Kingsley in his republished Miscellanies, as manicheism in art. And certainly it is a principle little in accordance with the practice of his chosen favourites the English pre-Raphaelites-and little consonant with their well-known love for original sin under their chosen symbol of inveterate ugliness. But we care not for a term of mere theological opprobrium. The principle itself, by whatever name called, is a fundamental doctrine in religion, an acknowledged fact in humanity, and lies as the corner-stone to all sound philosophy of art. A principle of evil, whether or not it be actually personified under the form of Devil, is universally admitted as existent in the world. This principle of evil our daily experience but too clearly tells us is in perpetual conflict against the good, and revelation indicates that the same warfare has even divided heaven itself. Call it what you will, evil is a fact and a mystery in the ordination of providence from which you cannot escape. It is an admitted difficulty in theology, in life it is a call to continual warfare, and not less in art must the stern fact be admitted, and when admitted, met as best it may. The great typical event of Christ tempted by Satan comes to us in ten thousand forms; and the serpent in nature, as a symbol of evil, is entwined round the tree of the forest, and lurks beneath the flower. To every true artist endowed with spiritual or aesthetic insight, each outward form in creation is indeed a symbol and a manifestation of an inner life. The human face is the mirror of the soul within, and so the outward face of nature-every flower that smiles, and each beast that roars from lurking thicket, is the expression of essential harmonies or discords. Evil is a fact, and the only question is how it shall best be met and overcome. It is truly a curse, yet manifestly not an unmitigated curse. In life we know that it rouses to heroism and even to virtue by antagonism. In literature and in art, in like manner, it alone renders tragedy possible; and all the valour and the virtue implied in suffering relieved and overcome, take their first origin in evil existent and sin

committed. To go further into this question as it here opens before us is of course now impracticable. We have said, we trust, sufficient to show that in the theory and the practice of the arts, evil cannot be ignoredthat its existence once admitted, it must be overruled for good, the serpent head crushed, the devil cast out, Satan, as in Raphael's wellknown picture, thrown beneath the feet of the victorious Michael. The art, indeed, which would say to evil, Be thou my good, is like to the man impure of leprosy, or to him whose dwelling was among the tombs, possessed by an unclean spirit whose name was legion, whom no man could bind, no, not with chains. We say that in Christian art this devil must be cast out; - that in all religious art it has been cast out; and that thus an artistic ideal has been sought after and attained, like unto, if the comparison be permitted, the new birth preached by Christianity itself. Mr Kingsley may call this manicheism if he will; but at least it is the principle which Fra Angelico and the holy painters of old have uniformly preached throughout their works. It is the principle, not of evil triumphant, but of evil overcome. And thus in these early pictures, like unto one indeed published by the Arundel Society-the Madonna, with attendant angels and the heavenly host,

original sin has given place to a pristine beauty, and art is made the mirror of that first nature which God pronounced as good.

This is one of the important lessons which these early Christian works can teach to the present generation. All that exists is good, constitutes the ultimate axiom in the received art philosophy of the present day. Everything which is found in nature is suited for a picture,-this is an assumed dogma from which there is now no permitted appeal. Everything that lives is beautiful, every detail that can possibly be transcribed is worthy of all reverence,-these are the guiding maxims which now govern the artist in his work. But the great masters of old, as we have shown, preached a very different doctrine. The true artist works, in

deed, in the spirit of the great Artificer of the universe. He studies nature in order to discover the typical ideas, those original and perfect conceptions in which all created varieties take their first origin, from which each departs, and yet towards which again all created beings tend. The true artist seeks for the restitution of all things-the removal of those defects and blemishes which mar the absolute perfection. And in many of the earlier Christian works of which we have been speaking, the painter loved to enthrone in the upper portion of his canvass, a glorified sphere of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, resting from their labour and their earthly conflict, fashioned according to the type of the heavenly places, without spot or blemish, perfect even as the sons of God. We should, indeed, in the present day, hesitate thus to write, were there not still ancient works to bear a living testimony to the truths we venture to enforce. And these undying truths, proclaimed by all Christian art, our English pre-Raphaelite school, to its cost, has chosen to ignore.

