by the Italian schools, and this will be the subject of his forthcoming volume. In the first work, indeed, we have glimpses of the Italian method, and recipes of the varnish supposed to be used by Correggio; but we look to certain information, which is the fair promise of the second volume. In the _Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts_, in addition to the essays on painting, sculpture, and architecture, taken from the "reports," we have Mr Eastlake's review of Passavant's _Life of Raphael_, extracted from the _Quarterly Review_; notes from Kugler's _Hand-Book_, on the subject of the paintings in the Capella Sistina; extracts from the translation of Goethe's _Theory of Colours_, on the Decoration of a Villa; and, perhaps the most interesting of all, if we may not say the most important, a fragment on "The Philosophy of the Fine Arts," not noticed in the chapter of contents. To this last, being so entirely speculative upon the very cause of beauty, and so new in matter, we should feel disposed to invite discussion on the side of doubt--partly because, it being professedly a fragment, by suggesting the difficulties attending his theory, a clearer exposition in the further prosecution of it may be the result. If it were not, so to speak, for the genius of materials--or if genius be not allowed, we may say the characteristics of materials--poetry, painting, and sculpture would be subject but to one order of criticism, under one set of rules. But though each has its agreement with the others in the same leading principles--the foundation of general taste, and mostly arising from moral considerations--yet have they, individually, their own diverging points, from which they seem freed from the "commune vinculum." It requires a nice discrimination to ascertain for each art these points of deviation from the general rules. These rules are, from observation and from books, more easily comprehended, and the common scope of all the arts understood; but, to an inquiring mind, difficulties will often present themselves, when seeming differences and contradictions occur; for undoubtedly all these arts must be reconciled with each other, and made akin. It becomes, therefore, an important step in the education of taste, to learn the necessarily different modes by which they each approach their ends--the same as far as the general principles are concerned, but with a variance according to the characteristics of each. Mr Eastlake has been very successful in pointing to these distinctions, in showing the rules which guide all, and those which necessitate the differences. We were particularly struck with this discrimination in his _Treatise on Sculpture_, than which we have never read any thing more clear and convincing. We quote a passage with this bearing:--