but more often from the indolence that adopts compendious modes of arrangement, expression, execution, etc. The styles of the greatest painters are, perhaps, in no instance perfectly free from some alloy of manner, while the manner of a great painter, as Fuseli has remarked, often becomes the style of lesser ones.

It by no means follows, however, that because styles are different- I take the word now in its highest signification-some are right and others wrong. Apart from manner, the style of every genuine painter is right; the difference consisting in his giving some quality or qualities of Nature in more perfection than they have been given by any other; and if it be asked. whether Nature can supply every individual with something which, in the same degree, is denied to the rest? I would answer, that if the principles on which Nature works are simpler than we are apt to imagine, the combinations of effects resulting from these principles are endless.

Style and subject are often confounded with each other by writers, and in ordinary conversation nothing

is more common than this mistake: as an instance, I remember that Paul Delaroche's picture of "Charles the First insulted by the Soldiers" was said to be in the style of Terburgh, because the dresses were such as he painted.

In regarding early Italian Art, to which attention has of late years been so much attracted, it is of great consequence that we consider its distance from Nature not as a departure from her, but as the nearest approach the painters could make to her, a distance they laboured to shorten with a remarkable steadiness of advance to the consummation of Art in the hands of Michael Angelo and Raphael. The general character of medieval imitation is the same as that of Chinese Art, and is evidently a style, if such it may be called, which must chiefly mark immaturity everywhere and under all circumstances. In the infant Art of every country the accidental appearances of Nature are omitted, not so much, perhaps, from their being unperceived as from a notion that they would interfere, and when imperfectly given they do interfere, with beauty and expression, both of which have always been the first objects of all serious Art. The Chinese, for instance, though much of their ornamental painting belongs to the grotesque, yet in their representations of real life aim to the utmost at beauty, grace, and expression. To those enthusiastic admirers of medieval Art who may think there is something sacrilegious in comparing anything by Chinese hands with it, I might mention that Flaxman, than whom no man ever more fully appreciated early Italian Art, and who, indeed, was the first among the moderns to

direct attention to it, saw how much, apart from subject, Chinese painting had in common with it; for I remember seeing Chinese pictures hanging on the walls of his parlour, which he admired for their grace and simplicity, as well as for the beauty of their colour. It may not, indeed, be impossible that the Chinese exercised some influence on European Art at its revival. Lord Lindsay notices a resemblance to Chinese Art in some of the Roman frescoes executed at the beginning of the eleventh century; and if Chinese silks were imported by the Roman emperors, why might not some of the pictures of that singular people (a people whose artists have always been colourists) find their way to Rome, when painting was nearly extinct in Europe? The resemblance between Chinese and Venetian colour is very striking; much more so than any resemblance between Indian, or Persian, and Venetian Art.

The severity of critics on the sameness of the works of one hand is not always just. Where it is sameness of an excellence we should be grateful for it. The gentleness, so utterly removed from insipidity, of Raphael, the sublimity of Michael Angelo, the almost invariably golden tones of Titian, or the pervading silver of Paul Veronese, are things of which true taste never tires. To demand that every work of one master should be distinct in all its characteristics, is to ask for something which the conditions of human nature refuse to grant. We have sufficient variety in the various men; and the endeavour of a painter to go out of himself and into another, to give up what may be called his birthright, is always to be lamented.

if he have genius. A friend of Stothard, on being told that he had painted a picture very like Rubens, said, with much good sense, "I would rather see a picture by him very like Stothard." Gainsborough occasionally stands on the same level in portraiture with Reynolds, because he kept himself distinct; but had he attempted the same style, he must at once have fallen below his illustrious rival, there to remain.

A YOUNG painter at the commencement of his studies, how far soever he may be from a perception of the highest beauties of pictures, will often see truly some of their greatest faults. As he becomes better acquainted with fine works, the beauties he discovers in them atone for the faults which he still sees; but if, on becoming more alive to their excellences, he allows himself to be persuaded that the faults are necessarily connected with the beauties, or that they are conventional merits, and not only inseparable from, but indispensable to, particular styles, he makes an opening in his mind for the admission of all the unfounded theories which ingenious critics have broached on the false system of considering pictures as the Art, rather than as manifestations of parts of the Art, which is the most that can be said even of the greatest works known to the world.

Were the study of pictures alone sufficient to make great painters of us, we are bound to surpass all our predecessors. But with apparently greater advantages, in this respect, than the world ever before presented, the young painter has more real difficulties to contend with, in the commencement of his studies now, than

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