Once more, reverting to the projects of the Arundel Society, we find abundant cause why the fresco art of Italy should be brought to the knowledge of the English public. Fresco-painting was, to the Italian artist, the ready language by which he rapidly expressed his thoughts and emotions. Easel - pictures were by comparison but subordinate and occasional productions. And it is well known that the greatest masters, from Giotto down to Raphael and Michael Angelo, executed their most important works through the medium and material of fresco. Fortunately for Italy, but unhappily for England, these wall-pictures admit of no ready removal. Our National Gallery, as we recently took occasion to show, has become richly endowed with a consecutive historic series painted upon panel or canvass; but the grand contemporary Italian frescoes in convents and churches, in loggia and stanza-works which, in fact, constitute the glory, and evince the power of Italian art-must ever remain, in legal phrase, attached as fixtures to the freehold. The un

travelled Englishman can become acquainted with these master productions only through the intervention of copies; and hence the special and important service which the Arundel Society seeks to confer upon the general public. Its operations may thus be viewed as auxiliary to the general intent of the National Gallery. In a recent article we have shown that the historic series so wisely brought to Trafalgar Square enables the student to trace the progress of the art of painting, from its first precarious rise to its triumphant consummation-to educe the laws that have governed, the influences which have promoted, this vital development-to connect into one consecutive chain the works of divers schools and epochs; and thus, finally, as in a panorama, to view art as the pictorial history of a country, the reflex of its clime, and the mirror of its landscape, the offspring of its race, the last and triumphant manifestation of its wealth and civilisation. What the directors of the National Collection have accomplished upon the walls of the Gallery itself, the Council of the Arundel Society will attempt for the portfolio of their subscribers. The private libraries of our country gentry may now glow as with the fresco art of a southern clime, and men even of moderate means may possess, as in a developed history, illustrations of the rare Italian masters. By such means the choicest works become diffused and popularised, and are brought, as it were, to the very door of every Englishman. The dissemination of such productions may be deemed an important, if not, indeed, an essential part of that general education, that extension of cultured taste which has for some years been among the most happy results of the art revival in this country.

These frescoes of Italy, moreover, concern the professional artist not less than the public at large. As compositions specially designed for an architectural position, they serve as the very best precedents of that pictorial decoration which is now, year by year, more generally applied to the adornment of our civil and eccle

siastical edifices. Space will not permit us to criticise the frescoes which have been executed by some of our most skilled artists in the Palace at Westminster. Suffice it to say that a more intimate knowledge of the fresco process and treatment in Italy would have corrected those errors and misconceptions which have unfortunately marked many of those works for national failures. The best Italian frescoes are wholly free from rawness and crudity, the colours and shadows are pure and transparent. These works in composition are distinguished by a balanced harmony suited to the symmetry of architectural arrangement; and in severe dignity they are consonant with the lines, the proportions, and the stability of a structure designed to endure for ages. Thus raised above the common level of everyday existence, the types of humanity ennobled with somewhat of senatorial dignity, they partake of that grand historic manner, which, in art, no less than in literature, is best fitted for the enduring record of a nation's greatness.

These fresco-pictures we have seen

are now threatened with destruction. But this, the calamity of Italy, may be England's opportunity. We are endowed with wealth and power, and we must be ready to save and to seize the treasures offered for our use. We must wait, ever eager on the watch. Dynasties are overthrown, and old families have fallen, and heirlooms, the riches of art, may in sore need be put to a bidding. Democracy, which sold in our own country the gallery of a Charles, may not always in Florence conserve the pictures of the Pitti. The authorities of our National Gallery, we say, must be upon vigilant watch. The "autonomy" established in Tuscany may yet, like many other grand conceptions, fall short of money; nobles, who have still something to lose, may yet be glad to fly from pillage, with pictures rolled in their portmanteaus. But some works cannot be carried into safety; and therefore it was a happy thought which led the Arundel Society to secure by copies those frail and fading frescoes which now, almost at any moment, a cannon-shot may destroy.

EVERYBODY hears, and perhaps utters, a dozen of these portentous sentences every day, and yet, perhaps, never took the trouble to consider what a proverb is what it is that makes it so popular among all classes, high and low, among all the nations of the world. Lord John Russell defined a proverb, by saying it was the wit of one man and the wisdom of many : a very cleverlooking, and neatly - expressed description, but liable to be questioned, if we take it in the sense that a proverb was originally a coruscation of wit, and became cooled and condensed in the course of time into a solid nucleus of wisdom; for one remark able peculiarity of a proverb is, that in its first intention, it is almost universally the veriest prose that the greatest blockhead could give utterance to the flattest, dullest, most unquestionable truth; and the essence of the proverb resides in that very quality. It must be almost as undeniable as the fact that two and two make four, or the learned observation of one of the fools in Shakspeare, who says ""Tis ten o'clock, and in another hour 'twill be eleven;" for you will observe, that the whole force and pungency of a proverb lies in its application, and not in the depth and ingenuity of its original form. If a man were to attend the silk-mills at Manchester, and observe the process of the manufacture of the threads, then proceed to London, and see those elegant filaments knitted into a vari-coloured receptacle for money; and then were to continue his studies into a market-place like ancient Smithfield, and examine the pendent auricles of a prodigious pig; and after all this preliminary study were to announce the startling fact, that you could not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, you would give him very little credit for ingenuity in making such a discovery. But if he were to tell you of a fellow, famous from his birth for clownishness and ill temper, who, by some circumstance or other, had been called on to fill a situation requiring generosity and

