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We chose an individual from the gang, but when on the point of giving some slight recompense to our corps de ballet," our intentions seemed to be divined; for, like a shower, there fell upon us a troop of young vagabonds, who sprang so suddenly from the shade of the piers and walls, and resembled so closely our own especial imps, that we were utterly unable to distinguish them from their companions.

We were in a quandary; and not caring to distribute largesse to the whole community, while the din and shrill clamor waxed alarming, we were

on the point of retreating to the boat, when a happy thought occurred to us. Commanding silence for an instant, we trilled forth a quick note of the tarantella, which being immediately taken up by our own little chorus, leaping and chanting to the music, we seized them by the arms, and were thus enabled to indulge them with a few coppers.

Then paddling through the fleets of merchant vessels which filled the port, we gained a cool offing in the bay, mounted to the deck of the frigate, and so betook ourselves deep down to our oaken parlors in the cock-pit

THE HE publication of this third volume, containing Part Fourth of Modern Painters, furnishes us an occasion for some remarks upon the works of Mr. Ruskin. He stands confessedly at the head of all English writers, on certain branches of art; and despite his idiosyncrasies, which are often glaring, his offensive conceit, and a want of philosophic genius, remarkable in a person otherwise so well endowed, he deserves his position. No Englishman,that we can call to mind, has written so much and so worthily of art as he has; no one, indeed, that we know, is comparable to him, either for the extent of his knowledge in this peculiar range, or for the vividness and value of his influence. Lord Lindsay, who has made the history of art a speciality, is not more minutely acquainted with it than Ruskin is; nor is Mrs. Jamison, though a woman more susceptible to all its finer poetic feelings; nor is Eastlake, though President of the Royal Academy, a nicer judge of its technical excellence. In fact, if the whole truth were told, we might roll a great many critical "single gentlemen into one," without forming a compound equal to Ruskin; for insight, vigor, sincerity, and eloquence, he stands head and shoulders above his contemporaries.

The appearance, indeed, of the first volume of Modern Painters, by an "Oxford graduate," protesting so vehemently against the shallow pedantries of the magazine writers, and throwing down the gauntlet of critical combat to the entire circle of onlookers, with such lusty disdain, was an era in the history of British criticism. It will be well remembered with what goggle-eyes of surprise the accredited authorities watched the advent of the young champion, as he bounced into the ring, and laying his devoirs at the feet of one J. M. W. Turner (who may be called his queen of beauty for the nonce, as Maria Theresa was called King of Hungary by law), prepared for a general charge, first unhorsing, in a most ungallant manner, the visored knight of Blackwood, and then brandishing his

lance, pell-mell, along the lists. He seemed to fight wildly enough at first; but it was evident, from the number that lay dishonored upon the fields— some with only their casques broken, but others with heads and limbs disastrously shattered—that he fought surely as well as wildly, and that those sturdy blows, apparently struck at random, brought down a foe at every aim. Everybody admired, we believe, the dashing intrepidity, the confident skill of the unknown combatant, though few trusted his judgment. What commended him, perhaps, more than anything else-more than his acknowledged ability, his brilliant mastery of natural scenery, and his evident erudition--to popular regard, was, the honest, unblenching, almost truculent zeal, with which he took up the cudgels for a great and unappreciated modern, in whose behalf he tore away the false glory that had hidden the defects of the most venerated painters of the past, tearing some of their flesh with it, and thrashed about among his own cotemporaries, even like a soldier of the Commonwealth among the bedizened images of some old Jacobitic chapel. There is scarcely in history another such instance of the fervent espousal and defense of one man by another, on the ground of pure intellectual sympathy, as that of Turner by Ruskin; and it is amusing to read, now that Turner's fame is assured, the intense vehemence with which it was supposed necessary to assail Claude and Poussin, in order to enthrone the favorite. Nor does it appear, from the preface to this latest volume, that he has yet forgiven the slowness of his countrymen to recognize the great spirit among them; for, abusing Claude with all the old venom and keenness of hate, he speaks with ill-concealed bitterness of irony of the threefold honor heaped upon Turner, now that he lies quiet at Chelsea, by those who "bury his body in St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and his purposes in chancery!" This is clearly the ring of the original Ruskin.

Mr. Ruskin's subsequent writings

have shown that his learning was equal to his confidence, and, though he has never been able to rescue his judgment from the suspicions which his early impetuosity and continued want of temperance have created, he has still succeeded in increasing his reputation as a critic, and in acquiring a new and solider hold of public respect. Not a few men, now-a-days, artists as well as amateurs, allow his thinking to color all their own there are some, indeed, who invest him with a species of infallibility; who would fain believe, that when he has pronounced on any point of artistic morals or doctrine, the thing is forever determined; and it is worthy of note, that Mr. Ruskin himself rather encourages this view of the matter. In the preface to the volume before us, he generously admits that, owing to the immense field of study which is to be gone over, in order to qualify one to become a competent critic of art—such as "optics, geometry, geology, botany, and anatomy," with "the works of all great artists, and the temper and history of the times in which they lived," not forgetting metaphysics," and "the phenomenon of natural scenery"-why not add, and "the use of the globes?" -there is some "chance of occasionally making mistakes." But, apart from these transient slips, he is quite impeccable. The laws of painting, he says, are as unerring and obvious as those of music or of chemistry, and anybody, who will take the trouble to master them, may pronounce opinions upon art, as unhesitatingly as Faraday discourses of the affinity of the gases, or, we suppose, as Stephenson would of the capacity of locomotives.

