and wiry line of rectitude and certainty in the actions and intentions? Leave out this line, and you leave out life itself; all is chaos again, and the line of the Almighty must be drawn out upon it before man or beast can exist. Talk no more then of Correggio, or Rembrandt, or any other of those plagiaries of Venice or Flanders. They were but the lame imitators of lines drawn by their predecessors, and their works prove themselves contemptible disarranged imitations, and blundering misapplied copies.

THE TRUE AND FALSE IN LITERATURE AND ART.

WE

(From a Public Address.)

HILE the works of Pope and Dryden are looked upon as the same art with those of Shakespeare and Milton; while the works of Strange and Woolett are looked upon as the same art with those of Raphael and Albert Durer, there can be no art in a nation but such as is subservient to the interest of the monopolising trader. Englishmen, arouse yourselves from the fatal slumber into which booksellers and trading dealers have thrown you, under the artfully propagated pretence that a translation or a copy of any kind can be as honourable to a nation as an original, belieing the English character in that well-known

saying, "Englishmen improve what others invent." This even Hogarth's works prove a detestable falsehood. No man can improve an original invention; nor can an original invention exist without execution organised, delineated, and articulated, either by God or man. I do not mean smoothed up, and niggled, and poco-pen'd, and all the beauties paled out, blurred, and blotted, but drawn with a firm and decided hand at once, like Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and Milton. İ have heard many people say, "Give me the ideas, it is no matter what words you put them into," and others say, Give me the design, it is no matter for the executions." These people knew enough of artifice, but nothing of art. Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriate words, nor can a design be made without its minutely appropriate execution. The unorganized blots and blurs of Reubens and Titian are not art, nor can their method ever express ideas or imaginations, any more than Pope's metaphysical jargon of rhyming. Unappropriate execution is the most nauseous of all affectation and foppery. He who copies does not execute; he only imitates what is already executed. Execution is only the result of invention.

S

OPINIONS.

I.

HE nature of visionary fancy or imagination

and permanence of its ever-existent images are considered as less permanent than the things of vegetable and generative nature. Yet the oak dies as well as the lettuce; but its eternal image or individuality never dies, but renews by its seed. Just so the imaginative image returns by the seed of contemplative thought. The writings of the prophets illustrate these conceptions of the visionary fancy by their various sublime and divine images as seen in the worlds of vision.

2.

Aristotle says, characters are either good or bad: now, goodness or badness has nothing to do with character. An apple-tree, a pear-tree, a horse, a lion, are characters; but a good apple-tree or a bad, is an apple-tree still. A horse is not more a lion for being a bad horse-that is its character. Its goodness or badness is another consideration.

3.

Oil has falsely been supposed to give strength to colours; but a little consideration must show the fallacy of this opinion. Oil will not drink or absorb

colour enough to stand the test of very little time and of the air. It deadens every colour it is mixed with, at its first mixture, and in a little time becomes a yellow mask over all that it touches. Let the works of modern artists since Ruben's time witness the villainy of some one at that time, who first brought oil painting into general opinion and practice, since which we have never had a picture painted that could show itself by the side of an earlier production. Whether Rubens or Vandyke, or both, were guilty of this villainy is to be inquired in another work on painting, and who first forged the silly story and known falsehood about John of Bruges inventing oil colours. In the meantime let it be observed, that before Vandyke's time, and in his time, all the genuine pictures are on plaster or whiting grounds, and none since.

4.

This subject an experiment picture is taken from the visions of Emanuel Swedenborg. The learned who strive to ascend into heaven by means of learning appear to children like dead horses when repelled by the celestial spheres. The works of this visionary are well worthy the attention of painters and poets; they are foundations for grand things. The reason they have not been more attended to is, because corporeal demons have gained a predominance. Who the leaders of these are will be shown below. Unworthy men, who gain fame among men, continue to govern man

kind after death, and in their spiritual bodies oppose the spirits of those who worthily are famous, and as Swedenborg observes, shut the doors of mind and of thought by placing learning above inspiration.

5.

The drawing, "The penance of Jane Shore in Saint Paul's Church," was done above thirty years ago, and proves to the author, and he thinks will to any discerning eye, that the productions of our youth and of our maturer age are not equal in all essential points. If a man is master of his profession, he cannot be ignorant that he is so; and if he is not employed by those who pretend to encourage art, he will employ himself, and laugh in secret at the pretences of the ignorant, while he has every night dropped into his shoe-as soon as he puts it off, and puts out the candle, and gets into bed-a reward for the labours of the day, such as the world cannot give; and patience and time await to give him all that the world can give.

6.

All frescoes are as high finished as miniatures or enamels, and they are known to be unchangeable; but oil, being a body itself, will drink or absorb very little colour, and changing yellow, and at length brown, destroys every colour it is mixed with, especially every delicate colour. It turns every permanent white to a yellow and brown putty, and has compelled the use of that destroyer of colour, white lead, which, when its protecting oil