Now a purchaser is confidentially "a victim," or in the more fashionable artistic phrase, “a client."

It is the "mission" of criticism not only to interpose between the counterfeit artist and his victim, but, while detecting and exposing the tricks of those who trade upon the ignorance of the public, to make manifest the excellences which deserve honour. This is the more necessary, inasmuch as these excellences must always be the result of devoted, faithful work. The critic must

therefore, never allow himself or his readers to forget that, while the pretensions of superficiality and feebleness in Art are to be treated with contempt, the shortcomings or even the errors which are allied with evident sincerity, are the failures of earnest minds pressing steadily onward and upward, and learning the truths of nature they have to teach us all the better for having often failed.

Moreover, no one understanding the true principles of criticism will ever attempt, by mere dogmatical assertion, to bully the public into an acceptance of his opinions, or lose the distinction between the artist in his professional and his private character. This distinction, we regret to say, has been too often set aside from motives of spleen and vanity. It shall therefore be our endeavour to look at the pictures from the point of view selected by the respective artists. The matter of fact work ought to be examined as a statement of facts, and the more imaginative one by its effect upon the imagination. Justice to the artist demands this, for the effect of artistic truth depends much upon the sympathy existing between the painter and the spectator. The "high volutant" style is always the refuge of the literary empiric, and we hope our readers will accept the moderation

appreciation of the higher qualities of a work of art, is by no means uncommon-not more so than the perverted taste which leads so many connoisseurs to mistake mannerism for originality, and so many critics to confound the results of mere mechanical effort with the intuitions of the true artist.

The great mass of people who like to look at pictures require to be told how far they are right or wrong in so doing why one is deserving of their admiration more than another-wherein consists the excellences of the one, and the deficiences, errors, or positive falsehoods of another. This step in the education of the taste can nowhere be more easily nor safely taken than in public collections of pictures like the Exhibitions of the Royal Scottish Academy, and under the modest but fearless guidance of criticism untrammelled by considerations which must of necessity more or less influence the writers for our public journals.

But it may be asked-"Why all this pother about pictures? Are our Exhibitions not merely places where people go to be entertained, and if entertainment is to be got-as, undeniably, it may, and is-from one picture as well as another, where is the necessity for so much being said to shew that the one is good and the other bad?" Such questions, silly as they may seem, ought to be answered, as if they put the preliminary questionWhat is the use of painting pictures at all? “Oo, is this the penter," exclaimed a west-country laird, when an eminent and stalwart artist was introduced to him for the purpose of painting his portrait; "I thocht he had been a wee, lamiter body, like the crater that pented the wife;" and turning to the R.S.A. himself, the laird added, "Od, man, ye're a muckle strong chield, ye're fit to haud the pleuch." The idea here expressed of Art and

the artistic profession, does not differ very widely from that of the modern dilletantism which regards pictures as little else than toys for children of a larger growth. The connoisseurs are, doubtless, very much more polite than the laird, but if Art has no higher value than they, and even some painters attach to it, the more able-bodied professors of it would, perhaps, be better employed at the serious work of the plough than in refined trifling at the easel. Man, however, liveth not by bread alone. There are wants in his nature that can only be satisfied in the ways appointed by his Creator. The existence of the imagination in that nature implies one of these wants, and Art, in its broad sense, affords the means of satisfaction. To all of us there is something beyond the actual-something without which our faculties want their proper objects—an inner chamber of which Imagination holds the key. Nor is this a mere phantasy of the poets. We feel it every day to be as real as the objects we look at or touch, and hence the want of that which lies beyond the scope of actual experience is as imperative as the questionings of the reason, or the yearnings of the affections. We bring this into the world with us, it is strong in our youthful years, and however custom, habit, or prejudice may affect it in after life, the faculty which at once creates the want, and the means of supplying it, is an original part of our nature. To those who consider the imagination as a power which can only entertain us because it conjures up things different from the actual, Art can be little else than merely a source of amusement; but to such as recognise it as a power whose outgoings are in search of a truth lying beyond that of perception, Art is the language in which it expresses that truth, and the greatest Artist is he who

sees it most clearly, and possessed by it, most fully interprets it.

As we all have imagination more or less, we all have an ideal—an ideal of everything to which we ascribe certain qualities, and these differ as the essential elements of our characters do. According to our delight in external nature, do its forms and colours excite the imagination, and minister to our sense of beauty. According to our sympathy with the highest or lowest attributes of human nature, will we invest it with certain qualities. Art must realise this ideal for us. It cannot express a continuous series of truths to us, but it can give us an impression which is equivalent to all these by its means of representing and suggesting the qualities of the scene, the incident, or the character. At the best, it can only do this imperfectly, but in this imperfection consists its suggestiveness. Our imagination sees beyond the actual moment, and is gratified by being excited and exercised. "The best part of beauty," says Bacon, "is what the picture cannot express ;" and the same truth is uttered by Emerson, when he speaks of all Art as initial and the symbolism of the imagination.

In the spirit of these remarks, then, we shall now proceed to the examination of this, the Thirty-fifth Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy, remembering that our aim is the enlightenment of the public rather than the glorification of the painters. We shall, as clearly and concisely as possible, point out the peculiar characteristics, the aims and the failings, the merits and the deficiencies of each artist, generally, following up with a

more especial notice of the pictures individually, as may seem necessary to a more complete understanding of what has been attempted and what has been done. We shall begin with a rapid notice of the works contributed by the English artists. Each of these pictures having been already criticised ad nauseum, our notes shall be of the briefest, merely throwing out a few leading hints, to be followed out by our readers for themselves.

No. 198. James C. Hook.-This is, we believe, the first picture by Mr Hook that has been exhibited in Scotland. Mr Hook is, in the strictest, fullest sense of the word, one of the best painters of the day. This is a fair specimen of his works. It is a quiet English pastoral, giving very charmingly and very perfectly the deep, rich, strong colouring of a clear, but not too sunny summer day.

No. 176. T. Creswick. This picture is one of those usually described by dealers as combining all the different excellences of the masters. It is a favourable representative of a class of picture now so popular among English buyers. It is very elegant and graceful and refined, but to a certain extent missy and artificial. The sheep by Cooper are hard and too neat-they are the worse part of the picture; as the figure by J. Philip, which we commend to the careful study of our landscape painters, is the best. The Piazza Navona, No. 265, and St Paul's, Antwerp, No. 371, are pleasing samples of the art manufacture with which Mr Roberts supplies the demand made upon him by the picture-buying public. They exhibit the most rapid and dexterous method of turning out pictures of architecture and figures yet discovered by any master. No. 245, Showing a Preference, by C. Horsley, is the most perfectly executed specimen of the commonplace we have met with for some time back. We believe that some