beautifully; and of this, his exquisite picture of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse," is one among many admirable examples.

Though thus important throughout almost the whole region of the art, yet it was in the display of the form, and by that of the mental faculties of man, that this class of art was discovered and principally employed in the schools of Italy. Indeed, the chief object of the painter's art is man - the only intellectual being with whose form he is acquainted. To him, therefore, it is the quintessence of all form; beautiful in its corporeal perfection, and powerful in the spiritual essence imparted to it by its great Creator: hence the representation of it most powerfully excites the feelings of our minds, from the sympathies we necessarily entertain with our fellow-creatures.

To this great object of the art, therefore, as in individual interest, and in association, combining all others, I shall principally confine my observations. It has constantly engaged the attention of the greatest painters; and in discussing the mode in which it has been employed by them, in singleness, in combination, and in expression; in the exercise of its bodily, and the exertion of its mental faculties, we may the more readily attain the knowledge of those rules of art, which their experience has prepared for us.

The first important point which claims the attention of the student in painting is to obtain command over the materials of the art; the next, is to become informed of its capability and its governing principles; and the third, to know whereon he may employ it most worthily. For the attainment of the former, I can here, as I have before said, render you little or no assistance; you can acquire it only with your pencils and your palettes in your hands; practice, and practice alone, will conduct you to that end. For the rest, I shall endeavour to supply you with the best aid that I can. But before I proceed to discuss the principles of painting, derived in great measure as above stated, I think it right to call to your recollection the main points of its history.

"The progress of the arts and sciences," Mr. Opie has observed, "is the exact criterion of the degree of cultivation among nations; " but there is a remarkable difference in their history.

The progress of science is in its nature so apparent, and its results are generally so capable of immediate application to useful purposes, that we cannot fail to observe every step by which it advances. It is not so with the arts. Their march is in secret; and it is only when some great result takes place, proving the cer

tainty with which their slow yet still advancing steps have been unobservedly conducted, that their improvement and extension are made known, and that their professors obtain the just renown which their patient and well-directed ingenuity deserves.

Thus, in the history of painting, we find abrupt mention of circumstances which seem to indicate some degree of progress in the practice of the art in the most distant ages; we are then merged in darkness and ignorance of its condition for a time, till peculiar occurrences again present it to our attention; a few scattered remnants of its productions are preserved to future times, and again its progress is interrupted and lost to our view.

How it first arose, how man was first induced to attempt to imitate upon a plane surface the actual projection of solid bodies, or in what happy country it was first displayed, are points which remain hidden in the mysteries of time past. We must be content to continue ignorant of both, for we know nothing certain of either. The dawn of the art, is as undefined as is the dawn of the morning; and its first approaches as undeterminate. We are left, therefore, with conjecture for our guide, to correct the fictions of antiquity, and supply the place of record. We might, indeed, be well content to take the

beautiful story related by Pliny, of the Corinthian maid tracing the shade of her sleeping lover as its origin, did not other historical narratives dissolve the agreeable spell that hangs over it, and carry us back to far more remote periods; and even in them we find reference to others now entirely removed from the recollections of man.

It is probable that its origin may with more certainty be sought, in an attentive consideration of the nature and propensities of our own minds.

We are children of imitation; our earliest sports and our earliest endeavours to acquire knowledge have their original direction in our love of it. Thence comes our aptitude to find resemblances between various objects, and thence also the willingness with which, in our youth, we rush to meet every suggestion of our fancy, when very imperfect images are found sufficiently potent to excite very full and powerful ideas in our minds.

The first useful application of painting was probably as an intelligent mode of conveying information; but such an employment of it was by no means calculcated to advance its progress far towards its present elevated condition; since, for the purposes of language, its emblematic figures, when once formed and accepted, must of necessity have become stationary; at least improve

ment must have been confined within very narrow limits. Accordingly, thus we find it was among a people of whose knowledge and cultivation in science we can have no doubt,—the Egyptians.

We have little or no knowledge of improved or ornamental painting among them; nor have we any record of the liberal use of it among the Greeks till after the reported invention of arbitrary signs as letters, more fully applicable among those who speak the same language to the purposes of written communication than figures. When emancipated from peculiar system and peculiar application, no longer bound to accepted types from which it could not vary, cultivation of it to more perfect imitation of the almost infinitely varied objects of nature, and to purposes more ornamental, was the natural and almost necessary result.

With this simple and, I believe, well-founded idea of its primitive growth and application, arising from the native feelings of mankind, it would be but of little use should I relate to you the antiquated tales of its early stages, or endeavour to trace its progress from nation to nation; it has been frequently attempted, but never satisfactorily effected.

"The time is passed," as Sir William Drummond has said, "when conjecture, appealing to legendary tales, could give the lie to proba