There is much, then, in Mr. Ruskin's position and opinions to invite our attention to him; but, before venturing upon a general estimate of his merits, we must first give an account of this last book.

The Modern Painters" has been scattered, in a somewhat desultory way, over a period of ten years, and though not begun, and never intended, we imagine, as a regular or formal treatise, bas sufficient unity of purpose in it to justify a common name for the several volumes. It is to be expected that there should be a great deal of rambling discussion in a work issued so by piecemeal-issued as the external exigencies of opinion, rather than its own internal

law, seemed to require-not a little inconsistency, perhaps-the end often forgetting the beginning, and the beginning often setting out vigorously, but reaching nowhere and the lesser critics have an ample field for the display of their art therein-yet it has a method, and a method which, with no great research, one is able to dig out and set upon its feet. As the author, indeed, states his plan for himself, his general object has been to discuss the sources of those pleasures opened to us by art (meaning chiefly pictorial and structural art)-pleasures which he distributes into three groups, consisting, first, of the pleasures derived from ideas of truth, or from the perception of resemblances to nature; second, of the pleasures derived from ideas of beauty; and, lastly, of the pleasures furnished by the meaning of these things, or ideas of relation. His first volume, therefore, treated of the success with which different artists had represented the facts of nature; his second inquired more abstractly into the origin of our ideas of beauty and relation, being an attempt towards a philosophy of the theoretic or imaginative faculties; while for the third volume, it remained to characterize the different degrees in which distinguished artists, or schools of artists, have succeeded in attaining true greatness in art. Another volume is to come, but what precisely it will be about, we cannot anticipate; for while it may be conceded to Mr. Ruskin that he is somewhat methodical, it is no less clear that he despises system. He promises, however, that it will contain a formal analysis of all the great labors of Turner.

Mr. Ruskin's first and leading question in this volume is, of course, as to what constitutes real greatness in art. Artists, as well as critics, have always recognized a certain distinction between high and low art, or between the grand ideal style, and the low realistic style, but have never succeeded, according to our author, in describing accurately what that distinction is. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in some papers contributed to Dr. Johnson's Idler, in 1759, made such an attempt, but without decided success. He compares high art to poetry, in which the great, general, and invariable ideas of human nature are expressed, without regard, and even in contempt of nice details; and low art to

history, which makes a formal statement of every particular of facts or events, illustrating the former by the Italian schools, excepting that of Venice, and the latter by the Dutch schools, including that of Venice, as a sort of Dutchified Italian. But Mr. Ruskin shows, as well he might, that these views of Sir Joshua are exceedingly superficial: in the first place, that poetry does concern itself with minute details, that the faithful imitation of nature is not an easy nor an undignified thing; and then, passing to his own better views, asserts that the difference between great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which the effort is directed.

"We cannot say," he remarks, that a painter is great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because he generalizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because he disdains it. He is great, if, by any of these means, he has laid open noble truths, or aroused noble emotions. It does not matter whether he paints the petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that love and admiration attend him as he labors, and wait upon his work. It does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inches of his canvas, or cover a palace-front with color in a day, so only that it be with a solemn purpose he has filled his heart with patience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not matter whether he seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or the simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all things with a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice."

All this, however, defines nothing, merely repeating what is as old as art itself, that its highest walks lie in the region of the beautiful and the good; and we must have, in order to understand the matter, a more specific description of the characters which make up greatness of style. Accordingly, Mr. Ruskin states them to be, in the order of their increasing importance, 1st, the habitual and sincere choice of noble subjects; 2d, the introduction of as much beauty as is consistent with truth; 3d, the largest possible quantity of truth in the greatest possible harmony; and, 4th, imaginative power. By "choice of noble subjects," he means an inward preference for subjects of thought which involve wide interests and profound passion, as opposed to narrow interests and slight passions. Leonardo, for instance, in the selection of the Last Supper for painting, evinced himself a greater artist than Raphael in

