ence of subscribers, and to the custom which has hitherto prevailed. According to the latter, the prizes would be upon the same scale as the pictures bought or exhibited on an average annually.

In our opinion, the principle which ought to guide the Art-Union in the graduation of its prizes should be compounded of both these. It ought to take up the state of things it finds, and introduce some principle for making it better. In other words, it ought to begin with a sufficiency of low prizes, but to keep in view the increase in number of the high ones.

Some will walk through an exhibition of the paintings selected by the prizeholders, shrug their shoulders, and say scornfully, "Here are the fruits of your Art-Union! why there is hardly a good picture among the lot." We would beg such as pass a hasty sentence of this kind mentally to make exhibitions of such pictures as have been purchased out of the annual galleries for years before the Art-Union existed. Would those be in any degree superior? If not, no inference can be drawn from the rarity of excellence in these, unfavourable to Art-Unions.

A parallel argument may be put about the rarity of mathematical merit at Cambridge. A man may say to Professor Whewell, "Why, what's the use of your Triposes? Shew me ne one of your wranglers, who is a tolerable mathematician, who has made any noise in the world." Professor Whewell would naturally answer, "We can hardly expect a crop of geniuses every year. I even admit, if you please, that mathematical eminence is extremely rare among us; but I don't see that we should gain any thing by suppressing our annual examinations, by taking away the chief incentives to distinction. We should then have still fewer men of mark than we have at present."

Merit is rare, and men attribute the rarity of it to the only visible means by which it can be fostered. As well attribute the ignorance which prevails among the lower orders to schools.

A comparison of their own Annual Reports, which are pregnant with meaning, will shew the vigour and spreading tendency of this society. The eighth of these Reports has just

appeared. It is pleasing to see the good augury we hold of growing elevation in the views of the society justified by their offering a prize of 500l. for the best original picture, illustrative of English history, to furnish a subject for engraving hereafter.

We trust in succeeding years to see some sort of rotation adopted in the style prescribed to the candidates in these competitions, and that poetical subjects, as well as representations of actual life, will not be excluded. We have before alluded to the vagueness of the expression "historical painting," and we fancy sometimes that many well-meaning people are misled by this term. If historypainting is to be confined to throwing lustre upon the fate of the seven burghers of Calais (a story which, with all its merits, we think may be represented too often), or to depicting the finding the body of Harold, or King Alfred giving laws, or Queen Eleanor sucking her lord's wound, or the murder of the little princes in the Tower, or even Milton dictating, with a daughter on either side (though one would imagine that one amanuensis might have been enough at a time), or, in fact, to the illustration of any page of Hume, Froissart, or Sharon Turner,-then, in our humble estimation, history-painting is not the most promising field for the exertions of our artists. It gives too free a scope for the turgid expansions of the false sublime. The stare, strut, start, frown, and swagger, that may be seen to admiration at our minor theatres, it is hardly needful to encourage the display of, upon canvass. We hardly see any endeavour, in this grand school of historypainting, that does not seem to have borrowed its dresses, expressions, and gestures from Astley's or the Victoria. And we venture humbly to suggest to the committee, that the most genuine merit, such as Gainsborough's and Wilkie's, which has made its appearance in this country, was not trained to flaunt, as it were, upon these pompous and gaudy poles of historical subjects, but crept along lowly as a lark's nest, matting the sober and unpretending paths of daily life as with a network of wild flowers. It is not that we object totally to the representation of historical scenes; we only think it a

pity that a style, in which vulgarity is so insufferable, and apparently so inevitable, should be held out to the artist as the one in which it is most desirable for him to employ himself. Let us have all sorts of things that are genuine and true; the bitter moral of Hogarth, the splendour and nobleness of Reynolds's portraits, the wild fancifulness and almost Shaksperian versatility of Maclise, the brilliant voluptuousness of Etty, the chaste tenderness and classical purity of Eastlake, the studious finish of Mulready, the humour of Leslie, and the consummate execution of Landseer. Let us have all these, let us do our best to have them, to cherish them; but pray let us pause before we pull down upon our heads an avalanche of such frozen historical sublimities as we see in Westminster Hall. Do not let us be run away with by a rage for the mock sublime.

