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day incidents," Mr. Ruskin's authoritative disclaimer of antiquarianism, and his disciple's presentation of a scrupulous portrait for John the Baptist or the Apostle Paul, are simple departures from our sense of what we have been commonly used to call historical painting; when we find it stated as a proof of honesty that "the artist, not having seen a Madonna, did not paint one, "" * we come, as it seems to me, to the point I venture to put in the form of a question. I must ask yet a further question.

10. Are plain facts, save as artistically conducive to something nobler, what any of us care to look on, except in what we are used to call "furniture pictures?

Here is a shower of rain that makes you feel for your umbrella. The critic observes, with an air of triumph, "I do not say that this is beautiful; I do not say it is ideal nor refined; I only ask you to watch for the first opening of the clouds after the next south rain, and tell us if it be not true."† Suppose it is. Am I to place the painter "beside Shakspeare and Verulam" for simply giving me what I can see, without any artistic effort, ten times oftener than is agreeable? We appreciate the science that explains the very commonest phenomenon. We thank the man who opens the caverns of physical nature, and reveals mysterious agencies working out the Divine Benevolence. We thank and venerate the man who opens the unspeakably richer caverns of humanity, and reveals moral elements that make man the very image of Him who made him. It is impossible to tell the preciousness

* "Stones of Venice," bk. ii. chap. vi.

"Modern Painters," pt. ii. sec. iii. chap. iv. § 24.

of those glimpses of the inner world that shine out from the canvass that has been touched by the hand of Raffaelle. But how are we to understand such language as the following?

"None before Turner had lifted the veil from the face of nature: the majesty of the hills and forests had received no interpretation." (Edin. Lectures, p. 181.)

One would like to know what was the veil alluded to, and how Turner lifted it, and what was then seen and interpreted that was not seen and understood before. Perhaps some courteous "Westminster" will call on "manliness, veracity, and morality" to convert this occult performance into a "plain fact."

We are told somewhere from the same quarter, that "man has become on the whole an ugly animal;" and that "High Art consists neither in altering, nor in improving Nature." (Modern Painters, pt. iv. chap. iii. § 19.) Is this, then, among the plain facts, Art is to be employed in making history? Or are we to forget so elementary a fact as that many an ornament to society would make but sorry ornament to a picture; and vice versâ ?

There is not the remotest need of abjuring "truth" and "nature," whilst avoiding the bluntness, rudeness, and essential commonness I have been deprecating. We perfectly understand the old patriarchal royalty, that could unite, almost in the same day, the tending of sheep, the command of troops, and the ministering of justice in the gate. There was no loss of dignity in this total absence of effeminacy. Abraham's running to "fetch a calf, tender and good," when he "entertained the strangers," stands

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side by side with his majestic bowing himself, in that beautiful conference in the field of Machpelah. So of Sarah, who "made them cakes upon the hearth," we are told that she was so "fair to look on, that princes commended her before the king of Egypt." (Gen. xii. 15.) The same of Rebekah (Gen. xxiv. 15.), and of Job's daughters (Job xlii. 15.). So," Joseph was a goodly person." And it was when the mother of Moses saw "he was a goodly child" (compare Acts vii. 20.) that she did what issued in wondrous things. All this is "nature.”

Of such noble simplicity, such marriage of truth and beauty, we have examples enough in the highest Art. I need but name Raffaelle's Loggie, and Michael Angelo's Lunettes in the Sistine Chapel. Pre-Raffaellitism is affectedly after another fashion. Mr. Ruskin tells us that "of majestic women bowing themselves to beautiful girls we have had enough." (Notice of Giotto, p. 76.) His Giottesque "plain facts" are, for the most part, ugly facts. His modern Revolutionists are "characterised by a total insensibility to the ordinary and popular forms of artistic gracefulness." (Edin. Lectures, p. 228.) He has not told us if that lover of plain facts who, as High Sheriff, met the judges the other day in a common cab, and paid the penalty, was, as I presume he must have been, a Pre-Raffaellite; but he is very careful to tell us and to reiterate and enforce it, that the Homeric ideal presents " Achilles cutting pork chops for Ulysses." (Modern Painters, pt. iv. chap. vii. §§ 4. 10.)

We have yet another question; but we must propose it in another chapter.

CHAP. XXI.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS CONTINUED. DO WE WANT A REVOLUTION? -THE "EFFETE HYPOTHESIS.

WE asked some critical questions in the preceding chapter. We must ask another here. Do we want this Revolution ? Do we want any Revolution ?

There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of artistic practice. There is, first, the loose, careless, unintelligent, inaccurate, which, whether in History, Portrait, or Landscape, we may denominate without irreverence, the school of slip-slop. There is, secondly, the careful and scrupulous, but prosaic, servile, undiscriminating copyism of actual nature, which we may call the school of matter of fact. And there is, thirdly, the no less careful and conscientious, but discriminating and poetical rendering, whether of Landscape or History, which we have been long used to denominate the school of "High Art.”

For the first, who will stand up and plead? Were only our National Galleries what the name implies, a means of instruction, not to Artists only, but to the nation at large, we should infallibly stop its supplies, and starve it out.

Had Mr. Ruskin contented himself with the mission (of which no one living is more capable) of exposing the errors, slovenlinesses, and unworthi

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nesses of that mockery of the nobler style, had he told empirics that poetic art is not flimsy art, that poetry is not going into infinite space, that a man must know what an object is before he can pretend to poetise it, had he even claimed honourable standing for downright Realism, and asserted not only its own right to its own ground, but its wholesome bearing, even on the higher styles, as a salutary protest against dissolving elemental existence in mists and vapours, had, I say, Mr. Ruskin done this, all but the delinquents, and their jobbing partizans, would have thanked him, and stood by him. What has he done?

I will not refer to what we have been reviewing; but will just add a characteristic passage from his last performance.

"I thought, some time ago, that this painter was likely to be headed by others of the school: but Titian himself could hardly head him now. This picture ('Peace Concluded') is as brilliant in invention as consummate in executive power. Both this, and 'Autumn Leaves,' will rank in future among the world's best master-pieces; and I see no limit to what the painter may hope in future to achieve." (Notes on Pictures in the Royal Academy, 1856, p. 22.)

Now I have almost as much repugnance to a description of this particular picture as to a depreciation of the particular talent evinced in the painting of it; but I must say that, had Mr. Ruskin meant to throw an impassable gulf in the way of further progress, he could scarce have done anything more