system then adopted, the peculiarity of that minister's situation, and the situation of the country at large, in a political view, might then afford, had, it was affirmed, been long since entirely at an end; but the same system is nevertheless resolutely and uninterruptedly pursued, recovering, Antæus-like, from every apparent or accidental fall with renewed and redoubled vigour.

On the other hand, the modern tories, a hough the descendants of those who long entertained a most inveterate enmity against the family upon the throne, and who, from motives not of the purest patriotism, vehemently opposed, in the former reigns, the unconstitutional measures of the whigs, having at length entirely shaken off their old attachments, and being taken into favour and invested with power under the marked and too partial protection of the court, suddenly became its open and zealous advocates-combining, as far as the spirit of the times would admit, the speculative errors of one party with the practical errors of the other. The necessity of strengthening the prerogative of the monarch, and of supporting the dignity of the crown, was from this time the incessant theme of their argument and declamation. Concessions and indulgencies were, in their estima. tion, things incompatible with the majesty of the regal character. The high, harsh, and peremptory tone of authority uniformly marked every act of government under the almost constant predominance of this dangerous faction during the present reign, from the commitment of a printer, or the prosecution of a libeller, to those measures of provocation and oppression, terminating in a war which rent in twain

and had well nigh subverted the empire.

This party, now grown strong and confident, by an unexpected re turn of prosperity, assumed, with ostentatious audacity, the appellation of the king's friends, in which novel capacity they hesitated not to give their eager and ardent support to those measures of court policy, which had been ever reprobated by the tories of elder days, as in the highest degree pernicious and unconstitutional. The standing army, so long the theme of their invective and reproach, was now affirmed to be necessary for the preservation of the national tranquillity; the public debt was pronounced a public benefit; the connection with Hanover was honourable and useful; the influence of the crown was the happy means of consolidating the harmouy of the different branches of government; a long parliament was said to be attended with no such inconvenient consequences as had been previously and erroneously apprehended: and every attempt to restore that equality in the representation, or rather to remove those glaring inequalities so inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution and the practice of former ages, was opposed and rejected by them in terms of unbounded obloquy and detestation, as leading to nothing less than the absolute subversion of government. They professed, on all occasions, their dread of innovation and novelty-not adverting to the constant declaration of the ancient tories, that the things to which they objected were themselves innovations wholly extrane. ous to the constitution- and that they who merely wished to restore were most anjustly accused of a

fondness

fondness forinnovation, or a dan gerous propensity to tamper with the constitution, by trying new and hazardous experiments.

Although the bigh and preposterous notions once prevalent respect, ing the authority of the church had, in common with the old opinions relative to civil government, gradually fallen into disrepute, the tories of the present reign have been invariably characterized by the strength of their attachment to the ecclesiastical establishment, which they are delighted to applaud and extol as a model of purity and perfection. Any suggestion of the expediency of a reform in the church, whether in relation to the irregularities of its discipline, or the errors of its doctrine, as exhibited in a set of obsolete and unintelligible articles of faith, are received by this class of men with a sort of horror, as leading to foul suspicions of sectarian heresy, or atheistical profaneness; while the dissenters of all denominations are, on the contrary, viewed by them with eyes of jealousy and hatred, and assiduously held up o all occasions as the inveterate enemies of at least one part of the constitution, and as the doubtful friends at best of the other; and every idea of enlarging the limits of the toleration allowed them by law, and much more of extending to them the common privileges of citizens, they have uniformly exclaimed againt with affected terror and real malignity.

on

Description of the several Merits of Albert Durer, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, by Mr. Fuseli ; from Seward's Anecdotes.

ΤΗ

ALBERT DURER.

