be devoted to the ends of the Institution is to be found in the grant of four thousand pounds to erect a room attached to the National Gallery for the reception of old pictures. We suppose from this that there is no native talent to be encouraged! no historical artist to be rewarded! no other mode of disposing of the overflowing money of the Institution! A large proportion of this sum was raised from the exhibition of the works of native artists. Their brains and labour were taxed under pretence of the encouragement of high Art, in order to build a room for a Government that has a revenue of fifty millions, and can afford tens of thousands to be thrown away in architectural blunders on works alike destitute of beauty and solidity. It well becomes noblemen and gentlemen subscribing to this Institution, to consider how far their honour (and no men in the world are more honourable than the majority of them) may be implicated in this abandonment of the purpose for which they give their money, and, what is of more importance, the sanction of their respectable names.

It has been reported, that when Mr. Herries resigned, or was compelled to leave the Cabinet, Lord Goderich followed as a necessary consequence, because, without Mr. Herries to make up the public accounts, which he could not do himself, he, the head of office, could not go on. Something like this," si parva licet componere magnis," is suspected to be the case in the connoisseurship fame of Lord Farnborough. A writer in the "Times," signing "Alfred,"* insinuates that Mr. Seguier, who has already been mentioned, is the factotum of Lord Farnborough, his lordship of course taking the credit of the taste and skill of his deputy. This person, Mr. Seguier, is emperor of all the picturedealers, purchases for sundry great people, cleans, values, and sells.+ Such a man near a public Institution must be every way improper. It is very rare that a love of Art has any thing to do with dealers in pictures. Like other dealers, their object very naturally is to make money. The useless Parmegiano, bought by the British Institution for 3,0501. (according to the before-mentioned writer,) was first purchased for Mr. Watson Taylor, at the price of forty guineas! Mr. Seguier formed that gentleman's collection, and valued his pictures. The pictures, "old and modern, selected for the British Gallery, await his fiat, it seems, for exclusion or reception, under the plausible pretext of coming from the directors, who, even if it were so, derive their opinions from himself, which used to be retailed back again as those of Sir Charles Long, or any other sir who happened to be the fashion for the time." This is much of a complexion with the management of some other public institutions; and hence the uniform disappointment of the public at their results.

Mr. Beckford, a subscriber to the Institution, lately purchased a picture of Mr. Danby, and that body presented the artist with two

Times newspaper, April 25, 1828.

The Bellows Shakspeare, and sundry other tricks recently exposed in the journals, show what picture-dealing is in this country.

Such is the influence of this person, that his brother, a military demisolde, is actually the keeper of the national pictures. Artists have nothing to do with these undertakings; they, if superannuated, may live on their funds or starve in their garrets. Is there to be nothing in this country of a public character that does not smell of jobbing?

hundred pounds; another artist, whose picture had not so fortunate a purchaser as a member of the Institution, received a gift of fifty pounds. These are all the wonderfully generous donations and efforts for the benefit of artists the Institution has bestowed, out of its thousands, that have lately reached the public ear.* Where are the paintings of native artists, in the highest walks of Art, purchased by the society? West, indeed, being, when alive, president of the academy, parted with a picture or two at a good price to the Institution, but we had and have better pictures than West ever painted, in the highest class of Art, which the Institution has never noticed. It goes on exhibiting pictures from private collections, few of which the owners exclude from the view of artists when in their own galleries. This is a convenience, however, and not so objectionable, for it swells the funds of the Institution. But it still continues its professions in the support of high Art, and raises a contribution from the works of British artists, to be squandered in large sums upon objects in which they have no interest, and which are opposed to the inducements originally held out, by which the loan of their works was first obtained. In short, the higher class of Art, and the intrinsic merit of a painting, seem to constitute no claim to preference and patronage, but pretended connoisseurship and picturedealing consultations govern all.

We have no patience with such a system in this age. We are aware that the affectation of knowledge in Art, as well as in literature, is one of the besetting sins of the day, and that many who wish to be distinguished above others who move in the same circle with them, assume every thing to gain their ends, and adopt any mode that will sustain the delusion. Our wonder is how those who encompass them, and have far better pretensions, suffer their affairs to be ruled, and their judgments set aside, by such as owe to a false and artificial reputation of their own nursing, all their ability or right to judge in such affairs. There is nothing more galling, more humiliating to artists, than the species of patronage which thus deludes the world at their expense. They should combine and exhibit their works for their own emolument only. In one firm body they might do any thing, and become independent of obsequious contributions or humbling favours from self

