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    wonder . His gift of grace to the cumbersome material he had to deal with , is certainly miraculous ; like the wonder-working Watteau , who made hoops , and high heads , and court-cut coats , and wigs , and waistcoats ,, subservient to the graces . Rubens should have had ' faith' in his own creative powers ^ and have entirely ' removed * those * mountains * of muscular men and fat

    women , —but they are moulded into something like ease , and so grouped , ( and you wonder how , ) that they do not jostle each other His judgment is least shown in his favouritism for allegory , rendering his want of spirituality more apparent . His would-be supernaturals are subs . However ,, compare him with the low Dutch school and he becomes a poet . As long as that has its admirers , with George the Fourth at their head , Rubens may boast of the

    superiority of his . Give us the exaggeration of the French school rather than the vapid nothingness of your mere coloured anatomy . It proceeds from their love of action ; they must have something stirring , something under strong excitement , and they are right ; ( what is called the repose of the soul , ' is generally its laziness ;) hence their frequent selection of battle subjects ; they should show better judgment in choosing a nobler excitement than war . —

    Go into any gallery , and do you not long to add souls to the lifeless forms that have too long enjoyed a reputation for beauty , and the admiration of picture-hunters . Fair unmeaning Virgins and children , fat Venuses and frivolous Cupids , saints without souls , priests without pride , soldiers without savageness , all sorts of people without any thing but mere form and colour , nothing

    approaching to a spirit either of good or evil to animate them . Where is the help for this ? As yet the arts lack the patronage they deserve . We do not mean the knighting a President , or asking an R . A . now and then to a stray dinner at a lord ' s , or said lord purchasing a picture of said R . A ., but the people's money which goes into other channels should be devoted more frequently to procure

    pleasures for them which would improve and refine the national character . We lie in wait for the time not only when ' swords shall be beaten into ploughshares / but when such senseless pageants as coronations , such childish baubles as coronets , and all their accompaniments , shall be changed into works of art ; forms that live in marble majesty , faces that breathe from out the canvass a moral , intellectual , and physical beauty . Much might be done

    with what already exists , if all would combine for the general good . Go then , all of ye who can , and take a lesson from the . Louvre Lords who have influence , and , what is better , private galleries to bequeath ; merchants who have money ; people who have wills and voices ; and artists who have genius ; go , and return with a determination , that , as far as in you lies , you will assist to obtain for England , —nay , for every nation in the world , —something which shall truly deserve the name of " a National Gallery .

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    A National Gallery . 845

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 845, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/41/