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estimable men, who drew up these descriptions of their parishes as the established ministers, are now preachers in dissenting congregations. When another half-century shall call for a new Statistical Account of Scotland, will the Ministers of the Kirk be more fitted for such a task? Whoever has duly appreciated their many excellent qualities and services, must hope so; but we can say no more. The same poverty in many of the just attainments of the scholar and the divine which disfigures these Reports, has ever since the Revolution, but more and more markedly within the last sixty or seventy years, deprived them (with happy exceptions, no one will doubt) of their proper place and influence among the educated classes. The tendency of a recent regulation, forbidding any man who holds a parish living to hold also an academical chair, must be to increase this mischief: that rash measure ought surely to be repealed. But the clergy are at this day in danger of losing also their former strength-the confidence and attachment of the people. As yet, however, it can hardly be too late for them to stay this evil; and probably their best chance with the people, too, will be in raising the standard of erudition and accomplishment among themselves. The Scotch peasant is much belied if he will not appreciate real sound learning; we hope we are correct in saying that there are even now some symptoms of a longing after a higher education for the clergy; and the hostile energy of the great new body of dissenters, with rival schools of study, may tend to promote it. The old Episcopalian Church of Scotland, moreover, was never, since her statutory downfall, in so flourishing a condition as now-she is every day extending her converts-she is fast raising and filling chapels in districts where but a few years ago the resurrection of Archbishop Leighton in the flesh would have seemed as probable;she, too, is founding her new institutions of education. If the Established Clergy neglect the signs of the times, let them look to it.

ART. III.-1. Materials for a History of Oil-Painting. By Charles Lock Eastlake, R.A., F.R.S., F.S.A., Secretary to the Royal Commission for promoting the Fine Arts in Connexion with the Rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament, &c. &c. London, 1847.

2. Theophili, qui et Rugerus, Presbyteri et Monachi, Libri III. de Diversis Artibus: seu Diversarum Artium Schedula. (An Essay upon Various Arts, in Three Books, by Theophilus,

called

called also Rugerus, Priest and Monk, forming an Encyclopædia of Christian Art of the Eleventh Century. Translated, with Notes, by Robert Hendrie.) London, 1847. THE stranger in Florence who for the first time passes through the iron gate which opens from the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella into the Spezieria, can hardly fail of being surprised, and that perhaps painfully, by the suddenness of the transition from the silence and gloom of the monastic enclosure, its pavement rough with epitaphs, and its walls retaining, still legible, though crumbling and mildewed, their imaged records of Scripture History, to the activity of a traffic not less frivolous than flourishing, concerned almost exclusively with the appliances of bodily adornment or luxury. Yet perhaps, on a moment's reflection, the rose-leaves scattered on the floor, and the air filled with odour of myrtle and myrrh, aloes and cassia, may arouse associations of a different and more elevated character; the preparation of these precious perfumes may seem not altogether unfitting the hands of a religious brotherhood-or if this should not be conceded, at all events it must be matter of rejoicing to observe the evidence of intelligence and energy interrupting the apathy and languor of the cloister; nor will the institution be regarded with other than respect, as well as gratitude, when it is remembered that, as to the convent library we owe the preservation of ancient literature, to the convent laboratory we owe the duration of medieval art.

It is at first with surprise not altogether dissimilar, that we find a painter of refined feeling and deep thoughtfulness, after manifesting in his works the most sincere affection for what is highest in the reach of his art, devoting himself for years (there is proof of this in the work before us) to the study of the mechanical preparation of its appliances, and whatever documentary evidence exists respecting their ancient use. But it is with a revulsion of feeling more entire, that we perceive the value of the results obtained the accuracy of the varied knowledge by which their sequence has been established- and above all, their immediate bearing upon the practice and promise of the schools of our own day.

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Opposite errors, we know not which the least pardonable, but both certainly productive of great harm, have from time to time possessed the masters of modern art. It has been held by some that the great early painters owed the larger measure of their power to secrets of material and method, and that the discovery of a lost vehicle or forgotten process might at any time accomplish the regeneration of a fallen school. By others it has been asserted that all questions respecting materials or manipu

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lation are idle and impertinent; that the methods of the older masters were either of no peculiar value, or are still in our power; that a great painter is independent of all but the simplest mechanical aids, and demonstrates his greatness by scorn of system and carelessness of means.

It is evident that so long as incapability could shield itself under the first of these creeds, or presumption vindicate itself by the second; so long as the feeble painter could lay his faults on his pallet and his panel; and the self-conceited painter, from the assumed identity of materials proceed to infer equality of power(for we believe that in most instances those who deny the evil of our present methods will deny also the weakness of our present works)-little good could be expected from the teaching of the abstract principles of the art; and less, if possible, from the example of any mechanical qualities, however admirable, whose means might be supposed irrecoverable on the one hand, or indeterminate on the other, or of any excellence conceived to have been either summoned by an incantation, or struck out by an accident. And of late, among our leading masters, the loss has not been merely of the system of the ancients, but of all system whatsoever the greater number paint as if the virtue of oil pigment were its opacity, or as if its power depended on its polish; of the rest, no two agree in use or choice of materials; not many are con⚫ sistent even in their own practice; and the most zealous and earnest, therefore the most discontented, reaching impatiently and desperately after better things, purchase the momentary satisfaction of their feelings by the sacrifice of security of surface and durability of hue. The walls of our galleries are for the most part divided between pictures whose dead coating of consistent paint, laid on with a heavy hand and a cold heart, secures for them the stability of dullness and the safety of mediocrity; and pictures whose reckless and experimental brilliancy, unequal in its result as lawless in its means, is as evanescent as the dust of an insect's wing, and presents in its chief perfections so many subjects of future regret.

