interment, lest a serious attack should be made; on which the officers would be ordered away, and not suffered to pay the last duties to their General. The officers of his family bore the body to the grave; the funeral service was read by the chaplain, and the corpse was covered with earth." CHARACTER OF JAMES BARRY, ESQ. THE most prominent feature in the character of Mr. Barry, was the fine enthusiasm he possessed after art, and for the acquisition of all knowledge, which referred immediately or remotely to it. If he gazed at and admired the sublime face of creation in homage to the Creator, the eye of devotion was always the painter's eye, which never glanced lightly over those parts which he thought subservient to the pencil. The effulgence of the rising or the glare of the setting sun, with the bold masses of gold skirted clouds in an evening sky, fired him with ungovernable rapture, but with the keenest ambition too, to steal the phenomena, Prometheus-like, for the purposes of his art rocks, mountains, and objects of stupendous mass of every kind, rouzed him in like manner, but only in subserviency to his graphic designs. Few things, even in the subordinate scale of nature, escaped him which had a tendency this way, though his mind naturally ran after the sublime. But these natural objects belonged only to a province in the domain of his study. His chief business was with men, and the affairs of men; with their actions, passions, and characters-here his observations and studies tended also to a point, the perfection of his art, as far as it embraced the high style of historical painting. We have seen that in the early part of his life, his studies were ar dent: in the decline of life they were equally unwearied, and on his death-bed his only complaint was, that his physicians kept him from books, and that he was losing time. Through a long course of years, with this unremitting application, and a powerful memory, his erudition became considerable, and extraordinary for an artist. His knowledge of the dead languages, indeed, was very scanty; of the Greek amounting almost to nothing, of the Latin not furnishing him with more means than just divining the sense of a passage, and that not always without the help of a dictionary-his pretensions went no further: yet with all this defect of classical preparation, no man was better read in and informed of the learning which the ancients have left us than he. Whatever had a reference directly or indirectly to the fine arts, in their writings, he had studied by the help of translations, with a patience and perseverance peculiar to himself; and had treasured it so firmly in his mind, as to make it almost his own. Few men, therefore, could draw more readily for any fact or occurrence in ancient history than himself; and his memory teemed so strongly with the most important ones, as handed down to us by the sacred and profane writers, that his relation of them had the allurement of graphical representation-he painted while he related. But civil history, as well Ç 2 as as poetry, bore but a small share in the sphere of his learning; he was well read, and not many ecclesiastics better, in church history. He was led to this most probably by the many subjects of a religious nature, which painting and sculpture had embellished in Italy: all which subjects he had studied in the writers themselves, to form his judgment of the accuracy of the pencil which had delineated them. Every man, who is the master of his own education, and whose studies are desultory, like the traveller without a guide over an unknown region, will have to diverge in a variety of directions, and to pass and repass often the same ground; but if his ardour and perseverance enable him to accomplish his journey, he is sure to see more and see better, than the man who goes straight by a beaten track. The studies of Barry were of this nature: it is doubtful if he had ever read through the Bible or the writings of the fathers in any series of study, much less the controversial writers. Yet he had gleaned voluminously from them all, and was not only well acquainted with their lives and characters, but would occasionally set his broad sails into the subjects on which they had treated, and weather the contentious and endless sea, if not to the satisfaction, at least to the admiration of those around him. There were certain of these writers, whom he had pinned his love and homage on, and whom he always emphatically called his heroes- Pascal, Antony, Arnauld, Nicole, Bossuet, Fenelon; and so completely did his veneration for them carry him away, that he hated their enemies as if they had been his own; and he not only imbibed, as far as he could, their learning from their writings, but he caught and practised upon their love of virtue, their vindication of the christian religion, their fortitude under persecution, their system of abstinence and self-denial. He compounded himself, if it may be so said, of such men, taking from each that excellence which he had admired in him. Of the two last, the one rouzed his congenial energy with his grand and powerful style; the other delighted him with his beautiful, mild, and truly classical imagery. With such guides in religion, it was not easy perhaps for a Catholic to go wrong; and in morality, not easy for any man. The religious subjects of the Italian paintings had conducted him to the study of theology and religion. He was led into mythology by the magic of Grecian