ntrast, however, belong to the painter. That poetry has
this power, and operates by more extensively raising our curiosity,
cannot be denied; but we hesitate in altogether excluding this power
from painting. A momentary action may be so represented, as to elicit a
desire for, and even an intimation of its event. It is true _that_
curiosity cannot be satisfied, but it works and conjectures; and we
suspect there is something of it in most good pictures. Take such a
subject as the "Judgment of Solomon:" is not the "event suspended," and
a breathless anxiety portrayed in the characters, and freely
acknowledged by the sympathy of the spectator? Is there no mark of this
"curiosity" in the "Cartoon of Pisa?" The trumpet has sounded, the
soldiers are some half-dressed, some out of the water, others bathing;
one is anxiously looking for the rising of his companion, who has just
plunged in, and we see but his hands above the water; the very range of
rocks, behind which the danger is shown to come, tends to excite our
curiosity; we form conjectures of the enemy, their number, nearness of
approach, and from among the manly warriors before us form episodes of
heroism in the great intimated epic: and have we not seen pictures by
Rembrandt, where "curiosity" delights to search unsatisfied and
unsatiated into the mysteries of colour and chiaro-scuro, receding
further as we look into an atmosphere pregnant with all uncertain
things? We think we have not mistaken the President's meaning. Mr Burnet
appears to agree with us: though he makes no remark upon the power of
raising curiosity, yet it surely is raised in the very picture to which
we presume he alludes, Raffaelle's "Death of Ananias;" the event, in
Sapphira, is intimated and suspended. "Though," says Mr Burnet, "the
painter has but one page to represent his story, he generally chooses
that part which combines the most illustrative incidents with the most
effective denouement of the event. In Raffaelle we often find not only
those circumstances which precede it, _but its effects upon the_
personages introduced after the catastrophe."

There is, however, a natural indolence of our disposition, which seeks
pleasure in repose, and the resting in old habits, which must not be too
violently opposed by "variety," "reanimating the attention, which is apt
to languish under a continual sameness;" nor by "novelty," making "more
forcible impression on the mind than can be made by the representa