threw around fascinations which rather tended to dissipate than to encourage religious sentiment. The divinity of art, which had deigned to shine with sacred lustre beneath and through the natural veil of modesty, indignantly withdrew, when that veil was rudely cast aside by the undevotional hands of her not less skilful but more deteriorated professors. The Venetian school, with a truly congenial luxury of colour, evolved the idea of civil polity, in all its connexions with religion, with judicature, with manners, commerce, societies, dignities, triumphs; a large field, indeed, but one in which the great civic idea was the characteristic, running through every subject. Even the nude, before considered as most eligible in the display of art, yielded to civic dress and gorgeous ornament. What other ideas remain to be evolved? The world does not stand still--art may for a time. We must wait till some genius awaken us. There is, we repeat, no modern school among us; art is pursued to an extent unprecedented, but without any fixed serious purpose, in all its multifarious forms, and with an ability sufficient to show that some moving cause is alone wanted. We progress in skill, in precision and clearness; but the hand is little directed by the mind. Our exhibition walls abound with talent, but are for the most part barren of genius: and surely this must continue to be the case, while the public mind is in its unpoetic, its utilitarian state, and shall look to art for its passing charm only as a gentle recreation, an idle amusement. If there is any tendency to a school, it is unfortunately to one which is most in opposition to that pure school which found, and cherished, and idealised the sanctity of female beauty.