incorrect in expression, false in drawing, or unnatural in what is called composition.  On the contrary, it is demonstrable that they exceeded all others in these particulars, that they partook less of coarseness and of conventional sentiment than any school which succeeded them, and that they looked more to nature; in fact, were more true, and less artificial.  That their subjects were generally of a melancholy cast is acknowledged, which was an accident resulting from the positions their pictures were destined to occupy.  No man ever complained that the Scriptures were morbid in their tendency because they treat of serious and earnest subjects:  then why of the pictures which represent such?  A certain gaunt length and slenderness have also been commented upon most severely; as if the Italians of the fourteenth century were as so many dray horses, and the artist were blamed for not following his model.  The consequence of this direction of taste is that we have life-guardsmen and pugilists taken as models for kings, gentlemen, and philosophers.  The writer was once in a studio where a man, six feet two inches in height, with atlantean shoulders, was sitting for King Alfred.  That there is no greater absurdity than this will be perceived by any one that has ever read the description of the person of the king given by his historian and friend Asser.

The sciences have become almost exact within the present century.  Geology and chemistry are almost re-instituted.  The first has been nearly created; the second expanded so widely that it now searches and measures the creation.  And how has this been done but by bringing greater knowledge to bear upon a wider range of experiment; by being precise in the search after truth?  If this adherence to fact, to experiment and not theory,—­to begin at the beginning and not fly to the end,—­has added so much to the knowledge of man in science; why may it not greatly assist the moral purposes of the Arts?  It cannot be well to degrade a lesson by falsehood.  Truth in every particular ought to be the aim of the artist.  Admit no untruth:  let the priest’s garment be clean.

Let us now return to the Early Italian Painters.  A complete refutation of any charge that the character of their school was neccessarily gloomy will be found in the works of Benozzo Gozzoli, as in his ‘Vineyard’ where there are some grape-gatherers the most elegant and graceful imaginable; this painter’s children are the most natural ever painted.  In Ghiberti,—­in Fra Angilico, (well named),—­in Masaccio,—­in Ghirlandajo, and in Baccio della Porta, in fact in nearly all the works of the painters of this school, will be found a character of gentleness, grace, and freedom, which cannot be surpassed by any other school, be that which it may; and it is evident that this result must have been obtained by their peculiar attachment to simple nature alone, their casting aside all ornament, or rather their perfect ignorance of such,—­a