most favourable to the developement of genius in painting. The redundancy of her wealth, and the number of her idle men, were calling for every mode in which taste could display itself. There was no want of those who having nothing else to do, had dedicated themselves to the eultivation of their taste, and the study of painting. Contractors and loan-jobbers were in abundance, who were willing to exchange their superfluous wealth for the flattering distinction of being patrons of the fine arts. Had the pencil been left to the unbiassed patronage of the public, its natural discernment and uninfluenced judgment would have brought about the same effects it had produced in Italy and -Holland. Those who could only hope to live by winning the favour of the public, would have laboured to deserve it. When the race was free to all, emulation would have given birth to genius, and England might have gloried in a school of painters not inferior to the proudest of other nations.

But this auspicious moment was chosen to shackle the art with the fetters of an academy. At the time when all agreed that there was in the country only one artist who rose above mediocrity, forty were erected into a perpetual corporation, that their ignorance and bad taste might never die. Genius was hoped for from the accumulation of dullness. Incapacity was selected to give instruction to talent. Men were thought fit to teach what they had shewn themselves unable to practise.

From that moment the young artist felt it was not to his application, but to his diploma as an academician, he was to owe his fortune. Study became to him of less importance than the science of intrigue. The academy, not the public, was made his object of ambition. He could only hope to please the dispensers of reputation by conforming to their taste, by imitating their

defects. Academicians are like other men; few are so absorbed in their art as to be wholly lost to their interest. It was not quite unnatural that they should think that the best style which approached nearest their own: that they should not be anxious to give encouragement to a new school of painting, which could only rise on the ruin of their own fame. They who were placed at the head of their profession could not wish for change. No revolution could be favourable to them.

Accordingly since the Academy was established, though painters have got forward, the art has stood still. Sir Joshua Reynolds flourished when painting was at its lowest ebb; yet the Academy, in half a century, has not produced one man who can dispute the palm with its first president, with him who received nothing from the Academy, but gave her much. We have indeed myriads of painters, but no genius. The names of our academicians are for the most part only known to themselves; their works to the hanging committee. The impulse, which has been given to art in every other country of Europe, has produced no excitement in England. Our painters continue to tread the beaten track; any display of genius might hurt their pretension to rank; it might excite the jealousy of those who have the disposal of honours.

The establishment of the Academy has indeed insulated art. It has given to the artist a world of his own. The public takes no interest in painting. Its natural good taste cannot approve the models set before it, and it dares not revolt against the decisions of those who, it is told, are infallible. Artists finding that their judgments are never confirmed by the voice of the people, have laid it down as a principle, that only a painter can judge of a picture: they might as well have contended

that none but a cook can relish a good dinner. It is to their own bad taste they owe the apathy and indifference of their natural protectors. The nation, which of all others has the most exquisite sensibility of the picturesque, has suffered itself to be persuaded that it has no genius for painting. As it feels that it cannot praise, it supposes that it cannot judge.

These are the obligations we have to the Academy. Other nations have been content to set up such establishments, when art was already on the decline. They have suffered artists to strangle her when she was grown old and decrepit. It was reserved for the wisdom of England to overlay her in her cradle.

To see more clearly how much the interests of painting may have suffered from the establishment of the Academy, we have only to consider how such an institution would have affected other arts.

English poetry is in a most flourishing and palmy state. It spreads its branches over every province of the empire, and every branch is loaded with golden fruit. Noperiod of history can boast of so many poets, nor can put forth so many claims to excellence. England may challenge the united strength of all Europe to a competition in this delightful art; she may drop poets with all her neighbours, and beat them in numbers, in fineness, and in weight. But can any one believe, that this would have been the case, if the wisdom of the last generation had established an academy for poetry? What would have been now its condition if Hailey and Hurdis had been seated in the chairs with so many others, all mighty men in their day, but of whom nothing is now recollected, except that they were once catalogued among the ten thousand living authors of Great Britain? Our bards might have ambled along with true namby-pamby

complacency, scuffling up the dust, which they would have mistaken for the smoke of incense, and occasionally breaking into the finical graces of the Della Crusca canter. Childe Harold might have sung the loves of the butterflies, and Barry Cornwall might have indicted sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow; but we should only have had versifiers. Poetry would have sunk to as low an ebb as her sister Painting.

But we need not have recourse to supposition, to shew how hurtful is authority of every kind to the cultivation of the fine arts. Genius is no galley slave: he will not work in shackles. The influence of the two great Reviews, though much less oppressive than that of an academy, has been little favourable to the free exertion of talent. Though it has not been able to check the spirit of the age, it has introduced much mannerism. It has formed two schools, who only agree in persecuting all those who will not range themselves under the banners of either. It carries on a perpetual war against the independence of genius. Yet these evils, though great, would have been more severely felt, had they not been checked by the influence of their publishers. The stern guardians of public taste have occasionally relented from the severity of their code: the dictates of justice have not unfrequently yielded to the milder influence of gratitude. The welfare of the school has been sometimes forgotten for that of the shop. The author, whose works are ushered into public notice under the auspices of Mr. Longman, will hardly want a good word from the northern seers; if he prefer Mr. Murray's more courtly press, Pam knows his duty,

and will be civil.

Here I must stop. The desultory nature of my subject leads me into digressions, which, though pleasing

to myself, may perhaps be wearisome to my readers. I have run my glass; the little remaining sand reminds me to conclude. I think I have established the propositions I undertook to set forth. I have shewn, that a taste for the picturesque is not a natural taste; that it is not generated by a contemplation of the beauties of nature; that it owes its being to the more artificial feeling of a love of contrast; that it is most strongly felt in cities. The peculiar form it assumes among Englishmen, the love of wandering, is partly induced by the particular construction of our society, and partly by the checks that have prevented any share of its force from being dissipated in the love of painting. As its growth has been hindered on the one side, it has put forth more branches on the other. So long as my countrymen shall abound, in wealth and in leisure, so long will they cultivate this taste; and so long as painting shall be overloaded by the weight of an academy, so long will the art be neglected, and so long will Englishmen be compelled to tread in the footsteps of Dr. Syntax, and to ramble through the world in search of the picturesque.

[We have received the following curious and interesting Paper from a Correspondent. Differing, as we do, in toto, from the opinions of the writer, we cannot but admire the ingenuity and elegance of his composition. We had thought that, at this time of day, few could have been found seriously to advocate the existence of ghosts - we believed that, while all listened with interest to these imaginative tales in the circle round a Christmas fire, scarcely even the youngest of the audience had any real dread of an unearthly visitant. We find, however, that we were mistaken. The writer of the following paper is manifestly a person of talent and education, and quite in earnest in the tenets he advances. This, of itself, is a cir