Among minor subjects for congratulation in this Art-Union Report, it is gratifying to notice that the committee has presented to that young and promising painter Mr. Selous, fifty guineas in addition to the premium he obtained by his very ingenious outlines on the Pilgrim's Progress. The style of outline in itself is a very subordinate one, and scarcely worth encouraging; but the production of this series displays a certain variety of power pleasing to witness, and the taste and fancy evinced in their execution no longer leave Retzsch without a rival in this province, and deserve to be favourably noticed.

The most serious objection that has been hitherto put forward against Art-Unions is the possibility of collusion between the prizeholder and the artist. It appears that, in more than one instance, prizeholders have been mean enough to tamper with painters previous to exercising their privilege of selection, and have tried to get their preference of the work of any individual painter accompanied by the condition of having the greater portion of the price, to be received by the painter from the Art-Union, paid to them clandes

tinely in hard cash, the painter to pocket the rest and take back his picture.

Recently, in two of these instances, which we sincerely hope and believe are all that have occurred, the trick has been exposed, and we have as much pleasure in re-echoing the unenviable notoriety of Mr. W. Saunders of Burton-upon-Trent, from whom one of these disgraceful proposals emanated, as in applauding Mr. Hollins for his very proper conduct, not only in rejecting with becoming indignation so base a bribe, but also in giving up the offender to the public scorn.

The spirit of Miss Sophia Claxton has baffled a similar attempt to pervert the objects of the society, though it is greatly to be regretted that in the latter instance the name of the transgressor has not transpired.

These examples ought to satisfy the public that they may depend upon the honest pride of artists for defeating and exposing such base attempts.

One check upon this fraud in the great Art-Unions, besides the honourable character of the artist's profession, is the publicity of the exhibitions of the pictures, selected by the prizeholders, which would infallibly prevent a prize-picture from being returned to the artist without the fact becoming very shortly notorious.

In taking leave of this interesting subject we beg leave to quote, for the consideration of clubs and city companies, the following passage from the Art-Union Report:

"The surplus revenues of a club or city company could not be better expended than in portraying for imitation, on the walls of their hall, a noble action, or elevated feeling, in the language of all lands-the language of the painter; or setting up, in marble, memorials of their good and great men.

"The cost of one civic banquet might be made to produce a work which should long remain to advance the best interests of society."

Let the goldsmiths, the fishmongers, and the merchant-tailors engrave that sentence on the walls of their refectories.

Ir was said upon one occasion, by a very stout gentleman of the last century, that it is surprising to observe how small a quantity of reading there is in the world; yet, if his subsequent conversation with the younger Burke and Boswell be correctly reported, he has furnished a solution of his own problem. The progress which the understanding makes through a book, he conceived to have in it more of pain than pleasure; and no man, he ventured to assert, ever reads a work of science from pure inclination, the books really perused with pleasure being only such light compositions as contain a quick succession of events. The reader will, doubtless, have identified the stout gentleman of cur quotation with that great Dr. Johnson, whose critical shoes have creaked over the threshold of the present generation, in all that unoiled roughness in which Boswell determined to preserve them. In uttering his last remark, he was probably thinking of the day when he read through Fielding's Amelia without stopping. But the assertion is not well founded, and, if Johnson had known any thing of Cambridge education, he would have immediately perceived its fallacy. Peacock's Algebra is the Ivanhoe of St. John's; and we have known a man of science whose constant and favourite companion among shady lanes was Bland's Collection of Problems. This taste, however, is not easily imparted. Whatever may be the contagion of the gown, Mr. Blakesley or Mr. Thurtell could give some interesting illustrations to shew that the infection of the differential calculus spreads slowly; and the present popular Master of Trinity cannot fail to number, among his tutorial reminiscences, a considerable party of Young England, absolutely deaf to the charmings of pulleys and Bramah. The difficulty resides in awakening a taste for a pump or a poem.

