h of whom, disdaining to acknowledge the usual
laws of admission to the temple of Fame, boldly forged their own keys,
entered, and took possession, each of a most conspicuous place, by his
own power." Rubens, with many advantages, acquired in his education at
Antwerp, and already influenced by the gorgeous pomp of Austrian and
Spanish superstition, arrived in Italy rather as the rival than pupil of
the masters whom he travelled to study. Whatever he borrowed from the
Venetian school--the object of his admiration--he converted into a new
manner of florid magnificence. It is just the excellence of Rubens--the
completeness, the congruity of his style--that has raised him to the
eminence in the temple of fame which he will ever occupy. A little short
of Rubens is intolerable: the clumsy forms and improprieties of his
imitators are not to be endured. Mr Fuseli excepts Vandyck and Abraham
Drepenbeck from the censure passed upon the followers of Rubens. As
Drepenbeck is not so well known, we quote the passage respecting
him:--"The fancy of Drepenbeck, though not so exuberant, if I be not
mistaken, excelled in sublimity the imagination of Rubens. His
Bellerophon, Dioscuri, Hippolytus, Ixion, Sisyphus, fear no competitor
among the productions of his master." Rembrandt he considers a genius of
the first class in all but form. Chiaroscuro and colour were the
elements, in fact, in which Rembrandt reveled. In these he was the
poet--the maker. He made colour and chiaroscuro throw out ideas of
sublimity: that he might throw himself the more into these great
elements of his art, and depend solely on their power, he seems
purposely not to have neglected form, but to have selected such as,
without beauty to attract, should be merely the objects of life, the
sensitive beings in his world of mystery. That such was his intention we
cannot doubt; because we cannot imagine the beautiful but too attractive
figures of the Apollo or the Venus adopted into one of his pictures.
Excepting in a few instances, we would not wish Rembrandt's forms other
than they are. They appear necessary to his style. Mr Fuseli speaks very
favourably of art in Switzerland; but says there are only two painters
of name--Holbein, and Francis Mola. The designs of the Passion and Dance
of Death of the former, are instanced as works of excellence. Mola, we
are surprised to find ranked as Swiss; for he is altogether, in art,
Italian. The influence of the school and precepts o