carrying the instinct of levity as far as it will go. With all their affectation and want of sincerity, there is, on the principle here stated, a kind of simplicity and nature about them after all. They lend themselves to the impression of the moment with good humour and good will, making it not much better nor worse than it is: the English constantly over-do or under-do every thing, and are either mad with enthusiasm or in despair. The extreme slowness and regularity of the French school have then arisen, as a natural consequence, out of their very fickleness and frivolity (their severally supposed national characteristics); for, owing to the last, their studious exactness costs them nothing; and, again, they have no headstrong impulses or ardent longings that urge them on to the violation of rules, or hurry them away with a subject or with the interest belonging to it. All is foreseen and settled beforehand, so as to assist the fluttering and feeble hold they have of things. When they venture beyond the literal and formal, and (mistaking pedantry and bombast for genius) attempt the grand and the impressive style, as in David’s and Girodet’s pictures, the Lord deliver us from sublimity engrafted on insipidity and _petit maître-ism_! You see a solitary French artist in the Louvre copying a Raphael or a Rubens, standing on one leg, not quite sure of what he is about: you see them collected in groupes about David’s, elbowing each other, thinking them even finer than Raphael, more truly themselves, a more perfect combination of all that can be taught by the Greek sculptor and the French posture-master! Is this patriotism, or want of taste? If the former, it is excusable, and why not, if the latter?