and inclinations are always accompanied by correfpondent form, fize, and pofition of other parts of the cranium, the knowledge of which will prevent the artist from blending the features of different nations in the fame individual, and enable him to give that true character to national figures introduced into a compofition, which has always been felt as a beauty, and the want of it as a defect, though the cause has lain concealed. This fubject may justly be confidered as a new and interesting study in the natural hiftory of man, which requires the joint labours of phyfiologifts to furmount all the difficulties attending it. It is alone by forming a very large collection of the craniums of different people, that a difcrimination can be made between what is general, from what is merely accidental; what is perfonal and to be ascribed to the diverfities obfervable in individuals, from that which is national and characteristic of a particular people.

The other articles, minutely treated in this book, relative to a new manner of drawing portraits in profile, according to certain rules deduced from the confirmation of the cranium, and the changes made by age, being founded upon indubitable principles, cannot be subjec to fimilar incertitude; fo that refpecting thefe, every ftudent has the means of making great improvement completely in his power. The great utility of the remarks concerning the beauties of the antients will be felf-apparent.

The contents of our fecond book are the small remains of lectures upon other fubjects relative to drawing; the ideas of which fuggefted themselves, while the Profeffor was engaged in the purfuit of his firft object. They were collected from imperfect manufcripts and detached hints, found among the Profeffor's papers after his decease, and published by his fon in as complete a manner as circumstances would allow. Of confequence they are merely to be confidered as notes and heads of lectures, the fubftance of which was given extempore. This will fufficiently explain the reason why the fcientific introductions appear fo difproportionate to the explanatory parts. It muft alfo be noticed, that at the time thele lectures were delivered, the audience enjoyed the great advantage of feeing every part of the fubject explained, by a great variety of extemporaneous sketches, which were fucceffively effaced from the board to make room for others. Thofe communicated to the public, are the only ones to which the Profeffor had given permanency; and of thefe the fketches, illuftra tive of the paffions, were too imperfect to be given as they were found; the engraver was obliged to fupply fome ftrokes that had been omitted.

Profeffor Blumenbach of Gottingen, is purfuing this study with great affiduity. He has already published two Decades of differences in the craniums of different people. The tranflator has only been able to procure the firft; from which he learns, that the specimens in the poffeffion of this Profeffor, led him, in fome few inftances, to differ from Profeffor Camper refpecting characteristic marks. each has formed his opinion from the fpecimens in his poffeffion, thofe differences manifeft the difficulties hinted above, and prove that further investigations alone will enable us to diftinguish between accidental forms and national marks.

As

All

All the other drawings were fufficiently accurate not to require additions or alterations. We are informed that Profeffor Camper had it in contemplation to extend the fubjects much farther, arrange his ideas with more accuracy, form each lecture into a diftinét treatise, and illuftrate the pofitions advanced by a regular feries of drawings. But upon recefs from the acdemy at Franiker, public affairs engaged his immediate attention during the political troubles in Holland, until death terminated every fublunary purfuit.

Although, from the above caufes, the lectures on the manner of delineating the different paflions, and on the points of fimilarity between quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, founded upon this fimilarity, are neceffarily imperfect, and have a claim to the indulgence due to frag ments and rough sketches; yet they may be deemed a valuable acquifition to the painter. They abound with found criticism, and furnish hints which promife peculiar advantage to the delineator of the human paffions, or of objects in the animal kingdom; and they will greatly aflift the connoiffeur in judging of the accuracy and merits of a performance in this department of painting. In a word, the principles and hints advanced, contain valuable germs, the developement of which promifes an abundance of rich fruit to the intelligent artist.’

ART. XX. A Philofophical and Critical History of the Fine Arts. Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture; with occafional Obfervations on the Progrefs of Engraving in its feveral Branches; deduced from the earliest Records through every Country in which thofe Arts have been cherished, to their prefent Eftablishment in Great Britain, under the Aufpices of his Majefty King George III. In Four Parts, Vol. II. By the Kev. ROBERT ANTHONY BROMLEY. B. D. &c. 4to. pp. 580. l. is. Boards. Cadell jun. and

Davies, &c. 1795.

WE

E gave fome account of the first volume of this work in our Review for February 1794, p. 151. The prefent volume is divided fometimes into books and fometimes into chapters: containing the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th books of Part II. and the 1ft, 2d, 3d, and 4th chapters of Part III. The 4th book treats of Etruria; the 5th of antient Rome; the 6th of the Eastern empire; the 7th of Gothic architecture. The chapters relate chiefly to the arts in modern Rome and Flo

rence.

