in the material and instrumental part of art, in embodying a technical theory, or in acquiring the grammar of different branches of study, excelling in knowledge and in gravity of pretension; whereas Raphael gave himself up to the diviner or lovelier impulse that breathes its soul over the face of things, being governed by a sense of reality and of general truth. There is nothing exclusive or repulsive in Raphael; he is open to all impressions alike, and seems to identify himself with whatever he saw that arrested his attention or could interest others. Michael Angelo studied for himself, and raised objects to the standard of his conception, by a formula or system: Raphael invented for others, and was guided only by a sympathy with them. Michael Angelo was painter, sculptor, architect: but he might be said to make of each art a shrine, in which to build up the stately and gigantic stature of his own mind :-Raphael was only a painter, but in that one art he seemed to pour out all the treasures and various excellence of nature, grandeur, and scope of design, exquisite finishing, force, grace, delicacy, the strength of man, the softness of woman, the playfulness of infancy, thought, feeling, invention, imitation, labor, ease, and every quality that can distinguish a picture, except color. Michael Angelo, in a word, stamped his own character on his works, or recast Nature in a mould of his own, leaving out much that was excellent: Raphael received his inspiration from without, and his genius caught the lambent flame of grace, of truth, and grandeur, which are reflected in his works with a light, clear, transparent and unfading.

L. Will you mention one or two things that particularly struck

you?

H. There is a figure of a man leading a horse in the Attila, which I think peculiarly characteristic. It is an ordinary face and figure, in a somewhat awkward dress: but he seems as if he had literally walked into the picture at that instant; he is looking forward with a mixture of earnestness and curiosity, as if the scene were passing before him, and every part of his figure and dress is flexible and in motion, pliant to the painter's plastic

such as that of the Fates at Florence. Another of Witches, at Cardinal Fesch's at Rome, is like what the late Mr. Barry would have admired and imitated-dingy, coarse, and vacant.

touch. This figure, so unconstrained and free, animated, salient, put me in mind, compared with the usual stiffness and shackles of the art, of chain armor used by the knights of old instead of coat-of-mail. Raphael's fresco-figures seem the least of all others taken from plaster-casts; this is more than can be said of Michael Angelo's, which might be taken from, or would serve for, very noble ones. The horses in the same picture also delight me. Though dumb, they appear as if they could speak, and were privy to the import of the scene. Their inflated nostrils and speckled skins are like a kind of proud flesh; or they are spiritualized. In the Miracle of Bolsano is that group of children, round-faced, smiling, with large-orbed eyes, like infancy nestling in the arms of affection: the studied elegance of the choir of tender novices, with all their sense of the godliness of their function and the beauty of holiness; and the hard, liny, individual portraits of priests and cardinals on the right hand, which have the same life, spirit, boldness and marked character, as if you could have looked in upon the assembled conclave. Neither painting nor poetry ever produced anything finer. There is the utmost hardness and materiality of outline, with a spirit of fire. The School of Athens is full of striking parts and ingenious contrasts; but I prefer to it the Convocation of Saints with that noble circle of Prophets and Apostles in the sky, on whose bent foreheads and downcast eyes you see written the City of the Blest, the beatific presence of the Most High and the Glory hereafter to be revealed, a solemn brightness and a fearful dream, and that scarce less inspired circle of sages canonised here on earth, poets, heroes, and philosophers, with the painter himself, entering on one side like the recording angel, smiling in youthful beauty, and scarce conscious of the scene he has embodied. If there is a failure in any of these frescoes, it is, I think, in the Parnassus, in which there is something quaint and affected. In the St. Peter delivered from prison, he has burst with Rembrandt into the dark chambers of night, and thrown a glory round them. In the story of Cupid and Psyche, at the Little Farnese, he has, I think, even surpassed himself in a certain swelling and voluptuous grace, as if beauty grew and ripened under his touch, and the very genius of ancient fable hovered over his enamored pencil.

L. I always believe you when you praise, not always when you condemn. Was there anything else that you saw to give you a higher idea of him than the specimens we have in this country?

