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unriddled. It is given up in despair. And although all are ready to cry out "De gustibus non est disputandum," disputes continue without end. "Quot homines tot sententiæ." So that as good a definition of our nature as any, may be, that man is a disputing animal. And what is strangest, he disputes most about his desires, his appetites, and tastes. Here is the great difference between him and all other creatures. That there is "no disputing," or rather no end of "disputing about taste," is only true of him. All the rest are severally guided by their one instinct, and think alike (if philosophers will admit thinking at all), and act alike, according to their species; and it is singular, that if there be seeming differences in any species, they exist in those which are brought most directly under the human influence; and there, indeed, they sometimes do appear to partake of human uncertainty-as is the case in dogs and horses. Dogs most strikingly occasionally show symptoms of a kind of conscience. They know when they do wrong; they learn both bad and good moral ways, and positively have what no other of the brute world have, a sense of shame; but, as to all other creatures, species scarcely differ more from species than does one man from another. Hence is the common saying, "What is one man's meat is another's poison." So great, indeed, and so many, are these differences, that when different sorts of people are brought into contact, all they understand of each other is their language, and not always that. As far as their tastes and habits go, they are a constant puzzle. Their natures are as strange to each other, as viewed through their habits, as are the natures, in their innermost detail, of hippopotamuses or kangaroos. We only know a few broadly-marked propensities. Let the highly educated, the nicely cultivated gentleman quit for a few hours his elegantly furnished house, his conservatory, or his library, and make an excursion with a detective officer into the purlieus of crime-amid dens of iniquity that shock every delicate sense he will have but little conception of the items which make up the daily pleasures of the inhabitants.

Yet will he see, in the worst of these lanes, children playing in their courts, and merry enough; so that he will be convinced there are enjoyments which are to him the cabala of nature. So might he find the grown inmates indulging their tastes. No human creature lives without something deserving the name of amusement; and in such amusement lies the recipient's taste. Sairah Gamp, and her invisible friend Mrs Harris, how little would they understand of the society at Almack's. If daily thoughts could be duly registered, those of the Premier and the chimney-sweep, if shaken in any bag, would never mix well, and come out together. The poetic lover, and the brutal man who, unprovoked, thrusts his fist into the face of a delicate woman-they are as unlike each other as wolves and doves; yet they have their tastes, and seek their daily pleasures from them: “trahit sua quemque voluptas." And doubtless (for we must apply this, my postRaphaelite friend, to the Arts) every grade of life would understand and feel pleasure in pictures of some kind or other. Take Raphael's chaste, divinely sentimental St Catharine from our National Gallery, and offer it for sale, or to be looked at, in Petticoat Lane. Do you think you would find admirers-not to say purchasers ? The various markets lie in districts as marked as the appropriate territories of a varied creation. Michael Angelo at Billingsgate would not be rated at a cod's head and shoulders. Now, are the Fine Arts supposed to be caterers for all these wonderfully diversified tastes? Verily they will have enough to do, if so much be required of them! No wonder if, like the old man and his son with the ass in the fable, they cannot please all. Then there must be other Arts besides the Fine Arts. But then comes the puzzle ;-by general consent there seems to be no separation allowed. They shall be the Fine Arts-the whole Fine Arts-and nothing but the Fine Arts; and they must and shall be such as to please the public. The publicthe public, and none but the public

shall have a National Gallery, a Royal Academy-demand especial legislation, committees of taste, to tell this public what it wants, which it

ought to know very well of itself, if the said public hath any individual bodily existence. Who then shall be the arbiter elegantiarum," and what elegantiæ will please the public? Yet pleased the public must be, and are; but how, or why, or who leads them? there is the mystery. This has been an incomprehensible thing since the world has been a world in England. Ever since I was young there has been a cry and a craving, "tell us what we are to admire." For lack of a little of this proper and definite knowledge, this Public has made very great and very palpable blunders. What it has loved one day as above all price, the next it casts off, "spernit et odit." To take a modern instance or two. Poor Wilson could scarcely get in his day four, five, or six guineas for pictures, which subsequently sold for more, much more, than as many hundreds. Smith of Chichester won the prize against him—had his picture engraved, exhibiting its multiplied littlenesses, witnesses of his present triumph, and satiric upon the world's judgment. Morland's pigs, admitted into drawing rooms and galleries, grunted defiance to framed saints and family portraits. Where are they wallowing now? In time they say all things find their level, and swine naturally go to the gutter. Don't you remember the account you gave me of the crowding to get a sight of West's large pictures, his last "Sacred Subjects," as they were called ? and how devotees of advanced age shuffled and pushed their way with breathless eagerness? "Am I too late to subscribe for a proof engraving?" Then there was the competition, and the daily advancing offers for the originals, up to many thousands. The President intended them, and thought they would be sure to immortalise his fame and themselves. O the vanity of human wishes! That great man of his day, in his gallery-embodiment, has to fight for a place and rivalry with Angelica Kauffman; and to those who notice either, the victory is still doubtful-the feminine scale rather weighs down the President, like Darius, "fallen, fallen from his high estate." But, notice, the scales are held by the public hand, when any weighing takes place; and, as in the

