I will hold no intercourse with them." Yet notwithstanding this heresy, Barry had formed so admirable a judgment upon the masters, and upon their art in many important respects, that we have always entertained much doubt whether his time was not after all employed more to the promotion of art than if he had followed the ordinary method of study. For his own interest he unquestionably did not choose the path of personal advancement. Often, indeed, it occurs, that they whose minds reach beyond their age, are found behind ordinary mortals in the race of life.

Though free from indolence,-or rather, endowed with powers of more than common industry, Barry's ardent ambition rejected those slow methods out of which all excellence which depends upon detail mustgrow. Addicted to vast and general conceptions, he most industriously studied the main principles of outline, grouping, and composition. For such a study the pentagraph was a valuable accessory, as it fully answered the purpose of making the eve familiar with every scale of proportion. With the same view, he occasionally practised drawing in that unfinished style known by the term sketching-a most dangerous source of illusion, when not counterbalanced by the most careful practice of detail. The fact is worth explaining. The faculty which conceives effects and expressions performs its office without any distinct notion of the actual elementary means: on looking into the fire strange and characteristic faces meet the eye-one characteristic line carries with it all its accessories, and the accustomed eye completes the face. The same process takes place in looking at an imperfect drawing;-what the artist has omitted, the spectator's eye will complete for himself. The artist, in the same way, fills up the chasm of meaning according to the suggestions of his own fancy and thus he will see, in his unfinished design, all that he desires it to possess. He will soon arrive thus at an illusory perfection. He has only to try to fill in the details, in order to discover that the hand and eye work by processes entirely dissimilar. Now, a result of all this is, that certain main characteristic lines may convey the whole effect by suggestion; and thus a sketching artist

may produce any effect he aims at, provided he avoids entangling himself in minutiæ, which demand the utmost precision. Thus it is that a certain false facility is frequently acquired, which may be termed the royal road to painting. This fact is common among the amateur artists; and one of the reasons why in Dublin, where very inadequate ideas of art even yet prevail, a strong party feeling operates in favour of a loose and unfinished style, as in fact being the only one in which mere genius can ensure a decided proficiency.

From Barry's letters we learn, that the wise and eloquent reproofs and admonitions of Burke produced a strong effect upon him, and for a time repressed his growing irritability. He was so far influenced as to reflect: and his strong understanding, when directly turned upon the dark delusions of a morbid fancy, not yet confirmed by habit, (or perhaps, by any organic change,) gave way to the control of his common sense. He forcibly repressed his incessant ebullitions of dogmatism and spleen, and adopted a tone of complaisance towards those whom he regarded as enemies to his person and fame. The consequence was, a corresponding change in their manners to him: the dislike which his savage manners had excited was tempered by the respect which commanding powers are sure to obtain; and he soon found to his surprise, kindness and candour; and he lived for some time on terms of intimacy with those whom he had avoided as conspirators and enemies.

Among the notices of art which form the main substance of his letters there are many in a very high degree indicative of great sagacity, and many of his activity in the exercise of his observation. Of these even a selection is impossible: the following is curious:

"The belief that Cinabue, Giotto, and Taffi, were the restorers of art and improvers on the Greeks is with me suspicious; for there is at the church of St. Maria in Cosmedin, a picture of the Madonna and Child, as large as life, done with some skill, and brought from Greece in the time of the Iconoclasts. There is also in the Vatican Library, the Russian Calendar, with some hundred figures painted in it, and the Greek artist's name at the bottom. There is a

taste, spirit, and ability in the figures of this calendar, which is not to be met with in any other work of art executed in Italy from the time of Constantine, or at least from the time of Charlemagne, down to the age of Masaccio, in the fifteenth century."

His praise of Giles Hussey, an English artist, a contemporary, is enthusiastic. His frequent and high praises of Raffaelle frequently communicate to the reader a sense that they are rather in deference to universal opinion than from any genuine feeling of the merits of this incomparable artist. Of all the masters, Titian was his decided favourite, and the principal object of his study. He notices Ghiberti as the original model of Michael Angelo's style, and gives a detailed description of his gate of the Baptistimum of St. John, a part of which we present to the reader. Having described the first gate, he goes on