selecting the School of Athens, or Teniers a body of simple clowns. Supposing the choice sincere, as it ought always to be, it marks a larger and nobler range of sympathies in the heart, and a disposition to dwell in the highest thoughts of humanity. Again: by the "introduction of as much beauty as is consistent with truth," he means that the fairest forms must always be sought out and dwelt upon, that the intensest beauty is to be worshiped, but not exclusively, not to the denial of the fact that ugliness and decrepitude also exist. For beauty, deprived of the proper foil and adjuncts, furnished to it by its opposites, ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light; while the ugliest objects contain some element of beauty peculiar to themselves, which cannot be separated from their ugliness. In other words, the perception of beauty, like other human perceptions, is relative, and is best enjoyed in the relations in which nature has discovered it to us. Thus, the intense spiritual beauty of Angelico is freshened and strengthened by his frank portraiture of ordinary brother-monks: Shakespeare places Caliban beside Miranda, while a vulgar mind withdraws his beauty to the safety of the saloon, and his innocence to the seclusion of the cloister. High art, therefore, neither alters nor improves nature, but seeks for what is lovely in it, just as it is, and displays this loveliness to the utmost of its power. What further Mr. Ruskin means by "putting as much harmonic truth as possible" in a work, and by "imaginative power," we need not stop to explain, as he has already dwelt upon these points in his previous works. Stated without disguise, or, rather, without that wonderful richness of illustration and occasional eloquence of phrase in which Mr. Ruskin sometimes imbeds his thoughts, his idea of the comparative greatness of styles in art is, simply, of the degree in which they combine goodness of purpose with love of beauty and truth, and imaginative power.

No one, we think, can object to this result, which is not particularly novel in itself, though so admirably worked up; but it seems to us that it might have been more simply, and, at the same time, philosophically arrived at. It is true of every work of art, as it is of every product of nature, that it is what

the strange old Swedenborg, in his way of phrasing it, calls "a thing of trine dimensions." He wants us to understand by this, that things are things only as they are, at once, an end, a means, and an effect, or as they possess a soul, a mind, and a body. Stript of either, a thing is a most imperfect thing,or, rather, no thing at all, as any one may see who will conceive of himself, or any creature, if he can, destitute of either of them, though it should be but for a moment. Every work of art, being a most precious outgrowth of the human spirit, must also have its soul, mind, and body-the first, in that great purpose which gives birth to it, the second, in that organic distribution of parts which makes it a form-and the last, in that sensible embodiment of it which is called the execution. Its substance, or soul, is the end which the artist has in view; its form, his mode of conceiving it intellectually; and its body, the actual sensible appearance.

We say the soul of it is its great end or purpose, in which expression more is contained than in the simple term, choice of subject, commonly referring to the mere external act. The most inveterate numbskull, or the most abandoned rake, may choose the most sacred theme for his artistic treatment; but he is only so much the more the numbskull and the rake for exposing in this way his foolishness or his hypocrisy. His real choice, his inward preference, is the internal delight which animates his action, and not the ostensible subject which gives name to it. But this delight or love may range from the lowest avidity of gain or fame, up, through the various varieties of display, to the most disinterested sympathy, in every humane and noble deed, even to the inmost life of God. A Caravaggio will paint you an Entombment of Christ-a subject which in itself is certainly full of tragic pathos and spiritual significance, and which he handles, in many ways, in a masterly manner, with carnations as fine as Giorgione's, and a touch as vigorous, almost, as Michael Angelo-but there will be only so much soul in it as may be implied in Caravaggio's desire to please the reigning taste, joined to the display of his own wild energy. His work, in spite of its subject, will be essentially a specimen of low art, quite as much so as the burial of one of our wandering Indians by his tribe would

be. On the other hand, there are Dutch painters, who paint you a festival of village-boors, or an encounter of halftipsy dragoons, which in themselves are generally pronounced vulgar subjects, so that nearly the whole of Dutch urt is called low art: yet, when we perceive, as we often do, that the delight of these painters lay, not in their boors and dragoons, but in the national life which these represented-in that sturdy burgher spirit which had laboriously won a country from the sea, which had heroically resisted the aggressions of Spanish despotism, and which rejoiced in the free, honest, independent citizenship, achieved by its own valor of spade and sword-we recognize in it a motive vastly superior to those superstitious reverences and base fears of authority which often prompted the Madonnas and Martyrdoms of Italy. It is the soul of a picture, therefore-its inmost purpose the spiritual sympathy it displays, which not only inspires it, but determines its character, and assigns it its rank in the different walks of art. Let the end of the artist be mean, selfish, groveling, and though its subject were the Nativity or the Crucifixionthe highest facts of human historyand though the effects were wrought out with miraculous cunning of brain and hand, the work cannot be elevated: but let the end be great, originating in any large and disinterested affection, in any sincere passion of love, hope, veneration, joy, philanthropy, and the spiritual grandeur alone will redeem it, in spite of much poverty of invention, and much feebleness of management. On this account it is. that the genial yet serious student of art, wandering among the splendors of Italy, will often be arrested, in the midst of their tropical gleams, by some infant bud, some early flower, peering, it may be, from the broken wall of a now abandoned and voiceless cloister, in whose faded touches he will, with joy and thankfulness, still discern the first warm kisses of God's heavenly sun. Thus, the paintings of the monk, Angelico, do not ravish us with a glory of color, as Titian's sometimes do-they do not overwhelm us with exuberance of incident, as Tintoretto does-nor charm us into speechless admiration, by graceful form, as Raphael often will: but the devotion of them, the intense spiritual power, calm from the very fervor of its