another thing from deception of the eye, and that such deception would in fact destroy illusion.

Children and childish minds are attracted by wonders. I remember when I was a boy seeing a picture that was placed flat against the wall at the end of a long room, representing an open door through which a flight of stairs receded, with the figure of a man of the size of life painted as if walking up them. At the base of the canvas a real step projected on the floor of the room, and at a certain distance it was impossible to distinguish between the painted stairs and the wooden one; indeed, so complete was the deception, that on first seeing it my only wonder was at the man's remaining stationary. This picture seemed to me perfection, and at that time I should probably have looked on the finest Titian with comparative indifference. It was, however, the work of a very ordinary painter, and I have since learned that deception to the degree in which it was here, with the assistance of a little ingenious management, attained, depends merely on carefully copying some of the most obvious appearances of Nature; and that her most charming qualities-all that the greatest artists have courted in her throughout their lives with success infinitely short of their hopes-may be omitted without rendering the representation less delusive.

I would ask whether others have not felt what has always occurred to me in looking at a Panorama,that exactly in the degree in which the eye is deceived, the stillness of the figures and the silence of the place produce a strange and somewhat unpleasant effect, and the more so if the subject places us in a city.

We then want the hum of population and the din of carriages, and the few voices heard in the room have an unnatural sound as not harmonising with the scene. Even in the Diorama, where the light and shade is varied by movement, and the water is made to ripple, there are still many wants to be supplied, and these are indeed suggestive the more in proportion to the attainment of deception. I have no wish to disparage the ingenuity of such contrivances; the Panorama is an admirable mode of conveying much information which by no other means can so well be given. My object is merely to ascertain how it is that there is always something unsatisfactory-to speak from my own feelings, I should say unpleasant-in all Art of every kind of which deception is an object. We do not like to be cheated even in a harmless way; the wonder excited by the tricks of a juggler is not without a mixture of humiliation; the powers of our minds, instead of being exercised, are for the time suspended, and even our senses cease to serve us; while the Art of a great actor delights us, not only as an imitation of Nature, but because our imaginations are excited, our understandings appealed to, and we have a secret gratification in the consciousness of the feelings he arouses within us; and these are also among the many sources of pleasure we derive from the works of a great painter. "I feel," said Reynolds, speaking of Michael Angelo, "a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite." But neither at the theatre nor before a picture should we feel in this way, were we for a moment to mistake what we see for reality.

"Imitation," says Coleridge, "is the mesothesis of likeness and difference. The difference is as essential to it as the likeness; for without the difference it would be copy or facsimile. But to borrow a term from astronomy, it is a librating mesothesis; for it may verge more to likeness, as in painting, or more to difference, as in sculpture."

It is of the utmost importance, however, that we should come to a clear understanding of this difference between Painting and Nature, as from mistakes on this point have proceeded all the varieties of mannerism that have in every age sprung up like weeds in the fair domain of Art, and not seldom with their rank luxuriance over-run its whole extent. Every fault arising from indolence, from inability, or from conceit, may be sheltered, as it has been sheltered, under the principle that the object of Painting is not to deceive. Defective colouring, mannered forms, impudent and tasteless bravura of execution, as well as servile imitation of that which is very easy to copy, the immaturity of early Art.

Perhaps the best safeguard against mistake on this subject will be found in our perception that the Art of Painting is in no respect, excepting in what relates to its mechanical instruments, a human invention, but the result solely of the discovery and application of those laws by which Nature addresses herself to the mind and heart through the eye; and that there is nothing really excellent in Art, that is not strictly the consequence of the artist's obedience to the laws of Nature.

Now deception, excepting with extraneous assist

ance, or but for a moment, is impossible. One instant's close examination of a wax figure which we have just before believed to be alive, shows us to what an infinite distance it is removed from Nature. And yet such is the effect of its approach to life, that even after we know what it is, we feel as much as ever its want of the power to move, and which we never miss in a fine statue. In all I have said, therefore, of deception of the eye, I have only meant deception for a moment or at a distance; for Nature allows of no substitutes that will bear continued or close inspection. And yet, while she has placed this beyond the reach of human hands, she has entrusted Art with a peculiar mission—the power, as I have said, of doing something for the world which she herself refuses to do. How many of her most exquisite forms, graces, and movements-how many of her most beautiful combinations of colours, of lights, and shadows that are "instant seen and instant gone"does she not permit the painter to transfix for the delight of ages! And, indeed, he is entrusted with another and a higher task, that of leading us to a perception of many of her latent beauties, and of many of her appearances which the unassisted eye might not recognise as beauties, but for the direction of the pencil. These considerations alone are enough to show that Art has a place assigned to it in the great scheme of beneficence by which man is allowed to be the instrument of adding not only to his sources of innocent enjoyment, but of instruction. "Painting and sculpture," says Richardson, "are not necessary to our being; brutes and savage men subsist without

them; but to our happiness as rational creatures they are absolutely so."

From what I have said, it is evident I must be at issue with Lessing, when he tells us that "all appearances of Nature which, in their actual state, are but of an instant's duration-all such appearances, be they agreeable or otherwise, acquire, through the prolonged existence conferred on them by Art, a character so contrary to Nature, that at every successive view we take of them their expression becomes weaker, till at length we turn from the contemplation in weariness and disgust. La Mettrie, who had his portrait painted and engraved in the character of Democritus, laughs only on the first view. Look at him again, and the philosopher is converted into a buffoon, and his laugh into a grimace. Thus it is likewise with the expression of pain. The agony which is so great as to extort a shriek, either soon abates in violence or it must destroy the unhappy sufferer. Where torture so far overcomes the enduring fortitude of a man's nature as to make him scream, it is never for any continued space of time; and thus the apparent perpetuity expressed in the representation of Art would only serve to give to his screams the effect of womanish weakness or childish impatience."

Lessing argues in this way to show why the sculptor of the Laocoon has not chosen to make the victim bellow with pain, as in the description of his sufferings. by Virgil. The attitudes of the entire group, however, being but of "an instant's duration," are, on the principle urged by the critic against a stronger expression, as inadmissible as if the sculptor had made the victim