H. Nothing superior to the Cartoons for boldness of design and execution; but I think his best oil pictures are abroad, though I had seen most of them before in the Louvre. I had not, however, seen the Crowning of the Virgin, which is in the picture-gallery of the Vatican, and appears to me one of his very highest-wrought pictures. The virgin in the clouds is of an admirable sedateness and dignity, and over the throng of breathing faces below there is poured a stream of joy and fervid devotion that can be compared to nothing but the golden light that evening skies pour on the edges of the surging waves. "Hope elevates, and joy brightens their every feature." The Foligno Virgin was at Paris, in which I cannot say I am quite satisfied with the Madonna; it has rather a precieuse expression; but I know not enough how to admire the innumerable heads of cherubs surrounding her, touched in with such care and delicacy, yet so as scarcely to be perceptible except on close inspection, nor that figure of the winged cherub below, offering the casket, and with his round, chubby face and limbs as full of rosy health and joy, as the cup is full of the juice of the purple vine. There is another picture of his I will mention, the Leo X. in the palace Pitti, on his front engraven thought and public care ;" and again, that little portrait in a cap in the Louvre, muffled in thought and buried in a kind of mental chiaro scuro. When I think of these and so many others of his inimitable works, "scattered like stray gifts o'er the earth," meeting our thoughts half-way, and yet carrying them farther than we should have been able of ourselves, enriching, refining, exalting all around, I am at a loss to find motives for equal admiration or gratitude in what Michael Angelo has left, though his Prophets and Sibyls on the walls of the Sistine Chapel are thumping make-weights thrown into the opposite scale. It is nearly impossible to weigh or measure their different merits. Perhaps Michael Angelo's works, in their vastness and unity, may give a greater blow to some imaginations and lift the mind more out of itself, though accompanied with less delight or food for

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reflection, resembling the rocky precipice, whose "stately height though bare" overlooks the various excellence and beauty of subjected art.

L. I do not think your premises warrant your conclusion. If what you have said of each is true, I should give the undoubted preference to Raphael as at least the greater painter, if not the greater man. I must prefer the finest face to the largest mask.

H. I wish you could see and judge for yourself. L. I prithee do not mock me. Proceed with your account. Was there nothing else worth mentioning after Raphael and Michael Angelo ?

H. So much, that it has slipped from my memory. There are the finest statues in the world there, and they are scattered and put into niches or separate little rooms for effect, and not congregated together like a meeting of the marble gods of mythology, as was the case in the Louvre. There are some of Canova's, worked up to a high pitch of perfection, which might just as well have been left alone and there are none, I think, equal to the Elgin marbles. A bath of one of the Antonines, of solid porphyry and as large as a good-sized room, struck me as the strongest proof of ancient magnificence. The busts are innumerable, inimitable, have a breathing clearness and transparency, revive ancient history, and are very like actual English heads and characters. The inscriptions alone on fragments of antique marble would furnish years of study to the curious or learned in that way. The vases are most elegant-of proportions and materials unrivalled in taste and in value. There are some tapestry copies of the Cartoons, very glaring and unpleasant to look at. The room containing the colored maps of Italy, done about three hundred years ago, is one of the longest and most striking; and the passing through it with the green hillocks, rivers and mountains on its spotty sides, is like going a delightful journey. You recall or anticipate the most interesting scenes and objects. Out of the windows of these long straggling galleries, you look down into a labyrinth of inner and of outer courts, or catch the dome of St. Peter's adjoining (like a huge shadow), or gaze at the distant amphitheatre of hills surrounding the Sacred City, which excite a

pleasing awe, whether considered as the haunts of banditti or from a recollection of the wondrous scene, the hallowed spot, on which they have overlooked for ages, Imperial or Papal Rome, or her commonwealth, more august than either. Here also in one chamber of the Vatican is a room stuffed full of artists, copying the Transfiguration, or the St. Jerome of Domenichino, spitting, shrugging, and taking snuff, admiring their own performances and sneering at those of their neighbors; and on certain days of the week the whole range of the rooms is thrown open without reserve to the entire population of Rome and its environs, priests and peasants, with heads not unlike those that gleam from the walls, perfect in expression and in costume, and young peasant girls in clouted shoes with looks of pleasure, timidity and wonder, such as those in which Raphael himself, from the portraits of him, might be supposed to have hailed the dawn of heaven-born art. There is also (to mention small works with great) a portrait of George the Fourth in his robes (a present to his Holiness) turned into an outer room; and a tablet erected by him in St. Peter's to the memory of James III. Would you believe it? Casmo Comyne Bradwardine, when he saw the averted looks of the good people of England as they proclaimed his Majesty James III. in any of the towns through which they passed, would not have believed it. Fergus Mac Ivor, when in answer to the crier of the court, who repeated" Long live King George !" he retorted, "Long live King James!" would not have believed it possible !

L. Hang your politics.

H. Never mind, if they do not hang me.