and cheek. They
disappear every where, except in the focus common to both eyes. Then
nothing is seen absolutely at rest. The act of breathing imparts
perpetual motion to the artist and the model. The aspen leaf is
trembling in the stillest air. Whatever difference of opinion may exist
as to Turner's use or abuse of his great faculties, no one will doubt
that he has never been excelled in the art of giving space and relative
distance to all parts of his canvas. Certainly no one ever carried
confusion of outline in every part not supposed to be in the focus of
the eye so far.

On the other hand, every portion of a large picture, however severe its
execution, acquires this morbid outline wherever the eye quits one
detail for another. Is, then, the law governing small and large surface
different? Do these instances imply that a definite boundary, a modern
German style, is indefensible? or only indefensible in miniature? Or, is
such a picture as the Van Eyh in the National Gallery a vindication of
the practice in small works?

I can answer that it is not; and this last question I merely ask to
avoid all answers on the score of authority. No doubt that strange work
is one of the most realising pictures ever painted,--more so than any
neighbouring Rembrandt,--whose masses of light and shade were used as a
"creative power." I want to know whether there is a right and wrong in
the case, apart from every thing men call taste. Whether, whenever a
work of art passes from suggestion to imitation, _some_ liberty must not
be given at the lines whence the rays are supposed to diverge to the two
eyes from two different surfaces. Every advance in art and science
removes something from the realms of opinion, and this appears to be a
question on which science must some day legislate for art.

J.O.W.H.

* * * * *

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL--OLD SONGS ONCE POPULAR THERE.

Amongst the numerous correspondents and readers of your very interesting
little work, there may yet be living some who were scholars in the above
institution during the last ten or fifteen years of the last century,
coevals, or nearly so, with Richards, afterwards of Oriel College,
author of a prize poem, _Aboriginal Britons_, and one of the Bampton
Lecturers; Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta; Trollope,
afterwards Master of the Grammar School; Barnes, afterwards connected
with the _Times_; Stevens, Scott (poor Scott!), Coleridge, Lamb,