refinement, and failed entirely in hiding for a moment the original selfishness and stolidity of his nature, you would say, "No wonder he failed; you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear," and immediately the saying becomes full of meaning. The application is so apparent-made more apparent by the very truthfulness of the assertion; and we find that a dull enunciation of a commonplace has suddenly grown philosophy, natural history, knowledge of character, and wit. And another, and perhaps greater, the charm of a proverb is, that it enlists our vanity on its behalf by calling forth the faculties of our own minds. It is something in the nature of a puzzle or riddle, which everybody thinks good when they have had the cleverness to guess it; and here it is so easy, and yet so pat, so metaphorical, and yet so striking, that we feel proud of the double exertion by which we see both its primary sense and its far livelier intention. "Ha! ha!" we say, "you thought I didn't know what you meant; you fancied I did not know which was the purse, and which was the ear; but a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse." Why, there's another proverb, as utterly incapable of disproof as the other; a most staring, glaring, unquestionable truism; for who in the world ever supposed that a blind charger saw any difference between a shake of the head and a twinkle of the eye? You can never call these platitudes wisdom as regards the profundity of the abstract truth contained in them. If a proverb indeed required serious meditation, first to ascertain the meaning of its terms, secondly, the exact correctness of its statement, you would have no time to make its application. If a man by some miracle of stupidity did not know what a bird was, or what a bush was, or even how utterly valueless a canary, or a bird of Paradise itself, on the upper branch of a bramble would be, however pleasant it would prove if he had it fairly between his palms, he would never recognise the propriety of preferring a

one

present gain to an uncertain hope, which is contained in the words "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Original dulness and undeniable accuracy are therefore the proper foundations for a homely proverb. Who can hesitate to agree with a man who tells you that " man may take a horse to the water, but twenty can't make him drink?" Is there a schoolboy so obtuse as not to perceive the fact that "when the cat is away the mice will play?" Is there a bookkeeper or housewife who does not feel that" many a little makes a mickle?" There may be another class of proverbs which move just one step farther forward towards the intellectual, inasmuch as they do not rely for their reception entirely on a mere statement of a fact. There is one which goes so far as to attribute external beauty to an internal virtue, --which equalises the gift of nature by placing on a par with them the charms of character, and shows that even the shape of a nose, the colour of a cheek, the expression of an eye, may be altered by liberality of conduct. "Handsome is that handsome does" is not a very elegant, but it is a very terse, enunciation of the selfapparent truth, that gratitude is a greater beautifier than paint or pearls; that for every favour we receive, a new improvement takes place in the benefactor's, or more likely the benefactress's, appearance, till, when we have been benefited by repeated acts of beneficence, the homeliness, if there is any, disappears, the brow becomes Grecian, the motions become graceful; we don't perceive the squint-and as to the limp and stutter, they are mere delusions of the eye and ear, and have no existence in the reality of things. We have been delighted to see in Paris the respectful attention paid to the Sisters of Charity even in the street. These are generally poor women, and sometimes ladies of a strongly religious bias, who devote themselves to the care of the sick and wretched. They go noiselessly about their work, dressed in the most unbecoming raiment they could select. Their faces are nearly hidden beneath a deep fall of white linen. Their other garments are black. They are often old, and have no ex

ternal advantages to recommend them; yet we have seen the French soldiers slacken their pace as they met these devoted ministrants, and respectfully give them way. French gentlemen touched their hats as they glided by; and we will answer for it that those thoughtless Zouaves and light-hearted Chasseurs would have been rather difficult to appease, if any one had maintained before them that the most ancient and plainest of the Sisters was one whit inferior to the Venus de Medicis.

And our own poor fellows at Scutari! What must they have thought of such apparitions of heavenly beauty as were presented to them, when the English Sisters of Charity-bound by no vow but the obligation they voluntarily incurred to risk life and health in the alleviation of human sorrow-the gentle-nurtured, kindvoiced, calm-eyed daughters of fine old manor-houses, who had left the refinements of their station, and the hopes of their youth, on this holy mission-when these unpretending ladies, we say, walked with quiet steps between the rows of their beds? We do not know; and it would be superfluous to inquire if the charms of female beauty are added to the far higher charms of godly life and heroic endeavour, which are the glory of Florence Nightingale and her friends; but of this be surethe British soldier recovered of his wounds, and the British soldier's mother left at home, and his widow in her silent cottage, and his children at their village-school, have a deep persuasion that no painter and no poet have ever designed such noble features, or idealised so divine an expression, as belong to that self-devoted band. Such is the innate power of the apparently vulgar proverb-"Handsome is that handsome does." But there are some proverbs which, though universal in their application, are so local in their colouring and language, that their meaning is not so easily seen by the uninitiated. When a Scotchman wishes to tell you that the object you aim at is not very easily attainable, he gives you a little geographical information in the words, "It's a far cry to Lochaw"-which was the proud boast