designs been made after he had seen the Elgin marbles, he would no doubt have paid as much attention to Nature in his horses as he has done in the forms and characters of his men and women.

From this we may observe how apt even the greatest artists are to rest contented, in some things, with the degree of excellence of such previous Art as is known to them. Raphael remained satisfied to repeat the horses of the earlier Italian painters, with their defective forms, and human eyes and expressions, though he was far from satisfied to repeat the figures of their men, women, and children.

The ideal, as a general principle, and not confined to form merely, is a principle so natural that the most untaught sign-painter paints his sky with the brightest blue and his fields and trees with the most vivid green he can procure, though he well knows he is exceeding the colours of Nature. But his notion is, that a picture must be an improvement on Nature-a notion always preceding the true settlement of what constitutes the ideal-namely, a selection from, and a combination of, the beauties of Nature, as the only means by which Art can compensate for its unavoidable shortcomings. "We cannot," said Sir Thomas Lawrence, "compete with Nature in the exquisite beauties she everywhere offers us, or in the minute delicacies of her finish; our only chance is in selection and combination."

The ideal I conceive to be not only the result of an inborn aspiration of all taste, but it is the sole condition of the very existence of Art; and, therefore, where there is no selection, or where the selection is

not under the guidance of judgment, there may be very good Painting, as far as it is merely copy, but there can be no Art; and it should be impressed on the student that though a good painter or copyist of Nature may obtain immediate fame, yet, unless he can rise to the rank of an artist, he will not outlive his generation; for the ideal is the poetic element by which, properly understood, and not by any classification of subject, high Art is distinguished from low or ordinary Art.

This principle is far from being confined to the beautiful or the perfect; for the hump-backed and near-sighted Sibyl of Michael Angelo is conceived in as great a style as anything by his hand; and Hogarth, in his own subjects, is as ideal as Raphael, because every face and form there is as well chosen for what he meant to express as are the faces and forms of Raphael.

"I work," said Raphael, "upon a certain idea that presents itself to my mind. Whether this idea has any artistic excellence I know not, but I do my best to attain it." Though the mind of Raphael was, no doubt, more than ordinarily formed for the reception of images of beauty and propriety from Nature, yet he was led to her by those "arbiters of form," the Greeks.

Angelico believed of himself that his pencil wrought by the immediate inspiration of Heaven, and thought it would be presumptuous to alter his first conceptions; yet, in one of the few pictures I have seen by his hand, the principal face, and that too of a divine personage, squints. The inspiration of Angelico was,

in fact, no other than that of Raphael. They both repeated, with more or less of beauty, what' their contemporaries were doing and their predecessors had done, with the assistance of a scanty legacy from the wealth of Greece, gradually deteriorated as it passed through the hands of the Romans, while the empire declined; but by degrees recovered, as Art arose from a state of suspended animation to its full vigour in the fifteenth century. Even in our own days additions to this precious wealth have been made available to us; and while we are thankful, we must remember that, like all good things, the treasures of the antique may be used to our benefit or abused to our injury.

In studying the sculpture of the Greeks and Romans, we must ascertain the principles on which they worked; for the mere mechanical process of copying their productions, however it may help us to obedience of hand and correctness of eye, will never make us masters of form. Nor can the antique be studied long to advantage without a constant reference to Nature; otherwise we shall become blinded to its occasional defects; as an instance of which may be noted a fault in the figure of the Laocoon, the sculptor of which has given an equal fulness to both the pectoral muscles, whereas the right arm being raised, would draw up the right pectoral muscle until it would become nearly flat.

I have remarked how easily even a great artist may be led away from beauty in blindly following previous Art; and, as this cannot be too strongly impressed on the student, I will here notice one of the most impor

tant works of Guido-the "Aurora," in which, as Fuseli says, the goddess "deserves to precede hours less clumsy." There can be no doubt that these short and heavy figures are the result of Guido's admiration of the gods and goddesses on the walls of the Farnesini, for the defects of which Raphael is not wholly answerable, as they were painted from his designs chiefly by Julio Romano. The "Galatea," supposed to be entirely the work of Raphael, is, I believe, free, or, at any rate, freer from these faults.

But, whatever may be the defects in particular works of Raphael, he is ever present to my mind as the one great painter of beauty. Not of beauty merely resulting from exact proportion or elegance of form, neither as it is enhanced by colour; for in these respects he is often surpassed by other painters; and Fuseli may probably be right in saying "no face of Raphael's is perfectly beautiful," that is, perfect in the proportions of beauty.

But Raphael is the greatest painter of the highest intellectual beauty, the greatest painter of loveliness. Loveliness, independent on sex, and always the charm of his children. How much and how often this is assisted by incident and grace of attitude, I will not now inquire; nor would I by any means say that in the works of many other painters the same charm may not be found—a charm, however, that pervades the Art of Raphael and raises him above the Greek sculptors, in whose works the beauty of exact proportion and of grace is common enough, but among their female heads I know but of one that impresses me as lovely.

I am ignorant whether the Muses, of which the Academy has casts, are Greek or Roman, but the head of the Thalia is the most charming thing in sculpture I ever saw, uniting the utmost tenderness of expression with great beauty of features. The figure, peculiar in its proportions, being remarkably slender, entirely corresponds with the face, and the attitude is as graceful as that is charming. Indeed this delicate statue is, from head to foot, such a personification of feminine gentleness, refinement, and sensibility, as we meet with in Nature, much oftener than in Art, with all its boasted poetry.

In all, either of Sculpture or Painting, that I am acquainted with, the only face of equal beauty to that of the Thalia, is the face of Michael Angelo's Delphic Sibyl; and this I have seen only in a copy (but a most admirable one) by Mr. Richard Cook.* In the Sibyl, as in the Thalia, the soul sits in the eyes and breathes from the lips. The Muse seems absorbed in tender thoughts, the Sibyl listens in wonderment to a heavenly voice; and if ever inspiration was painted, it is here.

The accidents that tend to impair the beauty of humanity are so much more numerous than those which affect any other forms, that it is not too much to say, perfect beauty of face and figure can never be found in man or woman. The human form, in infancy, has in most instances its greatest conceivable beauty; but the wearing of clothes soon impairs it;

4

Some repairs were going on in the Sistine Chapel, and Mr. Cook had the advantage of making his drawing from a scaffold upon which he stood, close to the fresco.

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