bishop Sharpe, which he has just executed. The picture will, I doubt not, be his domestic masterpiece. The idea of painting a picture on this subject may probably have been suggested to him by a piece of business in which he is just about to engage, viz. making designs for the illustration of Waverley, and the other novels of the same author. What a field is here! I have seen none of his designs; but he will doubtless make them in a manner worthy of himself; and if he does so, his name will descend for ever in glorious companionship with that of the most original author of our days, and the most powerful author that Scotland ever has produced. Q. F. F. Q. S. quoth

P. M.

LETTER XLIX.

TO THE SAME.

I KNOW of no painter, who shows more just reflection and good judgment in his way of conceiving a subject, and arranging the parts of it, than Allan. His circumstances are always most happily chosen, and the characters introduced are so skilfully delineated, as to prove that the painter has been an excellent observer of life. His pictures are full of thought, and show a most active and intelligent mind. They display, most graphically, the fruits of observation; and the whole of the world which they represent, is suffused over with a very rare and precious breathing of tenderness,and delicacy of feeling. In short, were his subjects taken from the highest field of his art, and had they any fundamental ideas of permanent and lofty interest at the bottom of them, I do not see why Mr. Allan should not be truly a Great Painter. But his genius has, as yet, been cramped and confined by a rather over-stretched compliance with the taste of the times.

The highest purpose to which painting has ever been applied, is that of expressing ideas connected with Religion; and the decay of the interest attached by mankind to ideas of that class, is evinced by nothing in a more striking `manner, than by the nature of the subjects now (in preference to them) commonly chosen for painting, and most relished by the existing generation. It would seem, indeed, as if the decay of interest in great things and great ideas, had not shown itself in regard to religion alone. Even subjects taken from na

tional history, seem to be scarcely so familiar to the imaginations and associations of ordinary spectators, as to be much relished or deeply felt in any modern exhibition room. It is probable, that subjects like those chosen by Wilkie, (and, of late, by Allan also,) come most home now-a-days to the feelings of the multitude. They pre-suppose no knowledge of the past-no cherished ideas habitually dwelt on by the imagination-no deep feeling of religion-no deep feeling of patriotism-but merely a capacity for the most common sympathies and sensibilities of human nature. The picture makes no demand on the previous babits or ideas of the spectator-it tells its own story, and it tells it entirely-but exactly in proportion as it wants retrospective interest, I am inclined to think it wants endurance of interest. I think Wilkie's species of painting may be said to bear the same relation to the highest species, which sentimental comedies and farces bear to regular tragedies. But in all this, as I have already binted, it is probable the public is most to blame-not the painter. Indeed, the very greatest artists, were they to go on making creations either in painting, poetry, or any other art, without being guided by the responses of public enthusiasm, would run a sad risk of losing their way. The genius of a gifted individual-his power of inventing and conceiving-is an instrument which he himself may not always have the judgment to employ to the best advantage, and which is more safely directed to its mark by the aggregated feelings, I will not say, of the multitude, but at least of numbers. Even the scattered suffrages of amateurs, who, by artificial culture, have acquired habits of feeling different from those of the people about them, must always be a very trifling stimulus, when compared with the trumpet-notes of a whole nation, hailing an artist for having well expressed ideas alike interesting to them all. There is no popular sympathy in these days with those divinest feelings of the human soul, which formed the essence of interest in the works of the sculptors of Greece--still more in those of the painters of modern Italyand the expression of which was rewarded in both cases by the enthusiasm, boundless and grateful, of those by whom these artists were habitually surrounded.

I confess, there are very few things of which I am so desirous, as of seeing a true school of painting, in its highest form, established among the people of Britain. But this can never be, till the painters get rid of that passion for inventing

subjects, which at present seems to predominate among them all. The object of a great painter should be, not to invent subjects, but to give a graphical form to ideas universally known, and contemplated with deep feeling. An Emtombing of Christ-a Madonna and Child-a Flight into Egypt, are worth all the larmoyant scenes which can ever be conceived out of the circumstances of modern life-circumstances, which, although they may be treated with the utmost genius, can never cease to be, in the main, prosaic. Even the early history of any modern nation, however replete it may be with remarkable events, can present no objects of which the imagination, set a musing by the contemplation of its likeness, does not speedily find the limits, and the barrenness--from which, in a word, it does not turn away as unpoetical, after the first movements of excited curiosity and week-day sympathies have ceased. How different from all this narrowness, is the endless and immeasurable depth of a Religious Allegory, wherein the whole mystery of man and his destiny is called up to breathe its solemn and unfading charm upon the creation of the artist, and the mind of the spectator!

