The author very modestly, in his introduction, professes not to write "for artists nor accomplished connoisseurs;" yet to such, we believe, the volume, in its compressed form, will be of most value. He has the honesty to confess that he has learned his connoisseurship at some cost--that he has been victimized into a knowledge of art. And as this is generally the case with most collectors in the beginning, and not unfrequently in the end too, he thinks he may be of some use to others in showing "how to judge pictures well"--"what is a good picture;" and not of the least value, how to use it when you have it. His qualification as teacher cannot be denied; for he has not only collected, but travelled much, visited all the important collections, and by comparing picture with picture, and style with style, he has been enabled to speak with accuracy upon the distinguishing marks of schools and masters. A universal admiration, a love that will embrace all schools and all styles, is of very rare attainment, and perhaps hardly to be desired; for every man of any strength, of any fixed tone of character, must necessarily have a bias. And besides, one man naturally receives more powerfully impressions through form, another through colour. It is not inconsistent that a perfect connoisseur should be equally affected by both; but the mind is not allowed the same latitude with regard to subject; the passion will ever be for that which is congenial; whatever is foreign to it will receive but a cold and passing admiration. We should collect from the whole contents of this volume, that the author was never an enthusiastic admirer of what is termed high Italian art. He seldom dwells upon "the sublime and beautiful." Gifted rather with a complacent acquiescence in what is great, than stirred by it to any heat of rapture, it is probable that at least the sphere of his pleasures was enlarged; and his nice sense of the beauty, touch, and colour, rendered pictures, of subjects of little interest, more pleasing to him, than they could be to the connoisseur of more exclusive taste. His predilection is, however, for Colour; and we agree with him, "that without the science of colouring, that so difficult science, about which the exclusive partisans of ideal beauty trouble themselves so little, their antiques and their ideal perfection may produce designs, but never can pictures." Two definitions are laid down, which, as frequent reference is made to them, we copy. Definition of painting--"The art of applying colours, without relief, upon a plain surface, so as to imitate any object in the manner in which it is seen, or may be conceived visible in nature." "A good picture" he defines to be, "a good choice of subject well represented." If we knew precisely what is here meant by "nature," a word used by all writers on art in very various senses, and commonly very vaguely, we might not find fault with the definition; but genius, which has