Thus Religion itself is ever changing in its manifestations; and to assume it as a fixed item, an unchanging centre-point, by which to gauge the phases of Art over two thousand years, will never do. Religion, like Science and Art, acts, and is acted upon by the other elements of Civilisation,-(a word which just means Human Nature as manifested in the life of a nation). All the various features of a Civilisation—including its history, science, art, religion, philosophy, and social aspectare just so many sides of the vari-coloured lamp of Human Nature, altogether change more or less as the central light changes and thus the change in any one may be an exponent of the change in the others, without being in any way the cause of it. Even in this modified form, we must say, generalisation in history is a most difficult and often impossible work, -for external circumstances may thwart a national tendency in one direction, while they allow it free scope in another. Nevertheless the principle holds generally true, that the various aspects of civilisation-or, as we have called them, the many sides of the Lamp of Human Nature-change with the changing of the central light. At one time that light shines more strongly through one aperture, producing Poetry and the Fine Arts, then through another, producing Science,-now through a third, developing the arts of war,-now through a fourth, developing the arts of peace. In fine, at distant intervals, that central light itself changes colour: Now burning red-i.e., rude, warlike, bigoted, energetic, superstitious, uncalculating — the early epoch of Faith and Force; Now blue, or sceptical, prudent, and inquiring the age of Reason and Discovery; Lastly, golden, in the good time coming,"-when men shall gather from every age and country the scattered rays of truth, and inaugurate the crowning millennial epoch of Earth,-when Truth shall at length be seen without the screen of bigotry, Heaven without the clouds of superstition, Man without the prejudices of caste.

"

Well knowing the difficulty of correct generalisation in

history, we shall not attempt to dogmatise. But were the not very profitable question put to us,-"Since we do not owe landscape-painting to Christianity, to what do we owe it?" we should not altogether refuse an answer. In his praises of Turner, Mr Ruskin said, "Long before geologists discovered the strata of earth, Turner saw them and painted them." In reality, there is a connection, both in point of time and of character, between physical science and landscape-painting; and in the grand march of Human Nature, there will be seen a sequence which, wholly irrespective of Religion, leads us to these as two of the (as yet) latest developments of civilisation. What has been the course of Science but from metaphysics to physics, from the Deductive system of inquiry to the Inductive-from the inner world to the outer? So also, what has been the march of Art, but from the divine and human gradually down to the lower forms of nature? What did Homer and Virgil and Ossian,-what did the authors of the old German and Indian poems, (the Niebelungen-Lied and the Ramayana and Mahabharata) sing of,-but Gods and heroes? What did Sculpture and Painting first depict, but Gods and men? What but Saints and men, and God in man, formed the theme of Raffaelle and the grand Italian school? What next, but man himself, in his features and his actions? toric painting followed, intermingled with religious painting. And then, after these, and last of all, came Landscape-painting. Thus, so far as the world has yet gone (there will be a reaction by-and-by), Natural Philosophy and Landscape-painting are the latest and kindred phases of Science and Art. They have grown together, step by step, with a singular contemporaneousness; and in what age of the world were they ever half so cherished as now? Chemistry, zoology, geology, botany, what are all these but the result of man's mind going out upon the face of the world? So is it likewise with Landscape-painting, -which, we repeat, has no more to do with the doctrines of the New Testament than chemistry or botany has. And let

His

this be remembered, in preference to the "devout fancies" of Mr Ruskin, that the Deductive or Metaphysical mode of inquiry gave way to the Baconian or Positive, exactly pari passu with the growth of Physics and Landscape-painting; and that both of these changes indexed the general turning of the European intellect from Mind to Matter, and from Man to Nature.

