the golden age of English art might have arisen.  Every artist would have invented a subject most congenial to his powers.  REYNOLDS would have emulated Raphael in the Virgin and Child in the manger, WEST had fixed on Christ raising the young man from the dead, BARRY had profoundly meditated on the Jews rejecting Jesus.  Thus did an age of genius perish before its birth!  It was on the occasion of this frustrated project that BARRY, in the rage of disappointment, immortalised himself by a gratuitous labour of seven years on the walls of the Society of Arts, for which, it is said, the French government under Buonaparte offered ten thousand pounds.

Thus also it has happened, that we have possessed among ourselves great architects, although opportunities for displaying their genius have been rare.  This the fate and fortune of two Englishmen attest.  Without the fire of London we might not have shown the world one of the greatest architects, in Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN; had not a St. Paul’s been required by the nation he would have found no opportunity of displaying the magnificence of his genius, which even then was mutilated, as the original model bears witness to the world.  That great occasion served this noble architect to multiply his powers in other public edifices:  and it is here worth remarking that, had not Charles II. been seized by apoplexy, the royal residence, which was begun at Winchester on a plan of Sir Christopher Wren’s, by its magnificence would have raised a Versailles for England.

The fate of INIGO JONES is as remarkable as that of WREN.  Whitehall afforded a proof to foreigners that among a people which, before that edifice appeared, was reproached for their total deficiency of feeling for the pure classical style of architecture, the true taste could nevertheless exist.  This celebrated piece of architecture, however, is but a fragment of a grander composition, by which, had not the civil wars intervened, the fame of Britain would have balanced the glory of Greece, or Italy, or France, and would have shown that our country is more deficient in marble than in genius.  Thus the fire of London produces a St. Paul’s, and the civil wars suppress a Whitehall.  Such circumstances in the history of art among nations have not always been developed by those theorists who have calumniated the artists of England.

In the history of genius it is remarkable that its work is often invented, and lies neglected.  A close observer of this age pointed out to me that the military genius of that great French captain, who so long appeared to have conquered Europe, was derived from his applying the new principles of war discovered by FOLARD and GUIBERT.  The genius of FOLARD observed that, among the changes of military discipline in the practice of war among European nations since the introduction of gunpowder, one of the ancient methods of the Romans had been improperly neglected, and, in his Commentaries on Polybius, Folard revived this