trasts either of form or colour. In like manner, in the design and manufacture of pottery, metal work, or jewellery, we are told that the general form must be first carefully determined, and the structure, capacity, and strength thoroughly adapted to the use. These more essential points secured, the added decoration must be kept subservient to the construction; the underlying form preserved beneath the ornament; the lines of decoration enhancing the symmetry of the original design, and assisting the constructive strength. In arts, moreover, which are applied to manufactures, it is obviously essential that the exigencies of the design shall not overtax the capacity of the material, or that the demands of the artist shall not surpass the powers of the mechanism to carry into execution. Hence the schools of art located at the seats of our national manufactures are directed to place themselves in intimate relation with practical managers and workmen, that so the pupils in the schools, on the completion of their instruction, may aid the manufacturers of the district in the production of works not only attractive from their beauty, but practical in their actual utility. Such, indeed, are the works which will take high rank in industrial exhibitions, and command by their merit, both in design and execution, the market of the world. Thus do we find the diffusion of correct taste at once administering to the refined pleasure of the people, and to the monied profit of the trading manufacturer. The system of instruction adopted, and the canons of art established by the Government Department, while sufficiently definite, are, we are glad to say, not dogmatic. Every style of art is taken just for what it is worth. An example, if good of its kind, is at once admitted into the course of instruction, and adopted as a precedent for imitation. In some distant country, in some special epoch and phase of civilisation, it may have formed a portion of a world-renowned structure, and if rightly understood in its beauty and utility, if the principles out of which it has grown be analysed, and received as the germs of a vital and further development, it may well serve, under fitting adaptation, to adorn and enrich the art-products of our own age and country. In art, we are sorry to say, as in politics and theology, there are found hostile parties, each backed by its chosen bigots. Some are strictly classic. The Greeks, they say, having handed down to us the purest and the highest examples known in the world's history, have established for all time that style of art most worthy of adoption. These men would dress the English senator in Roman toga, his neck and breast open and bare, his legs shivering in the cold, his feet shod in sandals. If they build an exchange for British commerce, a grand portico with Corinthian columns and classic pediment must be reared, that so, unsheltered from the cold wind and the driving sleet, the British merchant may at least bitterly realise that the London climate has little of the warmth and the brilliancy of sunny Athens. Others there are to whom the Classic is but another name for the Pagan, who tell us in reverent accents that the Gothic is the only style consistent for a Christian people; and so, on the principle that religion, and especially medieval symbolism, should permeate all the relations of life, they house the British Legislature in a Gothic palace, and desire to imprison our English diplomacy in new foreign offices under the secret shade and among the involved passages of a middle-age interior. And, lastly, there are men of Renaissance sympathies, who, feeling the inconvenience of a strictly classic style of all portico and no windows, thinking, too, that at least for domestic purposes the Gothic is too much of high roof, eccentric gable, and pointed arch, propose to take the stately Italian palaces of Florence, Vicenza, and Venice as the most noble and convenient types for secular edifices. For ourselves we believe that each of these parties is in a great measure right, and perhaps in an equal degree wrong. Each is right n insisting on the special beauties and excellences of his chosen style, wrong when he refuses to admit proportionate advantages in the opposing systems. Now we think it is manifest that for a Government department taking upon itself the education of the people, the only proper course is to give a fair and open field to each of these contending schools. Each style is already in possession of corresponding sections of the public taste, each is essential to the art-products and manufactures of this country, and therefore it is wise and even needful that all alike should have fair and full play, only with this proviso, that the bad and the corrupt of its kind be absolutely excluded. Let the spirit, purpose, and intention of every style be clearly understood; let it be known what effect and art-expression it sought to attain; what were the conditions of climate, commerce, and civilisation under which it