Hogarth, the first eminent English painter, if we except Scott, who excelled in sea-pieces, may be said to have formed a new school. Above the Flemish comic painters, who servilely copy low life, or debase it into farce, and below the best Italian masters, who generally draw exalted characters, and elevate human nature, as far as it was possible for men degraded by civil and religious slavery, He delineates, like Fielding and Smollett, the ludicrous features of middling life; with as much truth and force as either, and with a more direct view to a moral purpose. They who are in doubt about this matter, need only consult his Harlot's Progress, his Rake's Progress, his Marriage a la Mode, and his Stages of Cruelty. But Hogarth knew nothing of the elegance of design, the delicacy of drawing, or the magic of colours. These were reserved for English painters of a higher order. As the most excellent of those are now living, I shall not enter into a particular estimate of their merit; but observe, in general, that if they have not attained all the force of colouring, truth of drawing, and strength of expression, to be found in the greatest Italian masters, they have made ample amends by the judicious choice of their subjects. Instead of crucifixions, flagellations, last suppers, and holy families, they have given second life to heroes and legislators. They have made public virtue visible in some of its most meritorious acts: they have painted as became the sons of freedom. Nor need I be afraid to affirm, that Copley's Earl of Chatham, West's Departure of Regulus, his Pennsylvania Charter, and his Death of Wolfe, to say nothing of Reynolds's Ugolino, fill the mind with nobler ideas, and awaken the heart to more generous emotions, than were ever communicated by the pencil of any slave that kneeled at the altar of superstition'. Fortunately 14. "Since affections of every kind are equally within the painter's power," says Quintilian, “ it is of great importance that he apply himself "to excite only such as are subservient to good morals." (Inst. Orat. lib. xi.) Fortunately for the lovers of embellishment, engraving, of which painting may be said to be the prototype, has not made less progress in England during the present century than the parent art. Historical pictures can only become the property of the rich and great. And they are very liable beside to be injured by time or accident. Hence the utility of engraving in plates of copper. It multiplies copies at a moderate price; and its representations, if less perfect than those of the pencil, are more compact and durable. We have excellent prints of all our own capital paintings, and also of most of those of the greatest Italian masters. At the head of our native improvers of this elegant and ingenious art, we must ever place Strange and Woolet. The first excels chiefly in copying human figures, the latter in landscape. They have both, at present, several formidable rivals in every branch of the art, and the late unhappy Ryland was perhaps equal to either. We have yet another flourishing art, deservedly considered as liberal, and which is of English origin, unless we should allow the Chinese to come in for a share of the honour of the invention; namely, MODERN GARDEN-ING, or the art of painting a field with natural and artificial objects, disposed like colours upon a canvas. For this art, which was altogether unknown to the ancients, we are indebted to the taste and genius of Kent. taught us to imitate nature, or more properly speaking, to act upon her plan, in forming our pleasure-grounds, He xi.) And Aristotle, amongst other instructions, gives it in charge to the governors of youth" that they allow them to see no pictures but those "which have such moral tendency." (Polit. lib. viii.) The reason of this caution is founded in the depths of philosophy, in an equal knowfedge of human nature, and the influence of the arts; for there can remain no doubt, that whatever addresses itself immediately to the eye by an actual representation of objects, must affect the youthful mind, and indeed all minds, but especially the least cultivated, more than any form of words, or combination of articulate sounds, significant of ideas merely by convention. Yet we are told by a noted connoisseur, "that pictues cannot adapt themselves "to the meanest capacities, as unhappily-the tongue can.” Anecdotes of Painting in England, vol. i. pref. p. x. instead instead of impressing upon every natural object the hard stamp of art; he taught us, that the perfection of gardening, consists in humouring and adorning, not in constraining or disguising nature; consequently that straghit walks, regular parterres, circular and square pieces of water, and trees cut in the shape of animals, are utterly inconsistent with true taste. In a word, the whole secret of modern gardening consists in making proper use of natural scenery; wood and water, hill and valley, in conjunction with architecture; so as to give beauty and variety to the embellished ground, and in judiciously veiling and exposing the surrounding country: in contrasting the luxuriant meadow with the barren heath, the verdant slope with the rugged steep, the sylvan temple