Where is the collection of works by national artists which the Institution was expected to form? Is it because picture-dealers can best profit by trafficking in paintings of the Dutch schools, from being more easily obtained or fabricated, that we see such works the rage? The pictures of our own artists may be purchased without the mediation of dealers—is this the reason we never hear of a gallery of them? Italian pictures by the old masters are not easily procurable at a profit, or susceptible of forgery: these, therefore, are not the fashion. It is given out that the King prefers the Low Country school (or rather those who form galleries for his Majesty); this school, for that reason, is to be taken by all loyal subjects as the best and most precious in Art! A Waterloo Gallery is to be formed at Windsor, according to the newspapers, for which purchases have been made to the extent of forty or fifty thousand pounds. Was this collection projected by Mr. Seguier, who recommended it to Lord Farnborough, who recommended it to his Majesty? and is it then to be sent forth to the public as formed by his Majesty's own taste, under the direction of Lord Farnborough, and arranged by Mr. Seguier? It would be worth knowing.-Encouragement of native art!-we see nothing of it; Waterloo bonnets and Waterloo masters-Dutch taste and Dutch obesity for ever! We ask again where is the Gallery of British Artists? and did not the British Institution make the formation of one an anticipated object?

constituted patrons. It is injurious to themselves that they are so disunited a body. They might construct one grand gallery for the exhibition of their works, managed by themselves, not by picture-dealers or dilettanti peers. The Royal Academy should alone have any other claim to the gratuitous exhibition of their works, because, in spite of its defects, it is the greatest national school, where the elements of the art are taught, and ought, in consequence, to be supported by artists. Firmly united together, such a method would not fail to pay expenses, and create a fund for the general benefit. The Gallery of British Artists was formed by a part only of our artists, who yet deserve praise for their independence. Little good can be done until all boldly unite as one man, for the purpose of flinging off the shackles that bind them, and rendering Art free as air. Who does not sicken at the polluted dedications of John Dryden, and the appeals of literary men in his day to patronage, when the great kept literature in slavish abeyance? Half a century after, and at a still later era, what could patronage do for literature? Who would now regard the smile or frown of a "wit among lords," as of the slightest account in literary success? In Art, if it is to flourish in this country as it should do, it must sooner or later be the same thing. Then, the pretensions and pretender will find their level. The real encouragers of Art among our people of rank and wealth will be discriminating purchasers, and direct rewarders of merit. Genius in Art will no more languish in sickening dependence on inane caprice, or glean a scanty subsistence by curbing its heavendirected efforts to the paces of the sorry hack.

If any should urge that the charge made against the Institution is unfounded, we refer them to its proceedings. We are accusing only certain of the directors, who contrive to manage every thing their own way, not the great body of subscribers, who really wish to confer a benefit upon Art, except, indeed, that they are to blame not to force a clearer pursuit of the great end of their existence as a body-namely, the encouragement of high Art. If such directors are wrongfully accused, let them show how. If they have benefited Art in secret, let them show where and when. If they deny the right of interference or remark in and upon their affairs, let them exclude the works of living artists, and the profit received from them. If they assert that they have encouraged high Art, and rewarded historical painters according to their own avowed objects, let them tell us who they are, and what proportion the sums so awarded bear to their funds. In the job-purchase of the Parmegiano, they expended above 30007. In a gift to the National Gallery they have given away 4000l. Fifty pounds now and then, and but rarely presented to an artist, is not "a halfpenny-worth of bread to the intolerable quantity of sack." Large historical pictures may be painted, and painted well, but they are not purchased, and rarely rewarded; small paintings, principally after the Dutch Schools, are preferred by certain directors. In fine, we know but one mode in which the Institution can recover its lost ground with the public, and that is, by returning to and abiding by the object of its formation.

Let the noblemen and gentlemen who possess real taste in Art form a committee, and manage their affairs directly themselves. Let this committee earnestly vindicate its own consistency, and direct the public

taste, without the intervention of dealers, or the dictum of self-constituted judges. In considering and rewarding the claims of high Art, and of every new candidate in historical painting, let them judge by the general talent evinced, rather than by the minute performance. All artists have their weak points for the vampires of criticism to riot upon; let the judgment embrace the whole, let it be generous and just. If there be unquestionable excellence in several parts, with defects which in a rising school there cannot fail to be, let them be balanced, and if the first preponderate ever so little, there can be no mistake as to talent in the artist, which must not be sacrificed to fastidious nicety, but encouraged and rewarded. Otherwise, we may have a succession of martyrs to historical Art, but we shall never have a school in that great national line of painting. Raphael's early works exhibit little more than the germs of his future excellence. It should be the object of the Institution to nurse such germs to maturity, because the public does not cherish them, from not being sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of this species of Art, which the directors of the Institution are, or rather were presumed to be. Excuses of want of room to exhibit large pictures are ridiculous, yet such shuffling pleas have been urged in defence of the Institution. Such pictures might be first exhibited, and then purchased for churches or halls, by the Institution, and in some cases, perhaps, be sold on its recommendation to public bodies. By this means the public taste would be improved, and a demand be gradually created for them.

