It is about a hundred years since the passion, or the fashion, for collecting works of Art, began to be generally diffused among the rich and the noble of this land; and it is amusing to look back and to consider the perversions and affectations of the would-be connoisseurship during this period;—the very small stock of ideas on which people set up a pretension to taste—the false notions, the mixture of pedantry and ignorance, which everywhere prevailed. The publication of Richardson’s book, and Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, had this advantage,—that they, to a certain degree, diffused a more elevated idea of Art as _Art_, and that they placed connoisseurship on a better and truer basis. In those days we had Inquiries into the Principles of Taste, Treatises on the Sublime and Beautiful, Anecdotes of Painting; and we abounded in Antiquarian Essays on disputed Pictures and mutilated Statues: but then, and up to a late period, any inquiry into the true spirit and significance of works of Art, as connected with the history of Religion and Civilisation, would have appeared ridiculous—or perhaps dangerous:—we should have had another cry of ‘No Popery,’ and acts of parliament forbidding the importation of Saints and Madonnas. It was fortunate, perhaps, that connoisseurs meddled not with such high matters. They talked volubly and harmlessly of ‘hands,’ and ‘masters,’ and ‘schools,’—of ‘draperies,’ of ‘tints,’ of ‘handling,’—of ‘fine heads,’ ‘fine compositions;’ of ‘the grace of Raphael,’ and of the ‘Correggiosity of Correggio.’ The very manner in which the names of the painters were pedantically used instead of the name of the subject, is indicative of this factitious feeling; the only question at issue was, whether such a picture was a genuine ‘Raphael?’ such another a genuine ‘Titian?’ The spirit of the work—whether _that_ was genuine; how far it was influenced by the faith and the condition of the age which produced it; whether the conception was properly characteristic, and of _what_ it was characteristic—of the subject? or of the school? or of the time?—whether the treatment corresponded to the idea within our own souls, or was modified by the individuality of the artist, or by received conventionalisms of all kinds?—these were questions which had not then occurred to any one; and I am not sure that we are much wiser even now: yet, setting aside all higher considerations, how can we do common justice to the artist, unless we can bring his work to the test of truth? and how can we do this, unless we know what to look for, what was _intended_ as to incident, expression, character? One result of our ignorance has been the admiration wasted on the flimsy mannerists of the later ages of Art; men who apparently had no definite _intention_ in anything they did, except a dashing outline, or a delicate finish, or a striking and attractive management of colour. * * * * *