In fpeaking of Etruria, the author obferves, after other antiquaries, that the Tufcan ftyle of fculpture refembles the oldeft Grecian. The following obfervations, however, may enable us to diftinguifh the one from the other:

If under the foregoing circumstances, and indeed in a general afpect, there be fuch a fimilitude between the Etrufcan ftyle and that of the oldest Greeks that the difcrimination may not always be eafy, yet

Profeffor Camper died at the Hague, in the year 1789.'

there

there are others in which that difcrimination is plain and conftant. And these we shall find in the cloathing of the figure. The older Greeks adorned the head with long channels or ringlets of hair, which fell down over the neck as may ftill be observed in the Mercury and other medals of those artists, in the ancient Proferpines on the medals of Syracufe, and in the head of bronze found at Herculaneum, more ancient than all the other bronzes that we know of. On the contrary, in the Etrufcan medals and idols, and other works, those hairs were commonly either ftraight down, or cut as it became the Roman fashion; or, if they were formed into channels, they either fell about the forehead, or at most encompaffed the whole head. The figure or character, (if fo may be it called) we naturally find in each of those ancient schools to be a mere copy of the national features and national form refpectively, without any great skill or concern about the idea, fince the artists of those times worked only after nature. The Etrufcan heads have the profile lefs ftraight, and their figures have ufually lefs flenderness, than the Greeks. It may be faid that the Etrufcan style in their figures is conformable to that of their architecture. The Tuscan order is the fouteft of all; but it is the leaft genteel.'

Mr. Bromley proceeds, in imitation of Winckelman, to divide the Tufcan ftyle into various kinds, which appeared at different epochs: but, as his book is not accompanied with plates, according to the modern fashion, the reader will not gain any diftinct notion of the fubject from his verbose but inadequate defcriptions. This obfervation unfortunately applies to the work throughout; which is the more to be lamented, because the author appears, in this volume, to have employed much diligence in collecting his materials. As a fpecimen the leaft chargeable with the obfcurities and inaccuracies of loaded expreffion, we fhall infert a paffage refpecting the revival of arts at Conftantinople, and the first introduction of fubjects taken from holy writ:

If the quantity of fculptures carried on in Conftantinople, if the life and fpirit which pervaded that employment, if the eulogium paffed on thofe works of art by fome of the Byzantine hiftorians, may be received as teftimonies of their merit, we thould then conclude that fculpture was not as unfavourable to the views of Conftantine as painting, and that it had gathered new powers by it's migration from the weft to the east. There can be no doubt but the enlivening patronage of it's new meridian produced a new vigour. Whatever had become of the art of cafting large ftatues in the later periods of Rome, or whether from the mere want of employment it had rarely been feen, moft certainly it was brought into furprifing action at Conftantinople. For fcarcely in any part or period of the ancient world can we be led by hiftory to the conception of more numerous and ftately works in fculpture, particularly in bronze, and fometimes in filver, than are prefented to us in all the quarters of that city, commencing with the age of it's first emperor, and continued through many fucceeding ones til! the art itself became the object of perfecution. Whoever will follow the narrative of Petrus Gyllius through all the wards of that city, will

be

be apt to imagine that Paufanias is leading him by the hand through the fculptures of Athens, or Junius through thofe of the world. The forum of Conftantine, the forum Augufteum, the Imperial palaces, the Imperial walks, the porticos, the Chalca, and above all the Hippodrom, not to mention the temples old and new, nor to speak at all of the various collections of antiques, were fo filled with ftatues and other fculptures, the works of Conftantine and his fucceffors, that we are naturally led to conclude, what in truth was the cafe, that of all the fine arts, fculpture was that with which they were most pleased, and on which they bestowed the greatest study. We must nevertheless remember that the age of Conftantine, although nearer to the ages of purity, was itself a declining age, and much more those which were ftill later in time. Allowing for all the meliorating effects of a fpirited patronage, the nature of things was not wholly to be controuled, declenfion was not to be raised at once into ftrength, nor the want of tafte into purity.

