quillising associations which remind us that we have a debt to the past as well as a duty to the future-and rejoicing in the link which thus visibly unites us with the highsouled and the gifted of the generations that are gone.

But where the object is to provide for present wants, or to respond to the feelings of contemporaries, it seems to us preposterous to go back for our inspiration to some idea of a past age, except so far as any portion of it may have survived into, and be now incorporated with, our actual system of living interests. Is it any longer possible to restore the spirit of medieval times? And if it were, would any unprejudiced man of ordinary intelligence desire it? The movements of Roman and Anglo-Catholicism, instinct with an artificial vitality secreted from books and not drawn from the healthful sources of reality, often blind us, we are inclined to think, to the true character of the time in which we live. We overlook the intelligence that flows silently on, and see only the inert mass of superstition that arrests the current with a ceaseless murmuring. The appearance of one such phenomenon as the Cosmos of Humboldt above the mental horizon, with the previous changes it implies, and the wondering admiration and sympathy with which it is universally hailed-indicates a condition of the social atmosphere, which must for ever prevent the return of such a composition of the elements as produced the Cathedral of Chartres or the Campo Santo of Pisa.

To rival in other, it may be, in higher, departments of creative energy, the perfection of the master works of antiquity, we must seek an inspiration from the present. We must revert again to the living fountains of Nature. We must open our minds without constraint, or fear, or prejudice, to the influences which surround us; and where we conceive an object that is in harmony with man's highest well-being, apprehend it with distinctness, and feel that it ought to exist-bear upon it with the concentrated force of intelligence and will-of invention and moral power. Wherever we are in earnest, we attain to excellence. An elegant and sensible writer* remarks:-" If it were asked which of the buildings of the present day bid fairest to

The Rev. J. L. Petit. Remarks on Church Architecture, ii. p. 151.

command the admiration of posterity, I should answer, without hesitation, those connected with our railways."The reason is obvious. They embody the reigning idea of the age-material prosperity. They originate in distinct purpose, and are executed with a hearty zeal. But for the application of Art to the higher needs of the spiritual life, the inspiration of one great, clear, all-absorbing idea is wanting. It cannot settle upon the soul amidst the bickerings of a sectarian theology; it can gather no strength from the petty, aimless researches of a superficial dilettantism; nor ripen into art under the capricious humours and ever-changing fancies of an over-cultivated and effeminate taste. The cure for these evils-undoubtedly a sign of spiritual weakness-must be sought-not in going back-falling again under the influence of priestly ideas and a superstitious symbolism-but in going boldly and resolutely forward—in taking the living idea of Christianity, that highest faith, that widest, purest love, approving itself alike to reason and to conscience-for the governing inspiration of our being-and under its influence, working through a true conviction, discerning the thing that has to be done, and doing it earnestly and well. We must set out from the idea; around the idea, once dintinctly apprehended, the form will grow of itself. When Christian faith and love again are warm and strong-predominant over material interests and selfish, mercenary passions and pervade the hearts of multitudes-they will spontaneously, and as clearly as the vision of the future sanctuary filled the rapt soul of the prophet-suggest the idea of a Christian temple at once beautiful and characteristic, fitted to receive into its bosom the overflowings of the public devotion-not a soulless imitation of the structures of a darker age, adapted for spectacle and procession and dramatic effect-but a quiet, cheerful shelter for the soul from the hot dust and glaring sunshine of this working-day world-with its tempered light and graceful simplicity, and harmonising influence, expressing the peace of God and the love of Christ, and the mingling affections of human hearts. Architecture must always retain its place among the highest of material aids to devotion.