We approve of Johnson's suggestion, to turn a boy loose into a library-having previously removed all works of an injurious tendency— and to let him graze as he likes. Nothing can be worse than to enclose him in one small field of know

ledge, with thorn hedges, a cord, and a staple. The confinement of the pasture destroys its relish. Instead of binding down his eye and attention to a single book, let him please his appetite in the selection; and, above all, abstain from discouraging him by a statement of difficulties beyond the reach of his understanding. If he find the trunk of the tree too huge and knotty for his arms to encircle it, he will, of his own accord, soon abandon the attempt to climb to the boughs. Nor is another caution of the Doctor's undeserving of regard. If a man or a boy begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, he advises him not to turn back and commence methodically at the first page, lest the inclination to the task should lose its heat, or entirely forsake him. In addition to the removal of all books harmful to the spiritual health, the field ought to be carefully weeded from modern miscellanies and every body's abridgements. An opinion of Gray has been recorded that might be pondered with advantage by those whom it concerns: he thought that the abundance of dictionaries of all kinds promised badly for the literature of the age, because rich and profound learning is never derived from such sources, but drawn at the fountain-head; and the inducements to idleness, which such compilations hold out, effectually weaken, if they do not entirely quench, the spirit and the industry to study a subject in the original authorities. We think it, accordingly, no topic of rejoicing, when a young man is versed in the intellectual statistics of The Literary Gazette, or fond of paddling, with the water just up to his toes, in the streamlet of The Penny Cyclopædia. This is what we call, to borrow Gray's description of Harris's Hermes, the shallow profound. "It is amazing to consider to what an universality of learning people make pretensions here. There is not a drawer, a chair, or a hackney-coachman, but is politician, poet, and judge of polite literature." The words are Shenstone's, and were written from London in 1740. A hundred years have certainly not dimi

nished their truth. There is around and among us the chatter, but not the refinement of taste. The sale of 3000 copies of Paradise Lost, in eleven years, would, according to the frank admission of Hallam, have been a very satisfactory success in our own times. Yet that success was obtained in the seventeenth century, and against the full strength of ignorance, prejudice, and vice. An internal machinery of life worked the noble ship into the haven, in defiance of wind and tide. "There is sometimes a want of congeniality in public taste, which no power of genius will overcome." But say rather, that there is always an indisposition among the many to welcome or to admire the beautiful and pure in art. Is it conceivable that Spenser should ever be the poet of the Reform Club? The atmosphere of popular feeling and thought grows every day denser and cloudier; if the song-thrush would sing, it must ascend above the mist, and out of the sight of the vulgar, and there, followed only by a few loving eyes,

"Scatter its loose notes in the waste of air."

We think that this turning free of the young intellect may often be productive of excellent results. Fergusson was made a man of science by seeing his father mend the roof of the house by the aid of a prop and lever; Vaucanson might never have exhibited his remarkable mechanical talents, if he had not in his boyhood been shut up in a room with nothing but a clock for a companion. By a similar process of imitation, a few sunny hours over Hooker may make a Field, and Spenser may yet create many a future Cowley.

While we were thinking of the difficult hills which all benevolent Clarksons have to climb, in their efforts to mitigate the slavery of ignorance, we met with a volume entitled, A Course of English Reading, adapted to Every Taste and Capacity." The author is a clergyman, the Rev. James Pycroft. Now the book has merits, and may do good; but one objection to it should be stated

not only internal indications, but a distinct avowal of having been composed for the youthful scholar alone, and with a sort of wavering inclination towards the feminine gender. "Complete essays on these comprehensive subjects," says the writer, in allusion to history, &c., "are not to be expected from one who addresses himself to the young and inexperienced student, and whose chief ambition is to be useful." This caution is pointed by Pope's admonition to quarrelsome critics, about regarding

"The writer's end,

Since none can compass more than they intend."

