From the preceding remarks, and the names now enumerated, who are mentioned without any reference to comparative rank or merit as to each other, two inferences are deducible: first, That the masters more immediately in the public eye, as now at the head of the various departments of art, are on the whole superior to those of the last age; and, secondly, That between the former and their present contemporaries, the interval is small in comparison with the position occupied by Reynolds, Hogarth, Wilson, or Gainsborough, in relation to the school over which they presided. Hence the general conclusion seems evident, that in Britain, the art, as compared with itself, has continued to improve. Compared with foreign art, the distinctive character of the English school is strongly marked. Painting on the Continent exhibits a striking uniformity of style, with such peculiarities as, on a general view, will not lessen the truth of a common classification. The Continental artist, then, studies to detail, but fails in power of general effect; his performances are more valuable as works of art and of imitation, than of imagination or abstract resemblance. The parts are beautifully made out, finely drawn; but the whole is too seldom connected by any animating principle of general similitude, uniting the separate elaborations into one broad and forcible harmony. Hence the dry, the meagre, and the disjointed particulars, the usual components of their labours, though in themselves truer than the constituents of British art--better drawn, it may be, and more carefully finished, as they almost always are, yet contrast disadvantageously with the bold and powerful, though large generalizations of our pencil. Nor can there be impartial question, though each be separately defective, that more genius is displayed in the latter than in the former. The English artist paints more to the mind; the French and the Italian to the eye. The first looks abroad upon the universal harmonies and oppositions of nature; the second scrutinizes and carefully renders the filling up of her aggregated forms, and the lesser concurrences of her general effects. Art, with us, represents objects as they seem in their relations, rather than as they actually exist; among our rivals, it delineates things as they are in themselves, to the neglect of those modifications by which reality is diversified through pleasing falsehood, especially as viewed in reference to a medium of expression, founded itself in delusion. In the one case, nature is seen and imitated as a picture; in the other, her operations and forms are contemplated as materials out of which pictures are to be wrought. Hence English art satisfies, but deceives; the foreign style does not deceive, but fails to satisfy.