of contemporary jealousy having subsided, then will posterity give the honour due to my invention. How far the inventor's anticipated idea of the opinion of posterity upon his design may be justified, we know not, for as yet this new order has never been executed in any single instance. In fact, inventions of this kind have always proved futile, for while the Corinthian order has afforded to the world admiration and delight for upwards of two thousand years, so far from a new order being invented after this lapse of time, not even a new member, or a new moulding, has been added to what was before known and used by the ancients; indeed it is as useless to attempt to improve upon the orders, as to gild on fine gold, to add perfume to the violet, to paint the lily, or to add another colour to the rainbow.

MODERN SCULPTURE IN ROME.

THE four most celebrated works of the modern sculptors in Rome, says Ficorini on the authority of Spence, are, MICHAEL ANGELO'S Moses; ALGARDI'S Story of Attila; FIAMINGO's Susanna; and BERNINI's Bibbianna.

TRAJAN'S COLUMN.

THIS celebrated monument is composed of twentyfour stones only, cut within, for the staircase. It is one hundred and twenty-eight Roman feet high, just the height of what was taken from the hill, to

make room for Trajan's forum, which was one of the most magnificent beauties in Rome. This column stood in the midst of it, and on that was his statue, and it is said, his ashes in an urn.

PORTRAIT PAINTING.

As a distinct branch of the art, portrait painting only began with the commencement of the seventeenth century, when the name of "ritrattisti” was given to the Italian limners of that day. "Till we have other pictures than portraits," says H. Walpole, "and painting has ampler fields to range in than private apartinents, it is in vain to expect that the arts will recover their genuine lustre." Kneller, the last eminent name given to the arts before that barbarous interval which occurred in England between his day and that of Sir J. Reynolds had turned the profession into a trade. Such men

where they offered one picture to fame, sacrificed twenty to lucre, and lessened their own reputation, by making it subservient to their fortunes.

FUSELI'S CHARACTER OF ALBERT DURER. FUSELI, in his edition of Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, admirably says of Albert Durer, that "He seems to have had a general capacity, not only for every branch of his art but for every science that stood in some relation with it. He was perhaps the best engraver of his time. He wrote treatises on proportion, perspective, geometry, civil

and military architecture.-He was a man of extreme ingenuity, without being a genius. He studied, and as far as his penetration reached, established certain proportions of the human frame, but he did not invent or compose a permanent standard of style. Every work of his is a proof that he wanted the power of imitation; of concluding from what he saw, to what he did not see; that he copied rather than imitated the forms of individuals, and tacked deformity and meagreness to fulness and sometimes to beauty. Such is his design. In composition, copious without taste, anxiously precise in parts, and unmindful of the whole, he has rather shewn us what to avoid than what to follow in conception he sometimes had a glimpse of the sublime, but it was only a glimpse. Such is the expressive attitude of his Christ in the Garden, and the figure of Melancholy as the Mother of Invention. His Knight attended by Death and the Fiend, is more capricious than terrible, and his Adam and Eve are two common models, hemmed in by rocks. If he approached genius in any part of the art it was in colour. His colour went beyond his age, and in easel-pictures as far excelled the oil-colour of Raphael for juice, breadth, and handling, as Raphael excels him in every other quality. His drapery is broad, though much too angular, and rather snapt than folded. Albert is called the father of the German school, and if nu

:

merous copyists of his faults can confer that honour, he was. That the exportation of his works to Italy should have effected a temporary change in the principles of some Tuscan artists, in Andrea del Sarto and Jacopo da Pontormo, who had studied Michael Angelo, is a fact, which proves that minds at certain periods may be as subject to epidemic influence as bodies."

ANTIQUE MUSAICS.

THE fine old Musaic picture, of four pigeons drinking out of a basin of giallo antico, is much the finest Musaic now existing of the ancients; and is almost as good as what they do at present at Rome. It is an absolute painting, and the basin is so admirably rounded and hollowed at bottom, that the spectator appears to see under the side of it.

ARCHITECTURE AND LITERATURE COMPARED.

SIR WILLIAM CHAMBERS very, justly observes, that it must not be imagined that buildings, considered merely as heaping stone upon stone, can be of advantage, or reflect honour either on countries or particular persons. Materials in architecture, are like words in phraseology, which, singly, have little or no power, and may be so arranged, as to excite contempt; yet, when combined with art, and expressed with energy, they actuate the mind with

unbounded sway. A good poet can move even with homely language; and the artful disposition of an able architect, will give lustre to the vilest materials, as the feeble efforts of an ignorant pretender must render the most costly enrichments despicable. The progress of other arts depends on that of architecture. When building is encouraged, painting, sculpture, gardening, and all the other decorative arts, flourish of course, and these have an influence on manufactures, even on the minutest mechanic productions; for design is of universal advantage, and stamps a value on the most trifling performances; the consequences of which, to a trading people, are too obvious to require illustration.

ANNIBAL CARACCI'S FRESCOES IN THE

PALAZZO FARNESE.

AMONG the beautiful paintings at Rome, none are more deservedly admired than those in the Farnesian Gallery. They were executed in Fresco by Annibal Caracci, and represent the amours of the gods and goddesses, with the history of Andromeda.

All the paintings are so surprisingly beautiful, that the best judges are of opinion, that no gallery in the universe can be compared to this. But merit is not always properly rewarded. Caracci