s not the better nature.
Insensibilities of all kinds must be avoided, even where "Amor," as Mr
Fuseli calls him, and Psyche are the subjects. It is the happiest genius
that shall signify without offence the necessary existence of passion,
and leave purity in its singleness and innocence. How exquisitely is
this done by Shakspeare in his "Romeo and Juliet!" He keeps the lovers
free from every grosser particle of love, while he throws it all upon
the subordinate characters, particularly the nurse, whose part in the
drama, in no small degree, tends to naturalise to our sympathy the
youth, the personal beauty, and whole loveliness, of the unhappy Romeo
and Juliet.

The differences of manner in which the same subject, "the Murder of the
Innocents," has been represented by several painters, according to the
genius of each, are well noticed. "History, strictly so called, follows
the drama; fiction now ceases, and invention consists only in selecting
and fixing with dignity, precision, and sentiment, the moments of
_reality_." He instances, by a given subject, that were the artist to
choose the "Death of Germanicus," he is never to forget that he is to
represent "a Roman dying amidst Romans," and not to suffer individual
grief to un-Romanize his subject. "Germanicus, Agrippina, Caius,
Vitellius, the Legates, the Centurions at Antioch, the hero, the
husband, the father, the friend, the leader--the struggles of nature and
sparks of hope, must be subjected to the physiognomic character and
features of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the Caesar of Tiberius.
Maternal, female, connubial passion, must be tinged by Agrippina, the
woman absorbed in the Roman, less lover than companion of her husband's
grandeur. Even the bursts of friendship, attachment, allegiance, and
revenge, must be stamped by the military ceremonial, and distinctive
costume of Rome." For an instance of this propriety of invention in
history, reference is made, we presume as much, to Mr West's "Death of
Wolfe." Undoubtedly, this is Mr West's best picture. The praise from Mr
Fuseli was, in all probability, purely academic; he frequently showed
that he did not too highly estimate the genius of the painter. Having
given these outlines of general and specific invention in the epic,
dramatic, and historic branches of art, he admits that there is not
always a nice discrimination of their limits: "and as the mind and fancy
of man, upon the whole, consist of mixed qualities,