with the ruined tower; the meandering rill with the majestic river, and the smooth surface of the lake, or artificial sea, with Nature's most sublime object, a view of the boundless and ever-agitated ocean. Milton seems to have had a distinct idea of this kind of gardening, as far as it regards the particular spot. "Through Eden went a river large; "Nor chang'd his course, but through the shaggy hill "Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown "That mountain as his garden mound, high rais'd "Upon the rapid current,-which through veins "Of porous earth, with kindly thirst updrawn, "Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill "Water'd the garden. "From that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, "Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, "With mazy error, under pendent shades, "Ran nectar; visiting each plant, and fed "Flowers worthy of paradise; which not nice art "In beds and curious knots, but nature boon "Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain; "Both where the morning sun first warmly smote "The open field, and where the unpierced shade "Imbrown'd the noon-tide bowers.". This is certainly, to use the poet's own words, "a happy rural scene of various view's " But Milton, like all the gardeners of his time, or of those which had preceded it, confines his paradise within high boundaries, and consequently excludes distant and rude prospect, the grand charm in modern gardening; for "the champaign head "Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides "Insuperable height of loftiest shade, "Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm.' The man who first threw down the garden-wall, and sunk the fosse, whether Kent or Bridgeman, may be truly said to have broke the spell that enabled the necromancer Art to hold the fair damsel Nature so long in chains, and to have made the terraqueous globe but one great garden. From that moment, beauty began to connect itself with utility, and grandeur with rustic labour; the pleasure-ground with the pastured and cultivated field, the gravel-walk with the public road, and, the garden-lake with the navigable canal and the sea; that glorious fountain of universal communication among men, which enables the philosopher, the merchant, and the mariner, to visit every shore, and makes all things common to all. While our countrymen were thus successfully em-. ployed in extending the circle of the arts, and in embellishing external nature, science was not neglected: they were not inattentive to the motions of the heavens, or 15. The resemblance of Milton's Eden to a garden laid out in the modern taste, was first noticed by the late penetrating lord Kaims, in chap. xxiv. of his Elements of Criticism, printed in 1762. "Milton," says he," justly prefers the grand taste to that of regularity;" and he quotes part of the above extract, in confirmation of his remark. Yet Mr. H. Walpole, in retailing the same observation, almost twenty years later, seems to assume to himself the merit of it, and to congratulate himself, as if he had been making an important discovery. the the operation of the human mind. Locke and Newton have had their successors, as well as Dryden and Milton. Halley illustrated the theory of the tides, and increased the catalogue of the stars: while Maclaurin made great progress in algebra, and Gregory reduced astronomy to a regular system. These men of genius have been succeeded by very able mathematicians; but the era of discovery in mathematics seems to be past. More advance has been made in other sciences, with which Newton was little acquainted. The vegetable system of Tull has led to the greatest improvements in agriculture; and the bold discoveries of Franklin, in electricity, may be said to have given birth to a new science. With the purpose to be served by many of those discoveries, which at present so strongly engage the attention of philosophers, we are yet as much in the dark as in regard to the electric principle itself. But the beneficial effects of electricity in many medical cases, and the invention of metallic conductors, by which buildings and ships are preserved from the destructive force of lightning, entitle it to notice in a view of the progress of society, should it even otherwise disappoint the hopes of its fond admirers. Among the successors of Locke, Hume is entitled to the first place. Not that his metaphysical inquiries are more acute than those of Berkeley, Baxter, Hartley, or perhaps of Reid; but that his discoveries, like those of his great master, have a more intimate relation to human affairs-are of universal application in science, and closely connected with the leading principles of the arts. His beautiful analysis of the ASSOCIATION of IDEAS, which he comprehends, under three general heads, namely, resemblance, including contrast, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect. And his ingenious theory of the passions, or the COMMUNICATION of EMOTIONS, immediately laid the foundation of that PHILOSOPHY of the FINE ARTS, which was afterward formed into a system by lord Kaims, in his Elements of Criticism, and which has since been illustrated by many elegant writers But |