the possession of the former having been amicably disputed by the kings of England and Bavaria.

He revelled in the examination of the Correggios at Parma, gazed with interest on Rembrandt's house at Antwerp, was reminded of Cuyp at Nimeguen, and studied Michael Angelo with reverence in Italy. He took the Sultan's portrait at Constantinople, and was honored by a public dinner at Rome, at which the Duke of Hamilton presided, and all the artists of distinction in the Eternal City were present. His last pilgrimage was to the East; and the record of his impressions overflows with a keen yet holy appreciation of its scenes and history. With his portfolio enriched by sketches of the landscape, costume, and physiognomy, in which that memorable region abounds, his views of art enlarged, and his fancy teeming with new subjects, on his way home, his life prematurely closed on board an oriental steamer in the harbor of Gibraltar.

His views of art were both acute and comprehensive. He recognized the spiritual aim of Correggio, and the detailed fidelity of the Dutch painters, and, in his last manner, more perfectly united them than any previous limner. "Take away simplicity from art," he writes, "and away goes all its influence;" yet elsewhere he declares that the "power of stirring deep emotion, and not of overcoming difficulties, is her peculiar glory." He considered art a language to be used wisely, and sought his own material among the pipers and deer-stalkers of Athol, in the byway hovels of Ireland, in Jew's Row, London, in projecting gables, in byway incidents, in the sagacity of mind and kindliness of heart of the aged, in the mirth of the Lowlands, in the figures at the public bath on the Danube, in the old scribe at the mosque door, and in the incidental groups, brilliant harmony of color, and effective light and shade, which nature and life afforded. He appealed to the immediate; selected themes of national interest, and made noble pictures out of familiar materials. Hence the ardent recognition and unbounded popularity he enjoyed. "From Giotto to Michael Angelo," he remarks, "expression and sentiment seem the first things thought of, while those who followed seemed to have allowed technicalities to get the better of

them." In Wilkie's happiest efforts the desirable proportion between these two elements of art is completely realized.

An ingenious work has been published to show the effect of different mechanic trades upon the animal economy; a curious branch of the inquiry might include the influence of special kinds of mental action upon the brain and nerves. We have seen that Wilkie's superiority consisted in the minutiae of expression attained by intense study. After thus executing several renowned works, he seems to have felt great cerebral disturbance; the power of sustained attention was invaded; when his mind became fixed upon a, sketch or a conception, suddenly a mist would rise before his eyes, his ideas would grow bewildered, and only after an interval of repose or recreation could he again command his faculties. The discriminating reader of his own account of the process by which he worked out his artistic ideas cannot fail to recognize in the assiduous concentration of thought upon the details of expression, if not the proximate cause, at least an aggravation of this tendency to cerebral disease. A succession of domestic bereavements and pecuniary difficulties, consequent upon the failure of his bankers, increased these symptoms in Wilkie, induced his Eastern tour, and doubtless occasioned his apparently sudden demise.

Perhaps, too, the mental necessity of a change of habit led him at first to modify his style, and seek, in his last pictures, more general effects. From whatever cause, he certainly astonished even his admirers by the graceful ease with which he, all at once, rose to the dignity of historical subjects, and a more exalted dramatic expression. It is true that Wilkie is thought to have wholly failed as an ideal artist, but this opinion is probably owing to the comparative superiority of his character pictures. Hints of another phase of his genius he had, indeed, given at an early date, in the beautiful sentiment of the scene from the Gentle Shepherd, one of his first works, and subsequently in the picture of "Alfred the Great in the Neatherd's Cottage; " but the feeling and power displayed in the "Chelsea Pensioners," the "Maid of Saragossa," and "Knox Preaching the Reformation," proved that Wilkie could soar, at will, into the higher spheres of art, and carry his principles of execution

into the noblest class of subjects. These and other pictures of the kind, besides possessing his usual merit of being eminently characteristic, were not less remarkable for their comprehensive spirit. The "Peep o' Day" tells in two figures the whole story of Ireland's wrongs; the "Chelsea Pensioners" is the most pathetic tribute to patriotic valor ever put upon canvas; sailors and soldiers, with their wives and children, wept over it at the exhibition.

"

The Spanish Posada" is an epitome of modern Spain, grouping, as it does, with such truth to fact and nature, a Guerilla council of war, a Dominican, a monk of the Escurial, a Jesuit, a patriot in the costume of Valencia, the landlady serving her guests with chocolate, a mendicant student of Salamanca, with his lexicon and cigar, whispering soft things in her ear, a contrabandist on a mule, an armed Castilian, a dwarf with a guitar, a goatherd, the muzzled house-dog, the pet lamb, and the Guadarma Mountains in the background. Wilkie's picture and Byron's verses have made the Maid of Saragossa familiar to the civilized world; but perhaps no single work combines the excellence of Wilkie in a more impressive manner than "Knox.” The still-life is as exact as if painted by a Flemish master, and as suggestive as if designed by Hogarth; all the faces are authentic portraits; the expression of the stern and eloquent reformer, and the effect of what he says upon the different persons assembled, are absolutely and relatively characteristic. The whole scene is, as it were, thus redeemed in vital significance from the past. Wilkie explored the palace at Holyrood, the portraits of the leaders of that day, and attended the preaching of Chalmers and Irving, to obtain the materials of this inimitable work, in which the highest graces of the Flemish and Italian schools seem united. Calm, observant, persevering, and acute, Wilkie thus won successive victories in art, and proved his faith in its conservative worth by embodying memorable national events, until he fairly earned the praise of being the "most original, vigorous, and varied, of the British painters." He continued, as he advanced, to bear his honors meekly, from the freedom of his native town to the order of knighthood, the éclat of an exhibition of his collected works, the friendship of the

noble, the gifted, and the powerful, to the annual enthusiasm excited by his contributions to the academy. His birth was registered in an obscure Scotch parish, and his death in the log-book of a Mediterranean steamer; yet, within the fifty-two years thus included, how richly did he contribute to art, win fame, and vindicate genius!

THE LAY PREACHER.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

THERE is not a name in the annals of English literature more widely associated with pleasant recollections than that of Addison. His beautiful hymns trembled on our lips in childhood; his cheerful essays first lured us, in youth, to a sense of the minor philosophy of life; we tread his walk at Oxford with loving steps; gaze on his portrait, at Holland House or the Bodleian Gallery, as on the lineaments of a revered friend; recall his journey into Italy, his ineffectual maiden speech, his successful tragedy, his morning studies, his evenings at Button's, his unfortunate marriage, and his holy death-bed, as if they were the experiences of one personally known, as well as fondly admired; and we muse beside the marble that designates his sepulchre in Westminster Abbey, between those of his first patron and his most cherished friend, with an interest such as is rarely awakened by the memory of one familiar to us only through books. The harmony of his character sanctions his writings; the tone of the Spectator breathes friendliness as well as instruction; and the tributes of contemporaries to his private worth, and of generations to his literary excellence, combine with our knowledge of the vicissitudes of his life, to render his mind and person as near to our sympathies as they are high in our esteem. Over his faults we throw the veil of charity, and cherish the remembrance of his benevolence and piety, his refinement and wisdom, as the sacred legacy of an intellectual benefactor.