To conclude. All history shows that the highest departments of Science and Art were occupied first: God in India and Judea,-man in China,-mind in Greece,—and the Stars everywhere, but especially in Assyria. Taking European civilisation alone, we find as indices of this truth, in ancient Greece, Homer and Æschylus, Plato and Aristotle,-in medieval Italy, Dante and Tasso, Michael Angelo and Raffaelle,-in England, Shakespeare and Milton, Bacon and Newton. And just as these higher fields are excelled in (we do not say exhausted, for no department of mind will ever be exhausted by the finite intelligence of man), men take to the lower ones. They turn from the old to the new, from the higher to the lower; and thus we have arrived at the age of Landscape-painting. We do not undervalue Landscape-painting;-it is no part either of our inclination or of our theory to do so. We love it, as we think, "wisely," not, like Mr Ruskin, "too well." And we shall never consent that he should defame higher and infinitely nobler manifestations of Mind by subordinating them to, or even placing them on an equality with, this last and lowest of æsthetic studies. A copier of lifeless matter, of inanimate nature, to be classed with giants of intellect whose heads touched the skies! An expatiator in the narrow field of landscape-painting to be ranked with men whose genius overflowed all creation! "Shakespeare,-Bacon,-Turner !” ВАН!

GENIUS AND LIBERTY

NOTHING has been so deservedly dear to the best part of the human race as liberty; nothing has been so longed for, fought for, praised. And yet few things have been so much misunderstood or abused, or have so often been made a cloak for unworthy designs. "O Liberty !-how many crimes have been done in thy name!" was the mournful exclamation of the beautiful and gifted Madame Roland, as she mounted the steps to the guillotine; and never did the free and freedom-loving Englishman regard his favourite goddess so steadfastly as during the recent convulsions in Europe.

The connection between Liberty and Genius is neither forced nor imaginary. It is no mere figure of the rhetorician, giving glitter to his sentence at the expense of truth. Sunshine is not more needful to the flower than liberty is to the growth of genius. Without it the intellectual powers never reach their full development-never put forth that flower of the mind which we call Genius.

All history proves that liberty in a nation-the spirit of nationality is essential to the development of genius; that genius never springs up but where there exist pride of country and the self-respect of the freeman; and that, where existing, it never survives their extinction. Let us transport ourselves back two thousand years, and take a picture from the annals of Greece. Let us shadow forth, however faintly, that divine

excellence in art which has immortalised the country of Homer and Phidias, and inquire whence it came and how it disappeared.

Serene beneath a cloudless heaven, golden in the light of a mellow sunset, we behold Athens, radiant with temples and statues, smiling from the summit of her Acropolis upon the glittering waters of the Bay of Salamis, and lifting into her calm bright skies a thousand shapes of dazzling marble. On that temple-crowned summit, within the noble walls of the Pantheon, Aspasia and the great and high of Athens are gazing in admiration on the matchless statue of Minerva, just placed on its pedestal; while hard by stand Phidias and Ictinus, surveying calmly, thoughtfully, their newly completed masterpiece, the Temple of the Virgins, the world-renowned Parthenon.-It is the golden age of Sculpture and Architecture.

Yonder the lively impressible Athenians are pouring at midday from the open portals of the Theatre, with heart and soul still vibrating to the wonderful tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles-the earliest which the world ever saw, and still uneclipsed in their stern colossal grandeur. As the crowd spread themselves over the public square, they are arrested by the ever-welcome sight of a masterpiece of Xeuxis. A picture of a boy and grapes is suspended there for public criticism. So admirable is the limner's skill-thus runs the legend that the passing birds stoop to peck at the glowing fruit. But beside it hangs a rival effort of painting; and the citizens must decide to which the prize of merit is to be awarded. The crowd gaze curiously upon a drapery which seems to hide it from view. They wonder what loom could produce so soft a texture; colours of such glowing harmony. "Withdraw now your curtain!" exclaims Xeuxis, proud of the tribute which the wanderers of the air have rendered to his genius, and no longer able to control his curiosity. Parrhasius, his rival, smiles triumphantly:"Xeuxis deceives birds: I deceive Xeuxis!" That drapery was the picture! It is the heyday of Painting.