But if these evils now continue, it can only be through rashness which no example can warn, or through apathy which no hope can stimulate, for Mr. Eastlake has alike withdrawn licence from experimentalism and apology from indolence. He has done away with all legends of forgotten secrets; he has shown that the masters of the great Flemish and early Venetian schools possessed no means, followed no methods, but such as we may still obtain and pursue; but he has shown also, among all these masters, the most admirable care in the preparation of materials and the most simple consistency in their use; he has shown that

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their excellence was reached, and could only have been reached, by stern and exact science, condescending to the observance, care, and conquest of the most minute physical particulars and hindrances; that the greatest of them never despised an aid nor avoided a difficulty. The loss of imaginative liberty sometimes involved in a too scrupulous attention to methods of execution is trivial compared to the evils resulting from a careless or inefficient practice. The modes in which, with every great painter, realization falls short of conception are necessarily so many and so grievous, that he can ill afford to undergo the additional discouragement caused by uncertain methods and bad materials. only so, but even the choice of subjects, the amount of completion attempted, nay, even the modes of conception and measure of truth are in no small degree involved in the great question of materials. On the habitual use of a light or dark ground may depend the painter's preference of a broad and faithful, or partial and scenic chiaroscuro; correspondent with the facility or fatality of alterations, may be the exercise of indolent fancy, or disciplined invention; and to the complexities of a system requiring time, patience, and succession of process, may be owing the conversion of the ready draughtsman into the resolute painter. Farther than this, who shall say how unconquerable a barrier to all self-denying effort may exist in the consciousness that the best that is accomplished can last but a few years, and that the painter's travail must perish with his life?

It cannot have been without strong sense of this, the true dignity and relation of his subject, that Mr. Eastlake has gone through a toil far more irksome, far less selfish than any he could have undergone in the practice of his art. The value which we

attach to the volume depends, however, rather on its preceptive than its antiquarian character. As objects of historical inquiry merely, we cannot conceive any questions less interesting than those relating to mechanical operations generally, nor any honours less worthy of prolonged dispute than those which are grounded merely on the invention or amelioration of processes and pigments. The subject can only become historically interesting when the means ascertained to have been employed at any period are considered in their operation upon or procession from the artistical aim of such period, the character of its chosen subjects, and the effects proposed in their treatment upon the national mind. Mr. Eastlake has as yet refused himself the indulgence of such speculation; his book is no more than its modest title expresses. For ourselves, however, without venturing in the slightest degree to anticipate the expression of his ulterior views-though we believe that we can trace their extent and direction in a few suggestive sentences,

sentences, as pregnant as they are unobtrusive-we must yet, in giving a rapid sketch of the facts established, assume the privilege of directing the reader to one or two of their most obvious consequences, and, like honest 'prentices, not suffer the abstracted retirement of our master in the back parlour to diminish the just recommendation of his wares to the passers by.

Eminently deficient in works representative of the earliest and purest tendencies of art, our National Gallery nevertheless affords a characteristic and sufficient series of examples of the practice of the various schools of painting, after oil had been finally substituted for the less manageable glutinous vehicles which, under the general name of tempera, were principally employed in the production of easel pictures up to the middle of the fifteenth century. If the reader were to make the circuit of this collection for the purpose of determining which picture represented with least disputable fidelity the first intention of its painter, and united in its modes of execution the highest reach of achievement with the strongest assurance of durability, we believe that-after hesitating long over hypothetical degrees of blackened shadow and yellowed light, of lost outline and buried detail, of chilled lustre, dimmed transparency, altered colour, and weakened force-he would finally pause before a small picture on panel, representing two quaintly dressed figures in a dimly lighted room-dependent for its interest little on expression, and less on treatment-but eminently remarkable for reality of substance, vacuity of space, and vigour of quiet colour; nor less for an elaborate finish, united with energetic freshness, which seem to show that time has been much concerned in its production, and has had no power over its fate.

We do not say that the total force of the material is exhibited in this picture, or even that it in any degree possesses the lusciousness and fullness which are among the chief charms of oilpainting; but that upon the whole it would be selected as uniting imperishable firmness with exquisite delicacy; as approaching more unaffectedly and more closely than any other work to the simple truths of natural colour and space; and as exhibiting, even in its quaint and minute treatment, conquest over many of the difficulties which the boldest practice of art involves.

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This picture, bearing the inscription Johannes Van Eyck (fuit?) hic, 1434,' is probably the portrait, certainly the work, of one of those brothers to whose ingenuity the first invention of the art of oil-painting has been long ascribed. The volume before us is occupied chiefly in determining the real extent of the improvements they introduced, in examining the processes they employed, and in tracing the modifications of those processes

adopted

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