case of table-moving and ball-swaying, the impulse is given by the hand that holds. I have heard people very lately turn up their noses at a Reynolds, who, two years ago, thought a couple of thousand pounds, or some such sum, quite nothing for a few hours' work by his masterly hand. Oh, you Proteus Public! how often have you changed your shapes! Yet no Proteus either; for he delivered his dictum only by bonds and compulsion, whereas you rush forward willingly to commit in the face of the world your false prophecies, and his were not false. I have no faith in you; I know not what you will admire tomorrow. You had, indeed, a now defunct ancestry, who recorded, as with one consent, the same opinions. I believed them. They are to be found in many books still preserved in libraries; and essays and treatises, true and learned, were written upon the works they loved. I was, perhaps foolishly enough, led to believe, when as yet I could scarcely feel, that there were days in art when there were giants, and I looked and admired till I loved, and I studied the principles in the works; and the more I

studied, the more astonishment and admiration grew. But, if I have any modesty, I ought to acknowledge that I was all in the wrong-my time misspent-energies and admiration only expended to beget prejudices. There is, however, benevolence abroad. A new school is opened for the ignorant and the perverse to begin again, where the first lessons, and long ones too, will be to unlearn. It is a hard thing, at my time of life-and you well know it-you, my post-Raphaelite_companion-to unlearn anything. I tried

I studied the verbose lectures till I was almost mad-to understand what with the utmost effort I could not unravel, till, like a defeated schoolboy, I could have kicked the master; but, finding too many of us as ignorant and uncomprehending as myself, I took courage, shut the book, and won't be taught any more. In disgust, we agreed to vote the teacher a coxcomb, and his grammar, his maxims, his sections and dissections, little better than impudent nonsense, when stript of their mass of verbiage. The man, we said, who really knows a

thing, can write plainly and simply about it. To such a one the "melliti verborum globuli" never present themselves; they are only for him who knows nothing of what he writes about. It is well put by the author of the Pursuits of Literature-"The farther I proceed, the more I learn to distrust swelling men, and swelling words, and swelling ideas." You and I, post-Raphaelite as you are, cannot abide the seeing a commonplace truth that everybody knows, disguised, in illustration after illustration without end, in an involved variety of words, all conveying but one idea, and that not worth the rubbish wardrobe of the language. It is tiresome, indeed, to unfold the hieroglyphic wrappings of mummies, and find nothing better beneath the bandages than the bones of a kitten or an ape. Old teeth do not like the cracking blind nuts, that fill the mouth with dust or a maggot. Who cares for a literary sublimity which he cannot comprehend? He who writes upon Arts should try to be intelligible, and not make it a point to leave it on record, as a lawyer would do-whose business is to make confusion worse confoundedthat an unintelligible style is a virtue, -as it is pithily put by the author I have above quoted:-"I pretend not to comprehend this passage in all its sublimity, but upon one principle, which, it appears to me, is the grand, though secret design of Mr H. to leave upon record to his brethren: it is this-That a lawyer who writes so clearly as to be understood, is an avowed enemy to his profession."

