Ambitious attempts were not wanting, but the effort to produce them was ever palpable. Ingenuity over-taxed gave birth to bewildering allegories, affected postures, startling contrasts, exaggerated colouring, meretricious graces. Nature was invoked to stand godmother to the progeny, but she disavowed them as spurious. [Footnote *212: An undue sense of right seems to have led Dennistoun to the brink of an absurd precipice. Why should not the orgy or crime of a worthless man, make as good a picture as the orgy or crime [or the good deeds either, for that matter] of the worthy man? Poetry surely would seem to confound him here.] The rapid decline of art when imitation of nature became more strictly its object, has led to scepticism in some quarters as to the expediency of adopting such a guide. Until human ingenuity shall attain the means of embodying and preserving perfect copies of external objects, it would be presumptuous to decide how far such copies realise that standard of beauty which high art demands. The daguerreotype and kalotype, which give the nearest known approach to such a result, are far from solving the question in accordance with naturalist views; for, on their metallic plates and porous paper, a beautiful woman is, in general, coarsely caricatured; whilst a bust of her, or a bas-relief, always retains the grace of the sculptured original, and a chalk drawing is exquisitely reproduced. Were it enough to depict with perfect precision the forms and incidents reflected on the retina, a painter would be little more than a mechanic, in whom original genius might be almost dispensed with. But, though he will treasure in his portfolios a judicious selection of such impressions as he can daily gather from actual life, these, however nearly they may approach to nature and truth, are only materials of future creations. For high art,--and of such alone would we speak whilst Italy is our theme,--something more than mere nature was undoubtedly required;[*213] yet her guidance became indispensable after the revolution in taste and feeling which dismissed mediæval traditions and types. So various, however, are the freaks of individual fancy, so fantastic the vagaries of reason uncontrolled by authority, that the new path was beset by new pitfalls. The mediocrity of early masters found a refuge in mean but inoffensive commonplace; that of their successors, mistaking freedom and novelty for original genius, revelled in extravagant creations. The acute agonies, physical and moral, which sadly consummated the Atonement for man, were figured by the former in limbs wasted as by prolonged disease, stiffened as by a lingering death: the deep affliction of the Madonna Addolorata over the Saviour's body assumed in their hands an expression of such grief as knew not the relief of tears. But the artists of the "new manner" gave to crucifixions anatomical accuracy developed in spasmodic writhings, and bespoke