sculpture. The tenor of his mind, early impressed with a love and admiration of the beautiful and grand, naturally induced him to value the character of the ancient Greeks; but when the power of the Grecian chisel burst upon his eye in Italy, his enthusiasm as an artist was wrought up to its highest pitch. Grace, beauty, grandeur, force of expression in character, combined with unsullied correctness, never raised superior fervour in any poet's or painter's mind; and on these qualities, as exhibited in the sculpture of the Greeks, wai he to fix his lever, by which he was to move and raise the admiration of others in his own productions. He has been heard to remark that he had seen nothing, and felt tamely for art, till that sculpture had caught his correct eye, and fired his poetic mind. No vestige of this ancient ari was indifferent to him; the produc tion and the subject of it became a source of study, and the artist and scholar went hand in hand with equal zeal and a balanced profit. Thus by degrees did mythological learning ground itself in his mind, so that there was scarcely an author which he had not read; and he carried into these subjects such a judgment and taste as qualified him for an able critic of those matters. Superadded to this, he had a particular aptitude of mind for discovering the meanings, which often lurked under mythological emblems. He was impressed with high notions of the gravity of the ancients, and could not be persuaded that any thing which came from their hands, was without some meaning of an ethical or physical tendency. There was a philosophy, therefore, even in their wildest productions of imagination; and their mythological tales, extravagant and even ridiculous as some of them appear to us, contained some useful lesson or concealed truth, and were not unworthy of the patient investigation of artists and philosophers. Lord Bacon was of this opinion also, as may be seen by the admirable treatise he has left us, De Sapientia Veterum. With respect to this mythology, as it descended from the earliest times, his discrimination in the fine arts enabled him to observe vestiges, in some of them, of an antiquity so remote as to soar above history, or any written record; and as the learned and elegant M. Baillie traced the relics of a perfect astronomy to a remote but unknown people, so would Barry strengthen the same reasoning by a multitude of observations relating to vestiges in the fine arts, which could not be traced to any ancient nation on record, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, or Egyptians, and there fore belonged to some people long anterior to them. He had not the least doubt of the existence of such an ancient unrecorded nation, from, 1st, The fragments of an astronomical science, as proved so ably by Baillie. 2d, From the remnants of a mythology diffused so universally among succeeding ancient nations. And 3d, The scattered remains of an art much superior to what succeeding nations possessed for ages afterwards. As to where this nation had existed, he was decidedly of opinion with Count Carli, and, according to the tradition preserved by Plato, that it was near the coast of Africa, on some island in the Atlantic ocean, and not, as M. Baillie had conjectured, and endeavoured to prove, on the Asiatic continent, between latitude 45 and 50. He agreed with Carli in the proofs of this great, but lost island, from its abundant remains in the scattered isles of the Canaries, Cape Verd, and others; but more than all, in certain traces of similarity of buildings, customs, religious rites, and names, among the Peruvians, Mexicans, even the SouthSea islanders, and the ancient nations of the African and Asiatic continents. It was with views towards researches of this kind, or to explications relating to history or mythology, that he honoured the labours of antiquaries, giving them in other respects very little credit for hoarding and collecting, and still less for assuming to themselves the right of deciding dogmatically on matters of taste, which so often lay out of their acquirements, and properly belonged to other men, better prepared (as he thought) to decide-the artists. We believe that he took an early dislike to antiquarians, and mere collectors, from the consequence he observed some 1 some of them assumed at the time he studied at Rome, and the mischief he supposed they did to modern art and artists, by dragging the public attention to the crudities they collected, and thereby diverting it from fostering and encouraging modern works of merit. He had many complaints of this nature to make, and some of them perhaps well founded, which are detailed in his letter to the Dilettante, and which it is pleasant to see, have served as a kind of text to the vigorous and spirited, as well as highly poetical work of Mr. Shee, Rhymes on Art. But such complaints are neither novel nor uncommon; Michael Angelo was as much annoyed by antiquarian mania as Mr. Barry, and had no way of punishing the injustice of such men, but at the expence of any claims they might have to judgment or taste. But we repeat again, that Mr. Barry honoured the researches after antiquities, and thought them use ful where they tended to explain or illustrate ancient art or science. His strong mind in every thing considered the object and the motive. He could therefore distinguish between the solid labours of a D'Ancarville, and the mercenary restlessness of a Jenkins; between the useful investigator and