f the Caracci,
produced in France an abundant harvest of mediocrity. In France was the
merit of Michael Angelo first questioned. There are, however, names that
rescue France from the entire disgrace of the abandonment of the true
principles of art: Nicolo Poussin, Le Sueur, Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon,
and Pierre Mignard. The Seven Works of Charity, by Seb. Bourdon, teem
with surprising, pathetic, and always novel images; and in the Plague of
David, by Pierre Mignard, our sympathy is roused by energies of terror
and combinations of woe, which escaped Poussin and Raphael himself." Of
Spanish art he says but little, but that "the degree of perfection
attained by Diego Velasquez, Joseph Ribera, and Murillo, in pursuing the
same object by means as different as successful, impresses us with deep
respect for the variety of their powers." Art, as every thing else, has
its fashion. The Spanish school have, of later years, been more eagerly
sought for; and a strange whim of the day has attached a very
extraordinary value to the works of Murillo--a painter in colour
generally monotonous, and in form and expression almost always vulgar.

Art in England is the next subject of the lecture. He takes a view of it
from the age of Henry VIII. to our own. No great encouragement was here
given to art till the time of Charles I.: Holbein, indeed, and Zucchero,
under Elizabeth, were patronized, but "were condemned to Gothic work and
portrait painting." The troubles and death of Charles I. were a sad
obstacle to art. "His son, in possession of the Cartoons of Raphael, and
with the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, suffered Verio to
contaminate the walls of his palaces, or degraded Lely to paint the
Cymons and Iphigenias of his court; whilst the manner of Kneller swept
completely what might yet be left of taste under his successors. Such
was the equally contemptible and deplorable state of English art, till
the genius of Reynolds first rescued from the mannered depravation of
foreigners his own branch; and, soon extending his view to the higher
departments of art, joined that select body of artists who addressed the
ever open ear, ever attentive mind, of our royal founder with the first
idea of this establishment." After this little parade of our artists as
a body, but four are mentioned by name--"Reynolds, Hogarth,
Gainsborough, and Wilson."

We are surprised that, in this summary history of art, no notice has
been taken of Van Eyck