is not unimportant in the history of Italian art, I wish briefly to advert to one or two points.

The list of pictures given seems to prove that the Italians long remained faithful to the older masters. The names of Titian and Correggio do not appear! (I hope you will not follow the Catalogue in such defects.) This is not to be explained by supposing that the writer speaks for himself only; for he repeatedly says, "Some like to ornament their rooms with the works of others with those of," and so on, as if professing to give a variety of tastes. I can only account for this in one way the author lived in Milan, and it would appear that the style of Leonardo, closely allied as it was to that of the schools of Central Italy, long continued to influence the Milanese amateurs as well as the Milanese painters.

I pass over the musical instruments, which, beside their chief use, "piacciono assai all' occhio," especially when made by Lorenzo da Pavia, or Bastiano da Verona. Donatello, Michael Angelo, Alfonso Lombardi, and Christoforo Romano, are the sculptors he enumerates. The terra cottas are by Paganino da Modena; the bronzes by Verocchio and Pollaiuolo. Beside antique medals, he admires those of Giovanni Corona of Venice, together with the chasings of Caradosso. Among the works of the latter, he mentions a silver inkstand in basso rilievo, "fatica d'anni venti sei! ma certo divina." Cameos and intaglios should be, he thinks, by the

hand of Pietro Maria Tagliacarne, &c., but above all by Giovanni di Castello.

Now for his list of painters: Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, although, he adds, he left but few works. Then follow the young Lippi, and Perugino, and, heralded with appropriate honours, Raphael, accompanied by Giulio Romano.

Pietro della Fran

cesca, and Melozzo da Forlì, are characterised well, as indeed are all the painters. He next mentions some artists, all monks, who wrought in inlaid wood (commesso, tarsia); but his highest praises in this department are reserved for Fra Damiano da Bergamo, the artist of the choir of S. Domenico at Bologna. The engravings he speaks of are by Albert Durer and Lucas van Leyden.

Tapestries from Flanders, carpets from Syria, Turkey, and Barbary, figured leather from Spain, are all admitted to be desirable ornaments: "Tutti questi ornamenti ancora commendo perchè arguiscono ingegno, politezza, civilità e cortegiania." The author next describes his own treasures; but, except a head by Donatello and some rare books, he has nothing to boast of. His tastes are characteristic of the age: though a priest, his ambition is to have a collection of arms and armour, if wrought by a good Italian or German armourer; and above

*The author says he was an eye-witness of the Gascon crossbowmen making a target of Leonardo's model for the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza.

A A

all, he aspires to the possession of a large steel mirror, of the kind made by Giovanni della Barba, a German: the mirrors of glass then in use, were, it appears, commonly small and imperfect. The author's judicious observations (to which I refer you) on the chief use of mirrors may reconcile you to their occasional introduction over chimneypieces, which, for the rest, are by no means the best places for pictures.

The chapter ends with a pleasing story about a mirror and a lady, and Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan; a story copied by Addison (though without acknowledging the source) into the Spectator. The incident would not be an unworthy pendant for "Collalto," "and might have furnished a subject for the graceful pencil of Stothard; but it is time to make an end.

No. XIII.

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE FINE ARTS.

(A FRAGMENT.)

INTRODUCTION.

To hint at theories of taste is to invite opposition. The reader who gives his attention to them at all is eager to be an objector: he sets out by fancying that his liberty is in danger, and instinctively prepares to resist the supposed aggression. There seems to be an impatience of all controlling principles in regard to questions in which individual experience, however narrow, can form a criterion of its own; and in which the influence of habit, for once unchallenged by the moralist, may supersede the exercise of reason.

It is not to be assumed that those even who have professed to treat these questions on purely rational grounds have been themselves exempt from temporary and local prejudices, or from the no less enthralling spirit of mere opposition to them. But this tribute, direct or indirect, to the

force of habitual impressions, even at the expense of philosophic consistency, is itself favourable to the doctrine of a criterion in taste. The existence of relatively leading opinions in the midst of individual differences suggests the possibility of still more comprehensive judgments, and points to an ultimate standard.

And, with regard to the variety of theories, it will perhaps be found that misunderstandings, in this as in many other matters, have arisen not so much from upholding erroneous views as from giving exclusive prominence to particular truths. The earlier writers on these subjects appear to have thought it incumbent on them to propound a universal law for the solution of the problems with which they had to deal. The purpose itself may, perhaps, be admitted to prove the general belief in fixed principles of taste; but the incompleteness of the result, as compared with the ambitious aim, is but too commonly apparent, and this may have interfered even with the just claims of many an enlightened investigator. The diversities of opinion are also partly to be attributed to a needless complication of the question: the connection, by many writers, of the ideas of fitness and beauty, as cause and effect, of admiration and love (by Burke), of physical and moral excellence (by Shaftesbury, Winkelmann, and others), though conceivable in an abstract sense, has furnished but indifferent elements for a process of discrimination.