expounder of antiques, and the vain collector. If he judged of men in this respect, according to according to their value, so he judged of things, and blamed the attention, time, and praise so often bestowed on objects unworthy of regard: whose only merit was their antiquity; of no value in their own time, of no use in this, the refuse of mean art. But of those choice specimens, which displayed the beginning, progress, and perfection of art, or which threw a light on any facts, customs, or usages of ancient time; which embellished mythology, illustrated history, or fixed chronology, no man was more an enthu siast, or stamped a value more becoming the objects than himself. For the use which the study and researches of coins convey, he was a great friend to numismatic learning, and without pretending to much knowledge this way, yet he possessed that acumen of taste and science in the designs which coins display, that his observations were generally novel and valuable. He had a greater respect for collectors of this kind than for any others, finding them more useful and less arrogant or interfering, to depress art of modern time. From the admiration which he entertained of many of the ancient coins, of the medals of Pisano, Hamerani, and others struck in more modern periods, for boldness of design and vigour of execution, he was naturally led to contrast them with and lament the meagerness of art exhibited in the coins of this country. An application which the Lords of the Council had made to the Royal Academy for improvements in the coinage, fixed his attention more pointedly to the subject; and as the academicians could not agree among themselves on the suggestions they were to offer, nor he with any of them, he drew up a letter to the Earl of Liverpool on this important subject, in which he struck out some bold and useful observations on the improvements of the national coin; recommending a deep relief of figure filling the whole of space the coin, and.sunk in a cavo bed. A mode, certainly, of improve ment, and with the two-fold utility of effect and preservation. A coinage of copper which soon fol lowe the publication of this let ter, embraced in part Mr. Barry's object, but not to the extent in size or execution of the design, which he wished for. To preserve his claim to these suggested improvements, he was not content with the publication of the abovementioned letter, but he painted into one of his pictures at the Society of Arts, an imaginary coin or medal of Alfred, and has treated the same subject in a preface to one of the volumes of the Transactions of that Society; where, with really Grecian taste, he recommends typifying the common coin of the three kingdoms with the rose, thistle, and shamrock, intertwined round the border or rim of the coin. It is in the same preface, where he suggests a design for a new medal of that Society, simple and grand, and explanatory at a glance, by the combined heads of Minerva and Mercury, of the purposes of that useful institution. Round the rim in the design which he drew of this medal, he has carried the same wreath, which if executed with the bold relief he intended, would not only be ornamental, but complimentary to the three kingdoms, as well as a preservative of the main design it encircles. So easy could his mind descend to these smaller branches of art; but his love of the grand tended to the nobler subjects of design. And there is no doubt that, if he had been employed upon those for sculpture or architecture, his ideas in both these branches would have been Michel-angelesque. On the science of architecture he had spent a great deal of study, from a desire he had entertained of bringing a brother forward in this line, but whose early death dissipated his views. He was therefore competent to speak on the best speci mens of ancient and modern archi tecture, in their different styles, and his critiques generally abounded with those masterly strokes of a fertile and bold genius, as to fix always attention, and sometimes admiration. But whatever his skill in the different branches of the fine arts, or his general learning might be, posterity will be engaged upon him chiefly as a painter; let us therefore examine what rank he is entitled to in this line. There is an expression of his in one of his letters to Mr. Burke, which will give us a clue to ascer tain the principal object he had always in view, and which, if he accomplished, will entitle him to rank as a master in this noblest branch of art. "I find," says he, "Titian is the only modern who fills "up an idea of perfection in any "one part of the art. There is no example of any thing that goes beyond his colouring, whereas the parts of the art in which Michael Angelo and Raffael excelled, are "almost annihilated by the superio"rity of the antiques." In other words, that there was something wanting in the beau ideal of forms, which, whatever the ancient marbles might, the canvas of the moderns did not possess; and which none of the Italian schools, not even the Roman, so celebrated for its nobleness of style, had pushed to its perfection. Is Barry the artist who has supplied this most important desideratum? has he approached the perfection of the Greek antiques in the beau ideal? We may go farther, and ask, has he, in no instance, improved on that supposed perfection? Any of these questions answered affirmatively, (and they cannot all be denied) will entitle him to rank as a master;-by this term is meant an |