gratified; so, having once assumed a language and style not adopted in common discourse, "it is required that the sentiments also should be in the same proportion raised above common nature." There must be an agreement of all the parts with the whole. He recognizes the chorus of the ancient drama, and the recitative of the Italian opera as natural, under this view. "And though the most violent passions, the highest distress, even death itself, are expressed in singing or recitative, I would not admit as sound criticism the condemnation of such exhibitions on account of their being unnatural." "Shall reason stand in the way, and tell us that we ought not to like what we know we do like, and prevent us from feeling the full effect of this complicated exertion of art? It appears to us that imagination is that gift to man, to be attained by cultivation, that enables him to rise above and out of his apparent nature; it is the source of every thing good and great, we had almost said of every virtue. The parent of all arts, it is of a higher devotion; it builds and adorns temples more worthy of the great Maker of all, and praises Him in sounds too noble for the common intercourse and business of life, which demand of the most cultivated that they put themselves upon a lower level than they are capable of assuming. So far, therefore, is a servile imitation from being necessary, that whatever is familiar, or in any way reminds us of what we see and hear every day, perhaps does not belong to the higher provinces of art, either in poetry or painting. The mind is to be transported, as Shakspeare expresses it, _beyond the ignorant present_, to ages past. Another and a higher order of beings is supposed, and to those beings every thing which is introduced into the work must correspond." He speaks of a picture by Jan Steen, the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia," wherein the common nature, with the silks and velvets, would make one think the painter had intended to burlesque his subject. "Ill taught reason" would lead us to prefer a portrait by Denner to one by Titian or Vandyke. There is an eloquent passage, showing that landscape painting should in like manner appeal to the imagination; we are only surprised that the author of this description should have omitted, throughout these Discourses, the greatest of all landscape painters, whose excellence he should seem to refer to by his language. "Like the poet, he makes the elements sympathize with his subject, whether the clouds roll in volumes, like those of Titian or Salvator Rosa--or, like those of Claude, are gilded with the setting sun; whether the mountains have hidden and bold projections, or are gently sloped; whether the branches of his trees shoot out abruptly in right angles from their trunks, or follow each other with only a gentle inclination. All these circumstances contribute to the general character of the work, whether it be of the elegant or of the more sublime kind. If we add to this the