uish the different schools from each other." There is,
however, nothing new said upon this subject. Undoubtedly there is much
truth in the following passage: "So much did the liberty which the
Dutch had just recovered from the Spaniards, by unheard-of efforts,
become fatal among them to the same class of art, the foundations of
which they sapped by their resolution to banish their priests, and to
substitute a religion that suffers neither pictures nor statues of
saints in their churches. From that time all the views of their
painters were necessarily turned to the other classes of art, more
susceptible of a small form, and therefore more suitable to the
private houses of the Dutch, which, though neat and commodious, are
not sufficiently large for pictures of great size." If the dignity of
art is to be recovered, it will be by national galleries, and we might
yet perhaps hope, by re-opening our churches for the admission of
scriptural pictures.

The chapter upon the division of pictures into classes, is by no means
satisfactory. It is admitted by the translator to be incomplete. At
its conclusion is a quotation from Pliny, which, as it is intended to
justify De Burtin's taste for the low Flemish and Dutch schools, does
not indicate a very high taste in either Pliny or himself. Pliny says
of Pyreicus, that "few artists deserve to be preferred to him. That he
painted, in small, barbers' and shoemakers' stalls, asses, bears, and
such things." He further adds, that his works obtained _larger_ prices
than other artists of nobler subjects obtained, and that he was not
degraded by choosing such low subjects. We beg pardon of Pliny, but we
would not give three farthings for his pictorial judgment. Indeed, had
not Lucian given us some most vivid descriptions of some of the
ancient pictures, we should have had no very high opinion of them. For
the well-known anecdotes speak only in favour of mechanical
excellence. Our author, in his chapter on the art of describing
pictures, might have taken Lucian for his model with great propriety.
There is in this chapter on division into classes, much nonsense about
beauty, Ideal and Physical. De Burtin thinks we have not any
instinctive feeling for physical beauty as of moral beauty; that a
fixed proportion of parts neither in men nor animals, any more than in
architecture, is the foundation of beauty--which is perfectly
ridiculous, and not worth an argument. Ideal beauty he here treats
with