lime of art. Had the author seen
some of the noble animals, gifted with noble characters by nature, and
by the hand of our Landseer, he would have hesitated ere he
pronounced thus strongly.

The choice of a subject is considered as belonging solely to
invention, irrespective of composition or disposition. "The honour of
inventing truly belongs to him whose imagination creates all, or
almost all, of new." A distinction is made between composition and
design: indeed, according to our author, there are three parts of
invention--composition, disposition, and design. There is a repetition
of the charge of disproportion in objects, brought against Raffaelle,
to which we do not implicitly bow. He is considered as having
"committed two striking faults against nature and lineal perspective,
in his famous picture of the _Transfiguration_, by the ridiculous
smallness of his Mount Tabor, and by the disproportionable size of the
Christ and of the two Prophets." But we question if the mind, in that
state of feeling in which it beholds a miraculous and altogether
overwhelming subject, is not necessarily in a condition to overstep
the actual rules of nature, and to receive a type of things for the
reality, admitting the small to stand for the great. Were it conscious
of very exact formal truth, the power of the subject would be reduced.
Actual perspective would have, in Raffaelle's case, ruined the
picture. There was that boldness of genius which Shakspeare, when the
nature of the subject required it, adopted, which made the one, leap
over time, and the other, space and proportion.

Under the head "disposition of the subject," there is a somewhat
unsatisfactory sentence. "It contributes to the 'goodness' of the
picture," "if it avoid uniformity and positions that are too
symmetrical; if it distribute the light well; if by means of it the
groups _pyramid_ and unite well; and if it give value to all the parts
of the picture by means of each other, in such a manner as that the
result shall be a satisfactory whole." There is much here that is
true; but there is something false. And that which is false in it, has
often strangely misled artists in their arrangement and grouping.
There are some subjects of a perfectly symmetrical character; however
rare they may be, there are some. Raffaelle, in his cartoon of
delivering the keys to Peter, paints, as nearly as may be, all the
apostles' heads in one line. Is not the _character_ of Gothic
ar