tenderness in his faces, in which human frailty and passion are purified by the sanctity of religion. The ancient statues are finer objects for the eye to contemplate; they represent a more perfect race of physical beings, but we have little sympathy with them. In Raphael all our natural sensibilities are heightened and refined by the sentiments of faith and hope pointing mysteriously to the interests of another world. The same intensity of passion appears also to distinguish Raphael from Michael Angelo. Michael Angelo's forms are grander, but they are not so informed with expression. Raphael's, however ordinary in themselves, are full of expression, "even to o'erflowing;" every nerve and muscle is impregnated with feeling, -bursting with meaning. In Michael Angelo, on the contrary, the powers of body and mind appear superior to any events that can happen to them; the capacity of thought and feeling is never full, never strained, or tasked to the extremity of what it will bear. All is in a lofty repose and solitary grandeur, which no human interest can shake or disturb. It has been said that Michael Angelo painted man, and Raphael men; that the one was an epic, the other a dramatic painter. But the distinction I have stated is, perhaps, truer and more intelligible,

viz. that the one gave greater dignity of form, and the other greater force and refinement of expression. Michael Angelo, in fact, borrowed his style from sculpture. He represented in general only single figures (with subordinate accompaniments), and had not to express the conflicting actions and passions of a multitude of persons. It is therefore a mere truism to say that his compositions are not dramatic. He is much more picturesque than Raphael. The whole figure of his Jeremiah droops and hangs down like a majestic tree, surcharged with showers. His drawing of the human form has the characteristic freedom and boldness of Titian's landscapes.

After Michael Angelo and Raphael, there is no doubt that Leonardo da Vinci and Correggio are the two painters, in modern times, who have carried historical expression to the highest ideal perfection; and yet it is equally certain that their heads are carefully copied from faces and expressions in nature. Leonardo excelled principally in his women and children. There is, in his female heads, a peculiar charm of expression, a character of natural sweetness and tender playfulness, mixed up with the pride of conscious intellect, and the graceful reserve of personal

dignity. He blends purity with voluptuousness;

and the expression of his women is equally characteristic of "the mistress or the saint." His pictures are worked up to the height of the idea he had conceived, with an elaborate felicity; but this idea was evidently first suggested, and afterwards religiously compared with nature. This was his excellence. His fault is that his style of execution is too mathematical; that is, his pencil does not follow the graceful variety of the details of objects, but substitutes certain refined gradations, both of form and colour, producing equal changes in equal distances, with a mechanical uniformity. Leonardo was a man of profound learning as well as genius, and perhaps transferred too much of the formality of science to his favourite art.

The masterpieces of Correggio have the same identity with nature, the same stamp of truth. He has indeed given to his pictures the utmost softness and refinement of outline and expression; but this idea, at which he constantly aimed, is filled up with all the details and varieties which such heads would have in nature. So far from any thing like a naked abstract idea, or middle form, the individuality of his faces has something peculiar in it, even approaching the grotesque. He has endeavoured to impress habitually on the countenance those

undulating outlines which rapture or tenderness leave there, and has chosen for this purpose those forms and proportions which most obviously assisted his design.

As to the colouring of Correggio, it is nature itself. Not only is the general tone perfectly true, but every speck and particle is varied in colour, in relief, in texture, with a care, a felicity, and an effect which is almost magical. His light and shade are equally admirable. No one else, perhaps, ever gave the same harmony and roundness to his compositions. So true are his shadows, equally free from coldness, opacity, or false glare;-so clear, so broken, so airy, and yet so deep, that if you hold your hand so as to cast a shadow on any part of the flesh which is in the light, this part, so shaded, will present exactly the same appearance which the painter has given to the shadowed part of the picture. Correggio indeed possessed a greater variety of excellences in the different departments of his art than any other painter; and yet it is remarkable that the impression which his pictures leave upon the mind of the common spectator is monotonous and comparatively feeble. His style is in some degree mannered and confined. For instance, he is without the force, passion, and grandeur of

Raphael, who, however, possessed his softness of expression, but of expression only; and in colour, in light and shade, and other qualities, was quite inferior to Correggio. We may, perhaps, solve this apparent contradiction by saying, that he applied the power of his mind to a greater variety of objects than others; but that this power was still of the same character, consisting in a certain exquisite sense of the harmonious, the soft and graceful in form, colour, and sentiment, but with a deficiency of strength, and a tendency to effeminacy in all these.

After the names of Raphael and Correggio, I shall mention that of Guido, whose female faces are exceedingly beautiful and' ideal, but altogether common-place and vapid compared with those of Raphael or Correggio; and they are so for no other reason but that the general idea they convey is not enriched and strengthened by an intense contemplation of nature. For the same reason, I can conceive nothing more unlike the antique than the figures of Poussin, except as to the preservation of the costume; and it is perhaps chiefly owing to the habit of studying his art at second-hand, or by means of scientific rules, that the great merits of that able painter, whose understanding and