arose; by what successive steps it was developed to maturity; by what stages it fell into decline, then will full justice be done to its merits, and it will be saved from the injury of being wrested to a purpose for which it was neither fitted nor intended. Each school, thus understood in its essential principles, will accordingly become the best critic upon itself, because at once the severest, the fairest, and the most discriminating of judges. Its corruptions will be corrected and condemned by its beauties. Thus it well becomes the authorised artinstruction of this country to show itself tolerant of all parties, and sensitive to all phases of the beautiful; intolerant only of the false and the corrupt. Thus, even though there should be little promise of originality in invention, at least we may hope that the growing art of this country 161 will be marked by correctness and purity, free from the hybrid progeny of those illicit alliances between antagonistic schools and principles which have given birth to the startling monstrosities of other times and distant countries. We have shown how great is the need for the diffusion of correct princorrespondingly great are the efforts ciples of taste, and we have seen how Already the happy results of these now made to meet this national want. endeavours are found in the manufactures of the country, and ere long, we believe, all classes will share in the pleasure and advantage which high taught in the evening school, the culture can afford. The mechanic lady instructed during the day, will severally diffuse a knowledge and a love of art, the one in the midst of the manufacturing orders, the other among the patrons of wealth and high position. We now see the time approaching when art shall penetrate into all the relations of life; when not only the luxuries for the rich, poor, shall adorn alike the palace and but the simple necessities for the the cottage with that beauty which is a "joy for ever." The time, we say, is nigh, when man shall strive in all his works to approach that completeness and fitness which mark the more perfect ways of creation, making our industry, our manufactures, the clothes for our bodies, the furniture for our houses, part of that larger economy in which uses are mingled with beauties, thus constituting art a second and a reflected nature. ST STEPHEN'S. PART SECOND. ERE France the last dread century closed in blood, It is not here intended to describe the impression made upon profound thinkers, or upon pure and earnest philanthropists, by the warning signs that preceded the great French Revolution; the lines in the text refer to the joyous levity with which those on the surface of society regarded the prognostics of the coming earthquake. The gay temper in which airy wits and young nobles introduced the grim spirit of the age as a pleasant fashion of the drawing-room, is well hit off by Count de Ségur in his Memoires ou Souvenirs : On trouve "Pour nous, jeune noblesse Française, sans regret pour le passé, sans inquiétude pour l'avenir, nous marchions gaiement sur un tapis de fleurs qui nous cachait un abîme. Rians frondeurs des modes anciennes, de l'orgueil féodal de nos pères, et de leurs graves etiquettes, tout ce qui était antique nous paraissait gênant et ridicule. La gravité des anciennes doctrines nous pesait, le philosophie riànte de Voltaire nous entrainait en nous amusant. La liberté, quelque fût son langage, nous plaisait par son courage; l'égalité par sa commodité! du plaisir à descendre tant qu'on croit pouvoir remonter dès qu'on le veut et sans prévoyance nous gôutions tout à la fois les avantages du patriciat, et les douceurs d'une philosophie plebéienne. On applaudissait à la cour les maximes républicaines de Brutus; enfin on parlait d'independence dans les camps, de democratie chez les nobles, de philosophie dans les bals, de morale dans les boudoirs."Memoires ou Souvenirs de M. LE Comte de Ségur, de l'Academie Française, pair de France, vol. i. pp. 26, 42, 152. Found out a thorough gentleman of Rome, France sets the fashion to all States polite; England grew frisky in her own despite ; Hampdens and Lovelaces got drunk together, And the red cap display'd the Prince's feather. Gay time and strange, when George the Fourth was young, When peers, six-bottled, talked as Marat wrote, Don Juan in the rôle of demagogue. At home thus reared, in foreign parts improved, Each had these merits,-massive breadth of sense, Read what remains of Fox,-where find through all Tush-weigh no sentence! what pervades the whole? But in the Briton, if large faults you scan, His that warm genius which preserves the child— "And like the shadow proves the substance true." Men live who tell us what no books can teach, Striking you most when into talk-like ease The action? what Quintilian would have shock'd; Men in a passion must be in the wrong; And, heavens! how dangerous when they're made so strong!" Thus is it strange, with all his genius, zeal, Such head to argue, and such heart to feel, |