I

"But in the second gate which faces the cathedral, and which he finished some years after the first, it is the most astonishing thing that can any where be seen how much he advanced art. speak coldly of it, when I say, that though it has served as the model for basso-relievos ever since, yet it has never been equalled in any one part; the beautiful grouping of things, the happy perspective of his objects, his leaves and ornaments, and the laying out of his compositions none of his successors have been able to touch him in. But these were only mechanical parts, in which they might imitate him at a distance; but the noble reaches of Ghiberti's imagination is only to be paralleled amongst the ancient basso-relievos. When Eve rises into creation at the command of God, she is supported by little Loves, who are ushering into view the sweetest idea of a woman that I ever saw. His little figure of Sampson, Va sari mentions, and his praises are well bestowed upon it. In one word, this is the man that entirely removed the Gothic stiffness, and established in its place a poetical manner of treating things; ideas of true beauty and perfection on the one hand, and of real grandeur and sublimity on the other. And on the whole of his works he seems to have known every thing of art, but the expression of the soul in the countenance, which was reserved for his successor, Da Vinci, the absolute knowledge of the detail of all the parts of the figure, which belongs to Da Vinci and Michael

Angelo; but as this could not come into his little figures, they are many of them perfect."

We should not dismiss this portion of his life, without some specimen of his correspondence to illustrate the manner in which he felt disposed towards those who had a natural claim upon his affections. Isolated from all ties but those which appear to involve some degree of dependence, or some relation of personal interest, of protection or hostility ;-absorbed in the enthusiasm of art, or worn with the acrimonious collisions in which it was his misfortune to become entangledwe are apt to lose sight of him in all following letter to his father and mother the ordinary aspects of humanity. The is, we think, expressive of much good feeling :

"Rome, Nov. 8, 1769.

"MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHERCan I believe that my poor brother Jack should die amongst you, and no one of you think of making me acquainted with it.

The satisfaction and hope you have often had from his careful conduct and application, which I so often joyed to find in your letters, interested me ten thousand times more about him than his being my brother. Poor Jack! he was the last of the family that I parted from, and amongst the last of those I would part with, and his death has blasted almost all the hopes I had of being useful to the family, as the business he was bred to, and his sober conduct, gave me great expectations of his being able to put in practice some matters of architecture which my residence in Italy gave me opportunities of taking notice of; but this is all over, and it seems you have another son remaining with you who is of a very different cast; can this be Patrick? and is it possible that his own future prospect in life, the death of his poor brother, and the situation of his parents in their decline, can work no other effects upon him? But this is not all. My father thinks of making his will; what can occasion this? For God's sake, let such of you as are living, my father, mother, my two brothers (since I have only two), my sister, and my uncle John, write their names at least, to a letter directed for me at the English Coffee-house at Rome, by the return of the post. I leave Rome in the latter end of January, and shall make but a very short stay at Venice of a fortnight or three weeks, so that if my father writes to me on the receipt

of this, I shall either receive it at Rome, or a friend of mine who is here will send it after me to Venice. My mind has some little ease in seeing that excellent man, Dr. Sleigh, interest himself about my father and family. Good God! in how many singular and unthought-of ways has the goodness of that gentleman exerted itself towards me. He first put me upon Mr. Burke, who has, under God, been all in all to me; next he had desires of strengthening my connexion with Mr. Stewart, which is the only construction I could make of the friendly letter which I received from him in London, and afterwards he is for administering comfort to my poor parents. I shall, with the blessing of God, be in England about May next; and I hope there is no need for me to mention to one of my father's experience in the world how necessary it is to be armed with patience and resignation against those unavoidable strokes of mortality to which the world is subject. As we advance in life, we must quit our hold of one thing after another; and since we cannot help it, and that it is a necessary condition of our existence, that ourselves and every thing connected with us shall be swallowed up in the mass of changes and renovations which we see every day in the world, let us endeavour not to embitter the little of life that is before us with a too frequent calling to mind of past troubles and misfortunes; and if ever God Almighty is pleased to crown my very severe and intense application to my studies with any degree of success in the world, I am sure the greatest pleasure that will arise to me from it, will be the consolation it will give my dear father, mother, and friends.

"Your affectionate son,
"J. B.

"Mr. Burke was so kind as to send me Dr. Sleigh's letter, containing the account of the death of my brother. I had three brothers, and he does not say which it was; but by the good character he has given of him, it must be poor John."

He soon after received the account of his friend Dr. Sleigh's death, which he laments in a pathetic letter to one of the Burkes, with all of whom he kept a constant correspondence.

