that might provoke an epigram, which should turn upon the ideas, that the critic is so far behind the artist in antiquarian lore; and there is so much of Scotch mist between them, that he can't see him, and therefore takes a conscientious oath, on Mr. Major's books, that to the best of his knowledge and belief, Titian is not there.

We have little to add: having unavoidably incorporated most of our own observations on the details of this gorgeous picture, with our exposure of the mistakes of our contemporary. The head of Bacchus is richly enwreathed with the leaves and fruit of the vine; but its character is not Grecian, nor so elevated as might be wished: neither is that of the countenance of Ariadne: and their draperies, as well as that of the Cymbal-nymph, are perhaps somewhat too much subdivided into littlenesses. The landscape is admirable! and tenfold the more admirable for being unprecedented in its style, as well as execution.-But of this we must delay to treat. of it again in a future page. climbing the forest elms and aboriginal air to the scene, that is in perfect accordance with the poetry of the subject, and are painted with the same charming pencil, and the same faithful attention to nature, which we have already found so much reason to commend in the weeds and flowers of the fore-ground.

The reader shall hear Meanwhile the vines, sycamores, impart an

The sounds of the cymbals, tambourine, and bugle, with what is evidently following in procession-for the frame shuts out, Heaven knows how many jovial bacchanals, and pipes and tabors-these, in addition to the interjectional accompaniments which strike on Fancy's ear-altogether, the obstreperous din must have amounted to a great deal of" harmony not

understood," and we cannot be surprised that it has abruptly awakened poor Ariadne, or that she seems a little out of sorts. Distracted between the discovery that she was deserted by her Athenian lover, and the sudden presence of a deity; the painter who had represented otherwise would have been justly liable to reprehension.

The splendid and bold contrasts of colour which we here behold-homogeneous as they are with the sort of wild abandonment and ebriety of the pencil, in the rendering of the chiar-oscuro;-the "wanton heed and giddy cunning" of the artist, cannot easily escape notice, or fail to obtain praise. Who feels not that the sobriety of Gaspar, Claude, or Swaneveldt, would have been less well suited to the hilarious occasion? If he who contemplates this admirable work, does not perceive that its abrupt grandeur, and energy of composition, and its rich and rapturous tones, homogeneous with its masterly style of design, warrant the epithet which we set out with claiming for it from the current language of the Sister Art, we should in vain endeavour to prove its applicability. If his heart is not warmed, as Titian's must have been warmed (perhaps by reading the poetry of Anacreon in its original language)

When,-master of the pencil's fire,
He listen'd to the Muse's lyre,

we should never be able to satisfy him that the present is not less a triumph of the painter's Art, than of the deity of wine.

Nicolo Poussin, about half a century afterwards, advanced further within the penetralium of these antique Bacchic mysteries, but Titian was honoured

with the first glance. That his literary and scientific education within the castle and libraries of Cadoré, combined with the comparatively slender opportunities which he had of studying the basso-relievos of the Greeks, brought him so far acquainted with the nature and peculiar character of the Bacchanalian orgies, and Arcadian sylvan solemnities, as to enable him to conceive and compose the present picture, is proved by the picture itself. But Titian could ill bear to stand within the radiance of contemporaneous glory, as is known by his conduct towards Tintoret. The rising suns of Art, flung their radiance too horizontally, and too directly on his organs of vision: but the light of antiquity, shining from above, illumined his path without annoying or dazzling his eyesight, and in that path he trode with the firm, manly, steady, and conquering advancement of a Roman legion. Of this also, his Bacchus and Ariadne is proof sufficient.

INCIPIENCY OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING.

To the successful and surprising accomplishment which we have with so much pleasure witnessed and endeavoured to develope in the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian, as an historical or poetic picture, we may add, that it marks an era-an advent rather-in another branch of Art: being the oldest picture in the National Gallery; or with which we have acquaintance, wherein the true principles of Landscapepainting are duly recognised and when we perceive and reflect, that it is not less beautiful and grand in style and execution, than it is true to Nature, and was new in Art, it really approaches to inspiration! When has an uninspired artist, without exemplars

before him, produced any work even distantly approaching the landscape-passages of Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, or his St. Peter Martyr? which doubtless led the way to the landscape-painting of Dominichino, Poussin, Rubens, and the Caraccii; of which we shall proceed to treat.

In all Arts, the perception of Truth-I mean here the truth of external Nature (speaking in the aggregate), though probably I need not thus restrict my observation appears to have been of gradual acquirement. Men learn, like children, to see things as they really are; and this extends to professors of Art and their manual practice, or that which we so term; but which is in fact as much an affair of the eye as of the hand.

When Imitative Art dawns upon any country, the practitioner-even he who begins upon a wrong principle, exercises a certain power of carrying other minds along with his own, by sympathy and by example. There is manifestation of mental energy in such production, which is always influential: for whether the producer be a potter's daughter of Corinth, or a native artist of Mexico, or New Zealand, or any other land, with such manifestations men always sympathise. Is it not the same in the philosophy of morals? Men sympathise with courage and strength, calling them heroism, long before the milder virtues are recognised.—But at present, we have only to do with the energies of Imitative Art

We repeat, this is the case, even where the artist begins ever so wrong, or wide of the truth: much more is it the case when he begins nearer to what is right. His mode, be it what it may, of seeing Nature, extends itself to his neighbouring circle of observers, who soon become admirers. Hence, the widely spread

out delineations of tatooed faces, which we have seen from the pencils of New Zealand artists; and hence the attenuated, meagre, and miserable-looking, saints and angels, delineated when Graphic Art first emerged from the barbarism of the dark ages, and before the resurrection of the Antique-by the earliest professors of Italy and Germany, of which some specimens are still extant in those countries, and a few have been imported into our own.--And hence the ignorant wonder with which both were beheld.

The reappearance of ancient sculpture, effected a sudden, and a sort of miraculous, revolution :-It might be termed a revelation in the art-or rather mystery, of perceiving the truths of external Nature as regards the human form. The hood-winks were thus removed, and—whilst the physical, as well as mental, perceptions of the multitude concerning beauty, were infinitely raised and improved-such hawks and falcons as Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Titian, saw at once their quarry; and soared, or pounced, and triumphed, accordingly.

But it was somewhat otherwise with the Landscapepainters' branch of the Art. The ancients themselves, even of the best ages of Art, appear never to have attained to more than a very crude and imperfect perception of those truths of inanimate Nature, which it is the object of landscape-painting to disclose and exhibit. The painted contents of the grottoes, or souterrains, of Italy, including those of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and wherever else in the Roman territory remains of this sort have emerged to light, show that the artists of the classic ages had no ascertained principles of perspective, and no notion of what is now termed the picturesque, in landscape scenery; and

L