I showed you how the baby-Proteus Public took up and threw away its playthings, and thought nothing of the cost of all it broke to pieces. It was time to teach it something-and education, like everything else nowa-days, must be new. The boy-public must be taught the "Liberal Arts" upon an entirely new system. The knowing and the prudent disdained every advertisement. They knew the boy had had masters enough, but was wilful, and took a dislike to old heads. There began to be a great talking about the Fine Arts. It was a tempting time for ambitious ignorance. If the knowing had failed to instruct, why should not others try

their hand? There was little difficulty in setting about it. Every quack was an example;-abuse all the old and the regular bred of the faculty. Do as a celebrated one did;-rub a good itching disorder into the backs of people, and tell them boldly that's the way to get health and a sound taste. There must be the usual pretension; the best leg must be put foremost. If possible, be "a graduate," and be sure to repeat the title upon every occasion. It may be advantageously done in a note, thus-" By-the-by, the next time J. B. takes upon him to speak of any one connected with the universities, he may as well first ascertain the difference between a Graduate and an under-Graduate." The capital G in both words. This gives a notoriety-is equivalent to walking about with a bachelor's hood, or perhaps may equally imply the attainment of Master of Arts-a very suggestive title for one who constitutes himself the only true legitimate master and professor of all the Fine Arts.

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The "graduate," setting up for the sole enlightener of the world, naturally took a great fancy to "lamps," of which he boasted to have the very best assortment of new ones. would exchange with the public the new for old, with the laudable intent and desire to break the old to pieces, as things that could enlighten the dark world of taste no longer. There are two lamps he is almost ready to give away for the diffusion of light, yet, singular to say, they are advertised with a very odd recommendation, of rather adverse qualities-for the one, he tells us, has considerable "feebleness of light, while the piercing light of the other's eye exceeds that of the eagle." The one we may imagine to be a bull's-eyed dark-lantern-the other a real revolver, shooting out its multiplied lightnings in all directions. He speaks thus of two of his human "lamps":

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"I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of invention in the first painter, that the contrast between them might be more striking; but, with very slight modification, both the characters are real. Grant to the first considerable inventive power, with exquisite sense of colour; and give to the second, in addition to

all his other faculties, the eye of an eagle, and the first is John Everett Millais-the second, Joseph Mallard William Turner."-Pre-Raphaelitism, 1851. This will remind you of the sign-painter who could paint nothing but a red lion, and having to do the sign of the lamb, said, "The lamb if you like it, but I warn you beforehand that it will be as like a red lion as possible." The author's lion is, and ever was, the late Mr Turner: although, therefore, the title of the little pamphlet is Pre-Raphaelitism, the magic words "Joseph Mallard William Turner" no sooner drop from his pen, than the fit of his passion comes on, and he froths in panegyric to the end-the only wonder being that he comes to an end; for our pre-Raphaelite author has yet a very difficult knowledge to acquire, which is best conveyed in the words of Swift "To say the truth, no part of knowledge seems to be in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done." It surely cannot be necessary to pay here a tribute to Mr Turner's genius. That he was a man of great abilities, none deny; but it must not be thought ungracious to deny that he was the all-in-all of the Fine Arts; and few sober-minded critics will be found to accept his latter vagaries as examples of his powers. Yet, strange to say, these very vagaries have been trumpeted about as his almost exclusively excellent performances; and, in this delirium of his praise, the bewildered world of taste has been led strangely astray, and given thereby a tendency to perpetuate a very false style. Humanum est errare. The Graduate, therefore, has laboured to deify Mr Turner to make him the mirror of idolatry, wherein all future artists are to look, and dress themselves and their works thereby. You will not think the word "deify" too strong, if you remember some of the numerous extravagant passages in the volume of Modern Painting; but one extract will be enough, which I hope is nonsense, for, if not, it is poetico-prosaic blasphemy. "And Turner, glorious in conception, unfathomable in knowledge, solitary in power-with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and the morning obedient to his call-sent as a prophet of God to re

veal to men the mysteries of his universe-standing, like the great angel of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, with a rainbow upon his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand."