HE indiscriminate use of the words genius and ingenuity has, perhaps, no where caused more confusion than in the classifi-" cation of artists. Albert Dürer was a man of great ingenuity without being a genius. He studied, and, as far as his penetration reached, established certain proportions of the human frame, but he did not create a style. He copied, rather than imitated, the forms that surroun ed him without remorse, and tacked deformity and meagerness to fullness and beauty. He sometimes had a glimpse of the sublime, but it was only a glimpse. The expanded agony of Christ on the Mount of Olives, and the mystic mass of his figure of Melancholy, have much sublimity, though the expression of the last is weakened by the rubbish he had thrown about her. His Knight attended by Death and the Fiend is more capricious than terrible; and his Adam and Eve are two common models shut up in a rocky dungeon. Every work of his is a proof that he wanted the power of imitation, of concluding from what he saw to what he did not see. Copious without taste, anxiously precise in parts, and unmindful of the whole, he has rather shown us what to avoid, than what we are to follow. Though called the father of the German school, be neither reared scholars, nor was imitated by the German artists of his or the succeeding century. That the importation of his works into Italy should have off cted a temporary change in the prin ciples of some Tuscans, who had studied Michael Angelo, is a fact which proves, that minds at certain periods may be subject to epidemic [*A 4] 'influence

influence as well as bodies. That M. Angelo, when a boy, copied with a pen Michael Wolgemuth's print of the Temptation of St. Antony, and bought fish in the market to colour the devils, may be believ. ed; but it requires the credulity of Wagenseil to suppose that he could want any thing of Albert Durer, when he was a man. The legend contradicts itself; for who ever before heard of the bronzes of Albert Durer ?

MICHAEL ANGELO.

and

M. Angelo, punctilious and haughty to princes, was gentle and even submissive to inferior artists. Gulielmo Bugiardini, a man of tiney talents and much conceit, had been applied to by Meffer Ottaviano de Medici to paint the portrait of M. Angelo for him. Bugiardini, familiar with M. Angelo, obtained his consent. He sat to him desired to rise after a sitting of two hours; and perceiving at the first glance the incorrectness of the outline, What the devil, said he, have you been doing? You have shoved one of the eyes into the temples; pray look at it. Gulielmo, after repeatedly looking at the picture and the original, at last replied, with much gravity, I cannot see it; but pray sit down and let us examine again. M. Angelo, who knew where the cause of the blunder lay, sat down again, and patiently submitting to a long second inspection, was at last peremptorily told that the copy was correct. If that be the case, said he, nature has committed a mistake; go you on, and follow the dictates of your art.

There exists now at Holkham, among the pictures collected by the late lord Leicester, and in the pos

session of Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, the only copy ever made of the whole composition of the celebrated Cartoon of Pisa. It is a small cilpicture in chiaroscuro, and the pertormance of Bastiano de St. Gallo, surnamed Aristotile, from his learned or verbose descants on that surprising work. It was painted at the desire of Vasari, and trasmitted to Francis I. by Paolo Giovio, bishop of Nocera How it could escape the eyes of the French and English connoisseurs or artists, who had access to the collections, of which it constituted the chief ornament, is a mystery, which, for the honour of the art, none can wish to unravel.

Nothing is trifling in the history of genius. The following strange incident, extracted from the life of M. Angelo, written by his pupil, or rather attendant, Ascanio Condivi, deserves notice, because it is related from the month of M. Angelo himself.

Some time after the death of Lorenzo de Medici, Cardiere, a young improvisatore, entertained by his son Piero, secretly informed M. Angelo, with whom he lived in habits of friendship, that Lorenzo de Medici had appeared to him in a ragged pall of black over his naked body, and commanded him to announce to his son, that in a short time he should be driven into exile and return no more. M. Angelo exhort. ed him to execute the commands of the vision; but Cardiere, aware of the haughty insolent temper of Piero, for bore to follow his advice. Some morning after this, whilst M. Angelo was busy in the cortile of the palace, Cardiere, terrified and pale, comes again, and relates, that the night before, when yet awake, Lo

renzo

Yenzo, in the same garb, appeared to him again, and had enforced his orders with a violent blow on the check. M. Angelo now, with great earnestness, insisting on his immediate compliance with the commands of the vision, Cardiere set off directly for Careggi, a villa of the family, about three miles distance from Florence; but having scarcely got half way, met Piero with his suite returning to town, and instantly acquainted him with what he had seen, heard, and suffered. He was laughed at by Piero, and ridiculed by his attendants, one of whom, Divizio, afterwards cardinal di Bibiena, told him he was mad to fancy Lorenzo would charge a stranger with a message he might deliver himself to his son. Dismissed in this manner, he returned to M. Angelo, and prevailed on him to quit Florence and go to Bologna, where he had scarcely settled in the house of Gian Francesco Aldrovandi, before the predicted revolution took place, and the expulsion of the whole family of the Medici with all their party confirmed the vision of Cardiere, whether fancy-bred,' or communicated by spirit blest or goblin damned.'