Whether the other arts of design can ever be employed again, to the same extent as they have been, in the service

of religion, we doubt. They seem to us to belong to a lower stage of the religious life, when men must be addressed through the eye, and were less capable of sentiment and reflection. Yet we would not wholly exclude them. They might wait in the outer courts, and fill with a material glory the porch of the House of God.-Arts of closer affinity with a refined intelligence can alone henceforth, as we conceive, adequately express the adoration and trust of man. A sisterhood of higher descent and more spiritual function-Music and Poetry-should alone be permitted, as we feel, to enter the most Holy Place, and will alone, as we believe, minister everlastingly at its altar, and on the invisible pinions of their blended harmonies bear up the expectant soul into the presence of the Living God.

ART. II.—MODERN PAINTERS.

1. Modern Painters. By a Graduate of Oxford. Vols. 1st and 2nd.

2. A Handbook of the History of Painting.

By Dr. Franz Rugler. Part 1st, the Italian Schools. FROM the publication of the first volume of the "Oxford Graduate's" work we hope to date the subversion of the shallow and unmeaning style of criticism on the Fine Arts, which has, in our country, so long retarded the progress of the public mind to a more enlightened and vigorous taste. For some time past, evident symptoms have, we think, appeared of a growing weariness with the yearly displays of conventional laudation, ignorantly or capriciously lavished on some favoured few; and no less of an increasing distaste for critical dicta expressive of mere likings or dislikings on the part of the writer, and unsupported by any references to general and well-grounded principles. Not, indeed, that there has been wanting a certain number of readers, perhaps admirers of the emanations of this school, although their admiration was, we imagine, in its general character not unlike that described by Sir Joshua Reynolds as the lot of those who, straining their eyes, in obedience to the dictates of conventional taste, after beauty where none is genuinely discoverable, leave the thankless task, perhaps, with "admiration on their lips," but with "indifference at their hearts." How great or how small soever be the influence exerted by professional critics on the public taste, it is at all times far greater and more apparent in the Arts of Painting and Sculpture than in those of Poetry and Music, and that for reasons founded on the comparative nature and functions of the Arts themselves. To begin with such as arise merely from outward circumstances, we may mention the almost necessary concentration of the chef-d'œuvres of the two first in private and public galleries, always few in number, and not always easily accessible for the public; the total absence in our general institutions for scholastic and academical education of any but the most meagre and inefficient instruction in their general æsthetic principles, the obstacles thrown in the way of

historical research by an insufficient selection of examples, illustrative of schools and epochs, and still more by a confused huddling together, in public galleries, of works constructed on principles wholly different, if not diametrically opposed,-all these, we fear, greatly impede the formation of an enlarged love of beauty, and independent judgment; and incline the public mind to acquiesce, without examination, in decisions traditionally handed down, and in dicta rather imbibed, than learned. But in addition to, and above, all these, other causes, intrinsic and inherent in the Arts themselves, tend to make the sway of the critic less imperious and absolute in the domains of Poetry than in those of Painting. We discover these on considering their characteristic modes of expression, and comparative range of subjects. Is there not something in the more direct and spontaneous appealings of the language of words and sounds to the imagination; which rouses our minds to a freer and more habitual exercise of our moral, intellectual, and æsthetic faculties, and preserves alike the Artist and the Public from attaching an exaggerated importance to the purely technical in Poetry?

The long, and generally painful, apprenticeship through which the Painter or the Sculptor must pass, before he learns so much as the rudiments of his profession; in the majority of cases presses heavily on the higher faculties of mind and imagination. However differently this may be at some future time, when a system of artistic education has been devised, better calculated than that now existing to awaken individual genius, and to direct its most ardent efforts to the attainment of the noblest aims; at present it must, we believe, be acknowledged, that the end is too frequently forgotten in the laborious and exclusive pursuit of the means. How necessary, then, now and at all times, that the office of the Critic should be discharged by minds of large intelligence matured by experience, and endowed with the faculties of eye and soul, necessary alike to the genius who creates, and to the interpreter who expounds. We find these high qualities well and eloquently described in an answer recorded as that given by an ancient bard to the question-"What are the essentials of genius?-An eye to see, a heart to feel, and a resolution to follow Nature." It is their pervading pre