If

Certainly not: but then instead of page 98 these wise words should have appeared in page 1. If a course of reading be " adapted to every taste and every capacity," it must also be suited to every age; for the taste and the capacity fluctuate with the changes of time. this book be addressed strictly and singly to young persons, then the title-page ought to be altered; if to persons of maturer life, then the course itself should be amended. As it is, you pass under the arch of Buckingham Palace, and find yourself in an infant school at Pimlico: The contents of the volume are also open to rebuke; there is rather too much of flippancy, and not quite enough of accuracy. Some of the remarks, however, are ingenious, and calculated to be beneficial to the young ladies and gentlemen of whom the compiler speaks in his preface. We cannot approve of his hints for educating a feminine order of commentators upon the Scriptures. After giving an account of a young lady, who delights in writing the marginal references of the Bible upon some paper most mystically arranged in vertical columns, he adds, "This is a much more profitable employment than knitting, though ladies may be allowed to do both;" and astonishes us with the question, "Who would not be more proud of a mother who bequeathed him a commentary than a quilt?" We are so sacrilegious as to say, with unblushing effrontery, that we should prefer the quilt: and

the reason is obvious, and, to our mind, unimpeachable. We already possess several commentaries, but never had a quilt. Lady Jane Grey, reading Plato, was surely invading with sufficient hardihood the privileges of the universities; but even Ascham himself would have shrunk from the Commentary. There is truth, as well as neatness, in the lines of Cowper,

"Great offices will have Great talents; and God gives to every

man

The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordained to fill."

Mr. Pycroft professes, then, to teach us what to read. The offer should be welcomed. In the present day we live, as it were, in a mill, and the driving tide of business among the wheels keeps up a perpetual tumult and foam. Intervals of repose are all the opportunities of study and reflection that many of us can hope to obtain. A foot upon the cradle, and a finger upon Horace, may be the fate of more than one literary descendant of Hooker. How can these intervals be best employed for the purposes of mental cultivation? Every one feels, and acknowledges with Johnson, that snatches of reading will not make a Bentley or a Clarke, but then Bentleys and Clarkes make themselves. No man

of genius ever sailed over literature by the map of his predecessors; he marks his course by the stars overhead in the heaven of intellect.

How to read, and what to read, are questions more easily asked than answered. Look, for instance, at history. Temple requested a mutual friend to obtain from Gray a plan for studying modern history, not confined to any particular period, but beginning and ending at the epochs he might deem to be most expedient. We gather, from the recently published correspondence of Nichols, that Gray disliked the task-"You aggravate my misfortunes by twitting me with Temple, as if a pack of names of books and editions were any cure for his uneasiness, and that I withheld it from him." What Temple desired was, not a pack of names, but a list of a few of the best and most necessary in each period, sufficient to com

pose a historical chain, and continue it unbroken; and what he asked for himself in vain has been supplied to all students by Gray's successor in the historic chair of Cambridge. Smyth's Lectures on Modern History-already recommended in REGINA-afford a clear and safe light to the inexperienced traveller along these rugged paths of investigation. Pycroft, having the professor's arm to lean upon, maintains a good pace and a very becoming attitude in this section of his labours; the suggestion, to choose some particular branch of modern history, is plausible, but inconvenient, if rigidly carried out. No spectacle can be more absurd, than a person familiar with an episode in the life of a nation; acquainted with its manhood, but ignorant of its childhood and old age. It is knowing one's way to St. Paul's, without having ever heard of the Mansion-house. Still, by all means, select some strong points." Among these, Pycroft justly enumerates: (1.) The early history till about the time of the Conquest; (2.) The era of the middle ages, including the feudal system, chivalry, and the crusades. (3.) The dawn of discovery,-printing-gunpowdercompass, &c. (4.) Civil Wars. (5.) Revolution of 1688. Here, with the help of Smyth (why does he call the good professor, Dr. Smyth? as if every stain and wrinkle in that bombasin M.A. gown did not reject the title!), Pycroft mentions some important books, and his directions for reading them are plain and judicious. He calls Robertson's introduction to his Charles V. very valuable; but, perhaps, the reader sometimes feels with Nichols, that it is tiresome to wade into the history, through five hundred pages on feudal tenures and other barbarisms. Bacon's Henry VII. and part of Montesquieu will also do very well; but why bring us back to cheap literature, "with that very popular author, Mr. James," and his romances about chivalry and the Black Prince? It may be interesting to our readers to learn Gray's view with regard to English history. The work of Hume, he considered to be deficient in all the elements of excellence. Rapin's he esteemed as the only general history of England, and he said that, by consulting the copious and excellent marginal references,