He left Rome in April, 1760, and

we trace his homeward route by his letters from the several places at which he stopped on his way. We are, however, compelled to forbear, and resist the temptation of his numerous criticisms, always interesting, often masterly. The only incidents which we shall here delay to notice are those of his stay at Bologna. In this city he was detained by a most untoward delay of the provision for his journey: having drawn a bill for thirty pounds upon the London agents through whom his remittances had usually come, and given it to a Bolognese banker to negotiate, he was mortified after some time by the intelligence that it was not paid in London. As Signor Vergani communicated this circumstance to the people with whom he lodged, unpleasant suspicions appear to have been excited; and Barry, particularly sensitive to such mortifications, was consequently made for a time so wretched that he became incapable of thinking of any thing else. His first notion was that he should extricate himself by pawning his watch, a present from Richard Burke. Another scheme was, to run naked from his lodging and turn friar. It is, however, to his credit, that it never for a moment entered his mind to doubt the fidelity of his friends the Burkes, whom he supposed to be away in the country, or travelling. At last, however, he obtained the welcome intelligence that the bill was paid by his friends.

During his first stay at Bologna, he mentions that he did nothing but make a dissection-but having taken a journey to Venice, he came back to Bologna, where, by the interest of some friends, the members of the Clementine His Academy sent him a diploma. admission into their body made it necessary for him to prolong his stay to paint a picture for presentation to their institute. For his subject he selected Philoctetes in the Isle of Lemnos, following the Greek epigram on an ancient picture on the same subject by Parrhasius, and using the Philoctetes of Sophocles for a comment.

In the autumn of 1830, being engaged in a tour of the Rhenish provinces, I arrived one evening about dusk at the small town of Bergheim, some half way between Aix la Chapelle and the fragrant city of Cologne. Bergheim has a quiet comfortable inn, at which Michel, my voiturier, (who was absolute in these matters,) had ordained that I should stop for the night; nor did I feel any disposition to quarrel with the arrangement, when Herr Hons, the landlord, all civility and broken English, ushered me into his snug Speisesaal, where, instead of the dull, uncompanionable German stove I expected to find, a bright and crackling wood-fire blazed merrily on the hearth. I was glad, moreover, not to find myself the sole occupant of the saul; for, after all, it may be doubted whether the chief pleasure of travel be not to see travellers; and I will confess for my own part, that-without disparagement either of snowy Alps or cindery volcanoes, of a Strasburg cathedral or of a Basilica vaticana, of Florence galleries or of Roman ruins to me the people of any country (with one sole exception) rank by no

means

among its least interesting features. My exception is Switzerland, where, between the glorious earth and the inglorious race that possess it, the extremes of grandeur and littleness are brought into too painful juxtaposition and contrast. Nothing can stand higher in the scale of nature than Switzerland-nothing in that of manhood lower than the Swiss.

In the Speisesaal, then, at Bergheim, it was my fortune to light upon two goodly tomes (if I may so phrase it) of "the proper study of mankind:" they were moreover to give the coup de grace to my metaphor-controversial, and on opposite sides of the question as well as of the fire. In other words, there sat, installed each in his

chimney-corner, and armed-the one with a cigar, the other with a mighty pendulous pipe-two "dim smokified men,"-plainly Germans both, though widely dissimilar specimens of that very heterogeneous and multiform variety of human kind-engaged, when I entered, in a conversation (or to name it in their own way, a 'twixtspeaking) the more vivacious for the considerable discrepancy manifest in the sentiments of the speakers. The cigarrist was a pale, slight, voluble creature, under-sized and yet stooping, long-armed, round-shouldered, narrow-chested, using a great deal of gesticulation as he talked, and by a particular uniform drawing-out of the right arm, and a remarkable flourish or rather twitch of the right hand, (the left being comparatively at rest,) as well as by a look, not easily defined, of inefficiency and dubious fidget about the lower extremities, as if they were not in their accustomed position, giving you assurance of a tailor as unequivocally as if he had chosen to sit on the table instead of at it; while his sharp intonation, round-about fluency, mincing utterance, occasional lapses into a Low-Dutch dialect, frequent exclamations of "yuter Yott!" and continued interchanging of the pronouns mir and mich, Sie and Ihnen, certified you with equal infallibility of a Prussian-and truly no Rhenish Prussian, but a genuine nursling of royal Berlin herself.

He of the meerschaum was a man of another stamp: tall and bulky, yet well knit, broad of brow and chest, quiet in manner, earnest but brief in speech-saying in three words what would have cost his opponent three dozen-and now and then, but not often, letting fall a large and somewhat rusty-coloured though perfectly clean hand with the dunt of a sledgehammer on the table that stood near