When one talks to a painter of the present day about the propriety of taking to subjects of religious import—above all, to those of the simplest construction, and the most purely allegorical nature-there is nothing more common than to be told, that such subjects have been exhausted. If you are told, by way of confirmation of this, that the Scriptural pieces produced in this country are almost all very bad, you are, indeed, told nothing but the truth; because they are made up of insipid centos and compilations from former painters, or absurd misapplications of the plastic antique. Having no. real life or expression in them, they are universally regarded with indifference; and probably the grossest violations of costume, and the most vulgar forms, are better than this. Rembrandt, in painting Scriptural subjects, took such forms and dresses as his own country supplied, and his compositions were esteemed, because, whatever might be their want of dignity, they were at least pregnant with traits of which his countrymen understood the meaning. The fundamental ideas conveyed, had a religious interest, and the vehicles made use of to express them, were, in a certain sense, good, because they were national, and not mere garbled recollections of ancient pictures and statues, made up into new forms and

groupes, utterly destitute of coherence and truth. Paul Veronese made use of Venetian figures and dresses in treating the most sacred subjects, and although these violations of costume may appear ridiculous at first sight, yet, if we reflect a little, we shall perhaps find that it was the most judicious course he could have pursued. To make use of such nature as is before us, is always to secure consistency and truth of expression. There is, besides, a noble sincerity and simplicity in each nation, making use of such physiognomies and scenery as it is best acquainted with, to serve as the means of expressing ideas eternally to be loved and adored, in whatever way they may be represented. If I were a painter, and were engaged in painting Scripture pieces, I would boldly make use of such physiognomies and scenery as my country affords, and would think the surest way of exciting an interest in such performances, would be, through the medium of common associations and well-known appearances, applied to subjects radically great and dignified in themselves.

But all this poverty of modern artists, has no weight as an argument against the use of religious subjects. Any one who has gone through even a few of the great collections at home, must be satisfied that Christian subjects have been by no means exhausted by the Ancient Masters. Even in any one of the subjects, of which these were most fond, there is no appearance, as if any one definite conception had ever come to be regarded as the truest or best way of treating it---far less as precluding the attempts of succeeding artists. It is the more lamentable, when one looks back upon this endless fertility of the old, to think of the narrow-minded prejudice which has barred the new painters from the same inexhaustible ranges of ideas and subjects. Before the imitation can ever be imagined to have reached its limit, we must suppose that we have ascertained the limit of that which it proposes to imitate. Now where is the man, however ardent an admirer of the genius of the great dead masters he may be-however deeply and passionately he may worship the divine spirit which animated their works, and immortalizes their memories--where is the man who can persuade himself for a moment, that, in expressing the gestures and features of divine being, or beings partaking of sanctity above the conception of ordinary men, any one of those masters has gone

as far as it is possible to go? The best of their productions only take us so far-there is always a deeper path, which the imagination must travel in its own light alone-and where is the certainty that this path may not be abridged--that some yet nearer approach may not be made to that, which, even by the greatest of men, seems to have been seen afar off at an immeasurable distance? At all events, the result would be so grand, that the attempt is well worthy of being made by every artist who feels in himself the stirrings and the consciousness of genius. How natural and how fine a thing for a painter to desire to follow in the same path wherein Raphael, and Lionardo, and Perugino bave preceded him--to transplant himself anew into their ideas and their thoughts-to walk yet farther under the guidance of the same unwearied spirit which conducted them--and so to restore the broken links of connexion between the art of past ages and the art of the present! And then how rich-how comprehensive is their sphere in all beauty which painting can need, in all expression after which the heart of man pants in its moments of reflective earnestness! What a lamentable contrast is that which the present condition of the art affords-how insecurely and unsatisfied the artist seems to be wandering about from one set of unfortunate subjects to another set yet more unfortunate!

The old masters did not merely imagine themselves to possess a sufficient field for all the rich inventiveness of their genius, within the story and allegory of the Bible-they seem to have been satisfied not unfrequently with a very small portion of the space which this mighty field afforded-nay, to have been contented, month after month, year after year, and life-time after life-time, with some one little fragment of the whole--sometimes such as we should scarcely suppose it possible for them to have esteemed the best or richest in their power. Instead of seeking about for new subjects, they seem often to have formed such a love for some one subject as never, or, at least, seldom to leave it-unwearied in their admiration-in the intense fervour of their passionate love. It is thus that the divine Raphael seems to have delighted in manifold representations of the Madonna-each of them possessing an individual character-and yet each an aspiration of the same glorious spirit, after the same intangible evanescent divinity of conception. The far less lofty subject of the Herodias appears, in like manner, to have become a perfect common place in all the schools of Lionardo; while in the Cruci