The incipient connoisseur will do well to read the chapter in this volume which will tell him "how to judge pictures well." It will tell him even in what position to see a picture. He disapproves of the use of the mirror, in which the picture is reflected as giving a softness and harmony not genuine; but as it was the practice of Giorgione and Correggio, "in order to learn the effect of the colours, of the masses, and of the work as a whole," he recommends it to _the painter_. He expects, however, from the amateur an impartiality almost impossible to attain, when it is expected to reach such a point that "all schools, all masters, all manners, and all classes of pictures will be a matter of indifference to him." We fear that an amateur who could reach this indifference, would be rather a general admirer than a good lover. The amateur thus advanced, "will soon be able to weigh impartially the grounds of the dispute between the partisans of ideal beauty on the one hand, and the beauty which exists in nature on the other." But here is a mistake _in initio_; for is not the Ideal, too, Nature? We should have rather expected a disquisition to elucidate this point; but our author prefers passing away from the real question to indulge in a little severity on the admirers of the Ideal, which Ideal we are persuaded he never understood; for he considers evidently that the "ideal beauties," with the "magic truth" of the Dutch school in execution, would be perfection. He would view a work painted under this union as perfection. To us it would, we feel quite sure, be an intolerable performance. For this little bit of bad taste he is called to account by his translator. The author's taste was, after all, we suspect, rather incomplete; rather the product of an educated eye than of a mind educated to embrace the Ideal. The fact is, the Ideal in practice must be the reach of a something which the eye, however educated, does not altogether find in external nature; but which, from the data of external nature, the mind creates, partly by combination, and partly from a power of its own invention altogether. The external senses in educated man are obedient to this inventive direction of the mind, and at length receive their greater, perhaps often only, pleasures from it. It is easy to imagine how the _more evident_ and real beauties of the inferior schools, for we do not hesitate to speak of the Italian as the higher, more easily captivate, especially, the incipient lovers of art. They begin by collecting the Dutch; but as they advance in taste and knowledge, and acquire the legitimate feeling for art, they are sure to end with the Italian. The uninitiated may wonder to be told there is any difficulty in judging "whether a picture is in good preservation or not." Yet here is a chapter to teach this "useful knowledge." The "perils that flesh is heir to," are nothing if compared to the perils that environ the similitudes of flesh.