The _ideal_ is not a negative, but a positive thing. The leaving out the details or peculiarities of an individual face does not make it one jot more ideal. To paint history is to paint nature as answering to a general, predominant, or preconceived idea in the mind, of strength, beauty, action, passion, thought, &c.; but the way to do this is not to leave out the details, but to incorporate the general idea with the details; that is, to show the same expression actuating and modifying every movement of the muscles, and the same character preserved consistently through every part of the body. Grandeur does not consist in omitting the parts, but in connecting all the parts into a whole, and in giving their combined and varied action; abstract truth or ideal perfection does not consist in rejecting the peculiarities of form, but in rejecting all those which are not consistent with the character intended to be given, and in following up the same _general idea_ of softness, voluptuousness, strength, activity, or any combination of these, through every ramification of the frame. But these modifications of form or expression can only be learnt from nature, and therefore the perfection of art must always be sought in nature. “The Fight” will show clearly how the writer of true talent can elevate even the most brutal of themes. The paper entitled “My first acquaintance with Poets,” and that headed “Of Persons one would wish to have seen,” have a personal interest apart from the abilities of the writer. The article “On Liberty and Necessity,” that “On Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding,” and that “On the Definition of Wit,” bear with them evidence of a truth but little understood, and very rarely admitted—that the reasoning powers never exist in perfection unless when allied with a very high degree of the imaginative faculty. In this latter respect, Hazlitt (who knew and acknowledged the fact) is greatly deficient. His argumentative pieces, therefore, rarely satisfy any mind, beyond that of the mere logician. As a critic—he is perhaps unequalled. Altogether he was no ordinary man. In the words of Bulwer, it may justly be said—that “a complete collection of his works is all the monument he demands.” The illness of both Publisher and Editor will, we hope, prove a sufficient apology for the delay in the issue of the present number, and for the omission of many promised notices of new books.