higher and more numerous beauties. Superior to intrigue, as he was in all other respects to his more fortunate brother-artists, it was his fate to be often supplanted by unworthy competitors. Da Ponte's heavy, tasteless bridge of the Rialto, for example, was preferred to his delightful design-a model at once of lightness and magnificence.

In assigning the supreme place and honour among artists, it can never be the question who is faultless, but who combines the greatest number of high qualities. By pointing out and dwelling on defects, by sedulously keeping out of sight positive beauties, a prima facie case is easily made out against the very foremost, and more easily in architecture than in the other liberal arts. There is much, for instance, that is indefensible in all the elevations of the Farnese Palace at Rome, but it nevertheless commands our admiration as a stately fabric; for the character of a palace is well expressed; and more so by the completeness of design, than by the magnitude of the mass and correctness of detail. It is needless to deny the existence of faults in the Palladian system, but it is a quality of an enlarged understanding to consider the parts in conjunction with the whole; or, in other words, to comprehend the whole which suggested the parts. Then will the consistency, the harmony of the entire composition-that unison of parts with the end, which is so attractive, and which is beauty-cancel and absorb all objection in detail. We are more and more confident, from every day's experience, that those who reject his system have yet discovered no equivalent substitute; and the decriers of Italian art allow as much. In recommending the study of his works, we do not advocate a servile imitation-the copying his elevations-the disjoining and re-arranging his designs-but an imitation essential and characteristic; not to pilfer and tack together fragments-not to compile-but to compose; in short, to learn in what consists invention, and expression, which is the soul of invention.

The student who would profit by the inheritance of this school must bear in mind that architecture is quite as much a useful as a fine art and that, the remains of Greece being almost solely of sacred edifices-mere varieties of an oblong cell—what may thence be learnt is restricted to little more than the superior beauty of two of the orders. No ideas of composition at all adequate to our exigencies can be derived from the buildings in question ;* and those who pretend that they are to be compared, in point of

• This fact is even more strikingly exemplified in the interiors, than in the elevations of modern churches. Witness St. Pancras-Trinity, Marylebone-the New Church in North Audley-Street, &c.

utility

utility and practical application, to the great variety of later developments of the art, suggested by the increasing demands of new conditions of society-never contemplated in Athenian philosophy-either deceive themselves, or would deceive others.

The Greek temples, in the first place, exquisitely beautiful so far as they go, were meant for a worship which did not require the presence of the multitude within the walls. They are all in the interior of very small dimensions; and, from a similar cause, they are equally poor as regards the means of obtaining light. In Christian churches, where a multitude congregate, ample space is demanded, and also an abundant supply of light to be transmitted through openings in the lateral walls, and not through the roof and doorway alone. These considerations suggested to the Roman Christians the superior advantages of the Basilican over the Temple form. The Roman basilica is the real archetype of modern churches; and if for such structures the Temple of the Greeks is inappropriate, much more must it be so for all domestic purposes. The architect of the present day may continue to observe as much Grecian severity of character as he chooses; but he ought to know that he has at his command resources, drawn from old Roman magnificence, and from the happy inventions of modern Italy, far greater than Greece can furnish; and he will do wisely not to debar himself from still further enriching his mind in other countries of Europe. In this way disciplined and instructed, if the aspirant to fame in his calling is capable of rising above a feeble practitioner, he will be strong enough to withstand the empyricism of the day, and advance the art by opening an abundant source of invention. Then, in pursuit of the grand, he will not rest in mere size and mass-ponderosity will not be mistaken for solidity, meagreness and debility for lightness and elegance, baldness for simplicity, perplexity for variety, insipidity for sobriety, nor deformity for symmetry and beauty.

At present all is unsettled-each professor has his idol; one rears a barn-like parish church, and would have Norman ugliness admired for its cheapness; another would revive the bastard style of King James, in street architecture, and raises up a tower-like house, as if to deter imitation; a third gentleman, fond of innovation and devoid of taste, may revert to Hindoo or Egyptian forms and ornaments. A large class are for the re-establishment of Gothic, blind to the fact, which they demonstrate by their own practice, that the spirit of the style and the ability so to build have departed from us, as much as the social state which inspired them. There are others, and they are, as has already been hinted, an increasing sect, who can endure the ravings of Borromini, and would imitate the French vagaries of the same school. But the loudest

VOL. LIII. NO. CVI.

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loudest voices denounce all that is not Grecian; and the would-be Greek productions prove a total inability in the preceptors to sustain or follow their own precepts. One pernicious consequence of prescribing a too rigid code is becoming daily more palpable. Many artists—some in despair, others warned by the general disapprobation of the works of the Greekists, and refusing obedience to such poor examplars-run into the opposite extreme, and indulge in every whim and licence. All these would be arbiters of national taste; and all, at variance one with the other, conspire to prevent the establishment of a sound enduring system of architecture. In proportion as pseudo-Greek is in the ascendant, so is Roman art slighted, and falling into disrepute ; but it is well to remember this truth, that we, who approximate nearer the wealth of old Rome than any other modern nation, not only do not rival her greatness and taste in our edifices, but are actually falling behind other states, whose resources are as limited as ours are boundless. The young artist, who ventures to see and judge for himself, will be in no danger of despising that band of men of almost universal genius who graced Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It would be anomalous in the history of the human mind, that a country which produced the master-works of sculpture and painting, should have remained sterile of talent in the one remaining art of design. Young men must learn not to bow too submissively to the popular names of their own contemporaries. Artists of unquestionable talents, but unconsciously blinded by preconceived notions of excellence, have often published very foolish opinions. Witness Roubiliac-a man of genius, and a most skilful sculptor: late in life he visited Italy, and found he had nothing to learn; to the last, true to his false principles, he continued to prefer his own flimsy, starched drapery, to the breadth and natural fall of Michael Angelo's and Raphael's folds; and never made the discovery, now evident to all, that he had mistaken, in his statues of Shakspeare and Handel, conceit for dignified posture, and distortion for inspiration.