Now, do not, my dear Post-Raphaelite, imagine that I have fabricated an absurdity, to make the author of Modern Painters ridiculous; as ridiculous, indeed, as would such an image, and so clothed, of the late Mr Turner be, figured upon any stage set up to exhibit his apotheosis. Look to his book, “ dabe TO Bubov," you will find the passage, and fifty as befooled and befooling as the frenzy of utterance could make them. If this frenzy had not been catching, and Mr Ruskin's sound had not run away with other people's sense, I would not now say a word about his errors and defects; but I, and you, and such as we, are really put upon our defence, to defend the very principles upon which, during not a very short period, our tastes have been founded. It is rather provoking to have our young Ruskinised moderns looking contemptuously upon us as old fools, because we did and do believe that Gaspar Poussin and Claude were landscape-painters Vandervelde, a marine-painter-and that Salvator Rosa did verily know something about rocks. You and I thought that there have been men who "well and truly," without prevarication, represented trees, and that Turner was rather deficient in this part of his art;-that his usual practice was to put in a tree to the right of his picture, of a very nondescript character, and that he had no other. But no! Turner alone painted all and everything. He was the only artist over every province and territory of art supremethe rex denique regum. I should not care so much about defending my own taste; but it is an object to point out the absurdity of abusing such painters as Claude, Poussin, Salvator Rosa, and Vandervelde; and in so doing, I hope to disabuse the bewildered public, and to bring them back to a pleasure which they assuredly lose, if they are made blind to the excellence of the works of these great men. But to do credit to Turner, in his bright days he knew better. He did not depreciate the

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painters which the author of PreRaphaelitism affects to despise. Of Claude especially Mr Turner was a decided imitator, more or less, in most of his pictures: even in his compositions-in which, by the by, Claude did not excel, though he seldom positively offended-Turner never seemed quite to forget his master. Gaspar Poussin and Salvator Rosa were less to his taste. He had not the learning of either in composition. Those Italian landscape - painters, in that branch of the art, were perhaps the best the world has yet seen. They were, especially Gaspar Poussin, perfect masters of lines. They were never at a loss to bring the parts of a picture together, either by the acquired (and if so, learned is not an inapt epithet), or by an instinctive know ledge of the effect of lines upon each other. But of all this we suspect the "Graduate" author to be entirely ignorant; and, as is usual with presumptuous ignorance, he condemns what he does not understand. The account he gives of Mr Turner's casting off his admiration for the old masters is so absurd that no one will believe it to be true. It was in 1800, upon seeing a sunset on the Rhineas if he had never till then seen such a common sight-" the colours of the Continental skies" did the business. If there were a "Burchell" among painters, he would, in the author's presence, cry Fudge! nonsense! The "Continental skies!" There are as fine sunsets, and as fine skies, taking into consideration all the hours of the day, in this our England as in any part of the Continent. "The time was come for perfecting his art, and the first sunset which he saw on the Rhine taught him that all previous landscape art was vain and valueless" (then it taught him to be a fool, which he was not); "that, in comparison with natural colour, the things that had been called paintings were mere ink and charcoal; and that all precedent and authority must be cast away at once, and trodden under foot. He cast them away; the memories of Vandervelde and Claude were at once weeded out of the great mind they had encumbered; they, and all the rubbish of the schools together with them. The waves of the Rhine swept

them away for ever, and a new dawn rose over the rocks of the Siebengebirge."

A "new dawn over the rocks of the Siebengebirge "! Many a humble scholar, recovering from the magic of the mouthful word, may be bold to inquire, And pray where is Siebengebirge, this "Open Sesame" to so wondrous a dawn?-with the astonishment of the poor old village dame, who, being told the King of Prussia was dead, lifted up her hands and said"Is a indeed! And who is a?" But this dawn over Siebengebirge, though a very fine-sounding novelty, was not one for the painter. If you would say the "dawn" was in the mind of Mr Turner, then I wish the author would write intelligibly. But Turner was original, as well as a copyist; he invented the art, and perfected it, of "View"-making. He knew admirably how to throw an interest over very commonplace subjects, by making prominent their characteristics. Especially I allude to his views of towns: his management of their distances, and separation of parts, were contrived with the utmost skill. I speak of his drawings, and of the engravings. He was great in this semipoetical treatment of actual views; but of the other poetry of art-the invention without fact-I should doubt if it could be said truly that he had any. I do not remember seeing an attempt of this kind that was not spoilt by vulgarities, and even littlenesses.

If the delineations of objects stored in the portfolio make up the artist's vocabulary, Turner's range was too limited. In such his dictionary of art, he could turn to little under the head Trees. He had scarcely more than one, which served him for all purposes. Either the deep hollows in shady foliage, the graceful bendings of leafage-and in minor parts of nature's landscapes, the endless variety, and perfect freedom of all the green garniture, of shrub and branch and weed-were not sufficiently noted and studied, or were found incompatible with the style of subject he adopted. But in many of his pictures there is an absolute poverty of detail as to foliage, which beggars his subject. I would instance the "Tivoli," engraved, a

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