A certain national, though original character, marks the brightest epoch of the Venetian School. However deviating from each other, Tiziano, Tintoretto, Jacopo da Ponte, and Paolo Veronese, acknowledge but one element of imitation, Nature herself: this principle each bequeathed to his school, and no attempt to adulterate its simplicity by uniting different methods, distinguishes their immediate successors: hence they preserved features of originality longer than the surrounding schools, whom the vain wish to connect incompatible excellence, soon degraded to mediocrity, and from that plunged to insignificance. If what is finite could grasp infinity, the variety of Nature might be united by individual energy; till then the attempt to amalgamate her scattered beauties by the imbecility of Art, will prove abortive. Genius is the pupil of Nature; perceives, is dazzled, and imperfectly transmits one of her features: thus saw M. Agnolo, Raffaello, Tiziano, Correggio; and such were their technic legacies, as inseparable from their attendant flaws, as in equal degrees irreconcilable. That Nature is not subject to decrepitude, is proved by the superiority of modern over ancient science; what hinders modern Art to equal that of classic eras, is the effect of irremovable causes. But I hasten to the principal object of this Lecture, the consideration of the technic character of Lionardo da Vinci, one, and in my opinion the first of the great restorers of modern Art, as deduced from his most important work, the Last Supper, surviving as a whole in the magnificent copy of Marco Uggione, rescued from a random pilgrimage by the courage and vigilance of our President, and by the Academy made our own. The original of this work, the ultimate test of his most vigorous powers, the proof of his theory, and what may be called with propriety the first characteristic composition since the revival of the Art, was the principal ornament of the Refectory in the Dominican Convent of S. Maria delle Gratie, at Milan. Let us begin with the centre, the seat of the principal figure, from which all the rest emanate like rays. Sublimely calm, the face of the Saviour broods over the immense, whilst every face and every limb around him, roused by his mysterious word, fluctuate in restless curiosity and sympathetic pangs. The face of the Saviour is an abyss of thought, and broods over the immense revolution in the economy of mankind, which throngs inwardly on his absorbed eye--as the spirit creative in the beginning over the water's darksome wave--undisturbed and quiet. It could not be lost in the copy before us: how could its sublime conception escape those who saw the original? It has survived the hand of Time in the study which Lionardo made in crayons, exhibited with most of the attendant heads in the British Gallery; and even in the feebler transcript of Del Testa.