The writers who have made us acquainted with those works of art, and who by their language would lead us to fuppofe that the nature of things was at once counteracted in the new feat of empire by the cure of that declenfion which had preceded the age of Conftantine, must be read in that refpect with caution; they must be confidered as historians, but perhaps it was the leaft part of their character to be critics in the arts. Or if they were, they would fee with thofe eyes which were given to the age around them; their notions of tafte would be fuch as were derived from the tafte which they had feen produced : they would speak of the works which came forth in their own times, or near them, as the Florentines fpoke in exultation over the first picture of Cimabue,which they conceived to be wonderful, because they had seen no better. Even Petrus Gyllius, who flourished in the age of Leo X. if he had ftudied the fine arts as much as the antiquities of literature, and if his miflion from Francis I. into Italy and Greece had been to collect works of art as well as ancient manufcripts, cannot be supposed to have beheld them with accuracy of taste at a time when hardly any of those antiques were recovered, by the study of which that accuracy of tafte has chiefly been attained by the moderns. If other authorities were not fufficient to fhew that with all the encouragements given to fculpture in the age of Conftantine, it cannot be confidered as affording any models of art, the converfation which is recorded to have paffed between Conftantius the fon and fucceffor of Conftantine and Hormisda the Perfian architect, is decifive on the point, Surveying the brazen horfe in the forum of Trajan at Rome, along with the fuperb buildings adjacent, Conftantius faid that his utmost wish would be, to find abilities in his empire which could execute fuch another fculpture as that;" when he had fome scores of brazen horfes on the columns, and in the Hippodrom, of Conftantinople. Hormifda's reply did not mend the matter much, when he observed, with no little vanity intermixed, that before the emperor could produce fuch another horfe, a proper stable should be provided-and then he himself muft build it."

The encouragements, with which Conftantine was enabled to keep up the powers of art around him, received a very important ftrength and increase from the fubjects of holy writ, which then opened a new and

extenfive

extenfive field for the encouragement of ingenious talents. In thofe powerful and affecting hiftories, in all the various fcenes arifing from the scope of divine revelation, wider and more attractive interests were difclofed to the views of the pencil, ever guided before by the hands of heathens, who were aliens to the commonwealth of Ifrael, who counted the doctrines of the gospel foolishness, and who lived without God in the world. Conftantine gave full effect to the zeal which as a new convert he felt. The arts both of painting and sculpture were fully employed in the fervice of Chriftianity, and not of Christianity only, but of the older revelation. Eufebius enlarged much in commendation of that emperor for the opportunities he took of making the arts contributory to useful inftruction, while they decorated the city. Thus, fays he," the fountains were adorned by fculptural skill with the emblems of a good paftor, well known to thofe who understand the facred writings; and among other attentions of that kind you might fee the history of Daniel and the lions figured in brass, and shining with plates of gold."

It was natural for thofe arts to direct their attention not only to leffons and events, but to thofe great characters from whom both had flowed. They feized with rapture, as well they might, the reprefentation of thofe chofen apostles, who planted the gofpel through the world at the expence of their own lives-of thofe first difciples and martyrs, who helped forward that glorious work not less by their death than their labours-and, above all, of that divine person, whom to view in the well-felected traits by which the imagination of the artift would approach to the expreffion of that "human form divine," has ever been the higheft of contemplative enjoyments; but to behold him in any affured traits of likeness would juftify, we do not hefitate to fay, nay, would command, the internal adoration of all enlightened minds to all eternity.

When we touch this point, we cannot refrain from interpofing a momentary ftop to our argument. Whether or no the age of Conftantine was bleffed with the advantage we have laft mentioned, we cannot pronounce with certainty. It fhould rather feem probable, that notwithstanding the contempt in which Jefus Chrift was held by the Jews, fome portrait or model of him was taken, at least among his friends and if fo, the general caft of his features and perfon might have been conveyed down to the age of Conftantine, not quite three hundred years after. It may be legend, or as an argument for image worship it may be fufpected, but as we find it, fo we shall give it to the reader. Gregory the fecond, patriarch of Conftantinople, in his epiftle to Leo Ifaurus the head of the Iconoclafts, fpeaks of the first Chriftians as having often painted our Saviour and other martyrs to his religion. His words are thefe. " Qui dominum, cum viderent, venientes Hierofolymam, fpectandum ipfum proponentes, depinxerent, prout viderant. Cum Stephanum protomartyrum vidiffent, fpec. tandum ipfum proponentes, prout viderant, depinxerunt. Et uno verbo dicam, cum facies martyrum, qui fanguinem pro Chrifto fuderunt, vidiffent, depinxerunt." But perhaps what Eufebius of Cefaræa relates from his own eye- fight may have more weight; and if that be true, there is foundation enough to conclude that Conftantine had