If the British Institution persevere in turning aside from the object of its formation, it will do mischief to Art. It will justly incur the censure of the country for raising funds to misapply them, and for a perversion of object derogatory to the character of its members. We recommend that it look to itself, for the eyes of all are upon it. We trust to see it return to the right track, and confer some little of that benefit upon high Art of which it set out with fair promises; and lastly, that it spurn from the management of its concerns any or all who substitute connoisseur-ship quackery for sound knowledge, and mingle the craft of money-making and jobbing with the serious duties annexed to every thing belonging tosuch an Institution.

WRITTEN ON THE PLAINS OF CANNE.

I CAME upon thee, as a common field,
Thou field of many deaths, smooth Cannæ! where
Rome felt mortality without despair,

And the oft vanquish'd made the conqueror yield-
And the strong idol lost her spell and reel'd,
And Carthage almost grew a mightier Rome,
And Italy a subject. By their tomb

Now sits that Queen of Empires, thence to build
Fresh trophies from their bones, and in her eye
Couches cool confidence of maturing power
Midst tears and frowns, and silence. Realms shall die
Whene'er Rome mourns, and earth at last must cower

When her young eaglet knows his destiny,
And the red proving days of youth are o'er.

W.

THE CLARENDON CORRESPONDENCE.*

GENERALLY, as history is inevitably written, the amount of what we learn by it is rather the order than the concatenation of events. Of the ruling motives of the agents-of the immediate and conclusive causes which prompt them to action-of the numerous constituents which make up the integrity of what really brings about an event, we are, and must be content to be, mainly ignorant. The original actors are out of our reach, and were they within it, we could not look into their hearts, and they themselves seldom bare them to our gaze. The consequence is, that history, in spite of the diligence and even the dexterity of the artist, is full of obscurities-of unsatisfactory statements; every where we find causes assigned, which our common sense decides are incompetent or incompatible; and persons are perpetually appearing and disappearing, we know not how or why-exerting an influence at one time, the ground or extent of which we are not enabled to measure, and at another, and where perhaps we most expected to meet with them, apparently inactive, and the inactivity equally unaccounted for, -so that for the most part, and precisely at the most interesting points, we are thrown upon our own resources, our acquaintance with the common course of human motives, and the known results of their general complexities. The historian, for the probabilities he presents, must depend more on his own sagacity than the weight of his authorities; though, such is the essential uniformity of nature, that were he himself free from the bias of interest or prejudice, his narrative, pursued under her steady guidance, would perhaps seldom very widely deviate from the realities.

Yet the difficulty of getting at exact circumstances is next to insurmountable, from the difficulty of getting correctly at the facts themselves. For how know we aught of the causes of events which are occurring in our own times? Mainly by the guesses of observers, who, perhaps, nine times out of ten get upon a wrong scent, and the farther they go the wider they stray; sometimes by the statements of immediate actors, who as often have a direct interest in misleading, and generally an indirect one in not fairly and fully communicating, or by colleagues, who have their own views to serve, and are usually disposed to claim more than they have a right to,—or by confidants, or dependents, who must magnify their chief, and, in overshooting their mark, fortunately often defeat their unworthy object. Then how are we placed with respect to facts not resting at all upon contemporary evidence? Dependent entirely upon tradition, and tradition will, of course, carry nothing but the grosser materials—the finer subtilities, the nicer points, the shades, the sub-agencies, the collaterals are dropped in the passage;—most men are bad carriers, too careless to bear any thing but the more bulky and adhesive commodities. With these, then, the historian must grapple; on these he must piece and patch; and how far the result is likely to correspond with the original texture of the stuff, is sufficiently obvious: that which is put in to fill up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse.

But the sources of corruption lie not merely in the first materials, but mainly, we had almost said, in the principles and purposes of the historian, whether of nations or of individuals. The public historian has usually his own particular bias-his theory on the origin and even object of government and its institutions; and facts thus inevitably, for a strong bias operates insensibly, get twisted, or suppressed, or magnified, to establish a favourite hypothesis. Every party, and now-a-days more than ever, has its own historian-Southey for the Church of England, and Lingard for that of Rome -see how they force the same facts to their respective views; for, obviously

The Correspondence of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and of his Brother, Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; with the Diary of Lord Clarendon from 1687 to 1690, containing minute particulars of the events attending the Revolution: and the Diary of Lord Rochester during his Embassy to Poland in 1676. Edited from the Original Manuscripts, with Notes, by Samuel Weller Singer, F.S.A. 2 vols. 4to.