We trust that some learned artist, and not one but many, will zealously endeavour to avert the evil wherewith the art is threatened by the uncertainty, confusion, and derangement that now surround it--that they will interpose a corrective influence to obviate the danger of a complete corruption in our public taste; and help us, in Mr. Hope's words, 'to get rid betimes of a pernicious notion of our own prodigious superiority-a notion fatal to improvement, and which is now held as a rule of faith by a very large and powerful class.' We see no other salvation than in acknowledging the whole range of classic architecture, whether in Greece, in antient or in modern Italy, to be the legitimate source

of

of knowledge. We should thus render available to instruction all that the civilization of those countries has produced, and give the widest possible expanse to genius; but at the same time we should enjoin the avoiding of all heterogeneous mixtures-the constant observance of fitness of character and consistency throughout of the relation of all the parts, one to another, and each to the whole; and last, not least, the shunning of a scrupulously affected purism-scarcely less baneful than the opposite extreme, licentiousness. Thus may a truly national style be created, as uniform in principle, as capable of endless variety in practice. In the hope of such a consummation we confidently rest, and gladly bear testimony once more to Mr. Hope's distinguished services towards its attainment.

ART. IV.-Correspondence d'Orient, 1830, 1831. Par M. Michaud, de l'Académie Française, et M. Poujoulat. Vols. I. to V. Paris, 1833-4.

M.

MICHAUD, the well-known historian of the Crusades, had meditated a more complete and elaborate account of his travels in the East: the state of his health, and the fatal influence of the recent revolution on his fortunes, have compelled him to abandon this design, and to publish his correspondence with his private friends, of which the fifth volume now lies before us. The first of the series contains letters written during his voyage, up to his arrival on the plain of Troy; the second those from the shores of the Hellespont and Constantinople; the third those on the road from Constantinople to Jerusalem; the fourth and the fifth (with the sixth yet unpublished) embrace those written from Palestine, Syria, and Egypt.

However we may regret the circumstances which have interfered with the accomplishment of M. Michaud's more ambitious project, we doubt whether we should not have made a disadvantageous exchange, if these agreeable letters, written with all the freshness and animation of the author's daily impressions and feelings, had been wrought up into a stately and laboured book of travels.

M. Michaud is of the old school in politics and religion. However his opinions on the first head may be unsuited at present to the meridian of Paris, his ardent though liberal Christianity is an excellent qualification for a traveller in the East, most especially in Palestine. There is something very touching in his allusions to the misfortunes of his patrons and friends. We pity that man whose heart is so hardened, and his moral sense rendered so obtuse by party feeling, as not to admire the honourable fidelity

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with which the Carlist man of letters, the consistent loyalist, adheres to the fallen fortunes of his political friends, and contemplates the vicissitudes of power and distinction with a wise and religious melancholy. If he had written what might be called a work,' M. Michaud modestly says, he would have dedicated it to the minister to whom he had been indebted for valuable encouragement.' It would have been pleasant to address flattery to misfortune, and to utter my gratitude through the bars of a prison. I trust, notwithstanding, that Prince Polignac will find herein the expression of those sentiments of attachment which no revolution can weaken; I shall consider myself happy, if, from the distant countries of the East, I can bring him, I will not say an enjoyment, but a distraction; and the best fortune I can wish for my book and for myself will be to occupy for some hours the studious leisure of his captivity.'

M. Michaud was at Toulon preparing for his voyage during the scenes of joyous festival which celebrated the embarkation of the expedition against Algiers. Some dark presentiments even then overshadowed his mind.

'If it be true that we have always some hope in the time of misfortune, we have always some fear to chequer our days of happiness. During my stay at Toulon I saw General Bourmont almost every day; we had formerly known each other in the prison of the Temple, in that prison where every stone was prophetic of calamity. Since that time. our lives had experienced every vicissitude of fortune; and by a singular destiny, behold! each now found himself at the head of a crusade; M. de Bourmont commanding a noble army, and preparing an invasion in which the genius of Charles V. had failed; I finishing my career as an historian by a more modest expedition, and setting out with the pilgrim staff and scrip to follow the tracks of the crusaders whose exploits I had related. Our present situation did not blind either of us; and the future presented itself through our old recollections of the Temple. General Bourmont was occupied with the preparations for his great crusade, and had no time for other thoughts. But I, who had not so many preparations to make, had time to meditate on the uncertainty of human affairs.'

Among the literary friends to whom these letters are addressed, appears the name of M. Bazin, the author of a very clever work, L'Epoque sans Nom.' It contains a set of sketches of Parisian society and manners, from the highest to the lowest classes, written in the character of a lounger-(the nearest word which we can think of to answer to flaneur)-very graphic, full of quiet irony, and not altogether very favourable to the change which took place at the Revolution of the Three Days.

But though the political connexions of M. Michaud thus transpire occasionally in his correspondence, his views on the singular revolutions now operating in the East, must be allowed by even

the