LEONARDO DA VINCI.

Leonardo da Vinci, made up of all the elements, without the preponderance of any one, gave universal hints, and wasted life insatiate in experiment; now on the wing after beauty, then grovelling on the ground after deformity; now look

ing full in the face of terror, then decking it with shards, and shells, and masks: equally attracted by character and caricature, by style and common nature, he has drawn rudiments of all, but, like a stream lost in ramification, vanished without a trace.

Want of perseverance alone could make him abandon his cartoon of the celebrated group of horsemen, destined for the great council chamber at Florence, without painting the picture. For to him who could organize the limbs of that composition, Michael Angelo himself could be no object of fear. And that he was able to or ganize it, we may be certain from the sketch that remains of it, however pitiful in the Etruria Pittrice,' lately published, but still more from the admirable print of Edelinck, after a drawing of Rubens, who was his great admirer, and has said much to impress us with the beauties of his Last Supper at Milan, which he abandoned likewise with out finishing the head of Christ, exhausted by a wild chace after models for the heads and hands of the apostles. Had he been able to conceive the centre, the radii must have followed of course. Whether he considered that magic of light and shade, which he possessed in an unparalleled degree in his smaller pictures, as an inferior principle in a work of such dignity, or was unable to diffuse it over numerous groups, cannot now be determined; but he left his fresco flat, and without that solemnity of twilight, which

is more than an equivalent for those contrasts of Chiaroscuro that Giorgione is said to have learnt from him. The legend which makes Leonardo go to Rome with Juliano di Medici at the election of Leo X. to accept employment in the Vatican, whether sufficiently authentic or not, furnishes a characteristic trait of the man. The pope passing through the room allotted for the pictures, and instead of designs and cartoons, finding nothing but an apparatus of distillery of oils and var. nishes, exclaimed, Ah me! he means to do nothing; for he thinks of the end before he has made a beginning.' From a sonnet of Leonardo, preserved by Lomazzo, he appears to have been sensible of the inconstancy of his own temper, and full of wishes at least to correct it.

Much has been said of the honour he received, by expiring in the arms of Francis I. It was indeed an honour, by which destiny in some degree atoned to Francis for his disaster at Pavia.

only a short stay, when instead of resigning the veil, she only uncovers her head, permitting the veil to hang carelessly down on the shoulders. This generally produces a friendly contest between the parties: one insisting upon taking the veil away, the other refusing to sur render it. A like contest takes place at the close of the visit. When entreaty cannot prevail on the visit ant to stay longer, the veil is hidden, the slaves, instructed before hand, pretend to search for it every where in vain, and when she urges the absolute necessity of her going, she is assured that the aga, or master of the house, is not yet gone abroad, and is then jocosely dared to depart without it.

In their manner of receiving one another, the ladies are less formal than the men; their complimental speeches, though in a high strain, are more rapidly and familiarly expressed.

The common salutation is per formed by laying the right hand on the left breast, and gently inclining the head. They sometimes salute by kissing the cheek; and the young ladies kiss the hands of their senior relations. They entertain with cof fee and tobacco, but the sherbet and perfume are only produced on particular occasions.

The great men are attended in the harem, by the female slaves, in the same manner as, in the outer apartments, by the pages. They remain standing in the humble attitude of attendance, their hands crossed before them on their cincture, and their eyes fixed on the ground. The other ladies, as well as the daughters of the family, occasionally bring the pipe and coffee, but do not remain standing; they either

are