To those opulent and distinguished characters, who have lately added to our national possessions some of the noblest specimens of antient art, we are under the highest obligation. While they have embellished their own princely mansions, they have honoured, adorned, and enriched their country. We are still more indebted to a nobleman (I need hardly name the Marquis of Stafford) for the example which he has set, of opening his collection to the public, and of making it the source of improvement to the artist, and of gratification to the lover of art. The great and immortal specimens of the Italian Schools, afford example and impulse to the student; and, while they improve and refine our taste, give beauty and currency to our manufac tures, and increase and perpetuate our national resources. But the influx of worthless pictures, the noxious inundation of damaged or wretched originals and fabricated copies, which, like French principles, have infested our coasts since the calamitous period of the French Re

volution, must awaken and call forth the indignation and hostility of every friend to the arts, or to his country. The rubbish, which is daily smuggled into England, from the most inferior of the foreign collections, or from the meanest of the graphic manufactories of the continent, has created and given wings to a tribe of picture dealers, whose interest and occupation have been to defame the national character, to decry the talents of British artists, to discourage their efforts, to blight their hopes, and prevent their

success.

Ir may not be known to some of my readers, that, in the metropolis, there are, generally speaking, only three kinds of employment, which present themselves to the young student in painting. Of these the most humble, but not the least useful, is that of penciling for the manufacturer:-the second, that of designing (as it has been sometimes called) for the press; so as to obtain for original works, or for new editions, a degree of sale,

which, without popular prints, they could never have had. The third, the most general, and I may add the most profitable and acceptable, is portrait painting; in which the skill of the artist is exerted in copying the features of his employer; with licence occasionally to exercise the fancy and give wings to the imagination, by introducing his patron's family into an historical piece, or his horse or dog into a landscape.

SUCH is the unworthy occupation of the graphic art in England! Such is the occupation of that art, which has the talent of exemplifying and enforcing all the amiable and endearing affections, that constitute the delight and value of our present existence; which can awaken and purify the disinterested virtue, that gives security and happiness to nations, and protects the innocent and defenceless from the savage inroads of ambition. Such is the occupation of that art, which possesses the power of nourishing every principle of piety and charity, and of

impressing and consecrating the most exalted feelings and habits of virtue and religion.

THE degree of virtuous and refined pleasure and improvement produced by mental exertion, is the acknowledged test of a liberal art. To this exercise of talent, kings and heroes, and great and splendid actions, are by no means essential. The seclusion of a convent, the recesses of domestic life, and the wild scenes of untamed nature, will afford topics for the most elevated genius, and supply incidents and circumstances, to improve, to elevate, fortify, and civilize the mind, and to fit it for its present duties and its future hopes. But in the selection of his subject, whether exalted or humble, whether drawn from public or private life, it is of the utmost importance that it should be of a nature and quality proper to instruct and amend, and not to debase and corrupt, the mind. The adoption of dignified, interesting, and moral subjects for his pencil, should

be the ruling passion of the artist, who is ambitious of true and lasting fame. Though an ardent admirer of the Italian schools, I am by no means blind to their defects. The scenes of licentiousness and cruelty which are exhibited in many of their finest pictures, have a tendency to familiarise the spectator to those odious vices. When deliberate and studied torture, or when the libidinous and disgusting vices of the heathen mythology, are displayed in the colours of Titian, or by the sublime powers of Michael Angelo, the eye, that would remain pure and uncontaminated, should turn with abhorrence from such a perversion of talent, and lament its misapplication.

NEITHER should the subject be mean or trivial. Trifles may occasionally engage the painter's pencil, as well as the poet's pen; but either is degraded, when entirely so occupied. The patient industry of the Flemish and Dutch schools has produced for us objects of study, and examples of imitation. But let not their