nature, though of less value. He employed skilful painters to copy what he could not purchase. Through the interposition of Rubens he obtained the Cartoons of Raphael, and by the negotiation of Buckingham, the collection of the Duke of Mantua, containing eighty-two pictures, principally by Julio Romano, Titian, and Correggio. These and others rendered the great gallery of Whitehall a place of general attraction; there the king was oftener to be found than in his own apartments; all who loved or encouraged art went there; and so careful was Charles of those favourite works, that on the occasion of a public banquet, he caused a temporary place of accommodation to be constructed, rather than run any risk of soiling the paintings by the vapour of candles and torches.

This gallery contained in all four hundred and sixty pictures, by thirty-seven different artists. Of these eleven were by Holbein, eleven by Correggio, sixteen by Julio Romano, ten by Mytens, seven by Parmegiano, nine by Raphael, seven by Rubens, three by Rembrandt, seven by Tintoret, twenty-eight by Titian, sixteen by Vandyke, four by Paul Veronese, and two by Leonardo da Vinci. All these were the private property of the king. The nobles, imitating the example of the throne, purchased largely whenever an opportunity offered. In 1625 Buckingham persuaded Rubens to sell him his own private collection, consisting of thirteen pictures by his own hand, nineteen by Titian, thirteen by Paul Veronese, seventeen by Tintoret, three by Leonardo da Vinci, and three by Raphael.

Charles considered this noble gallery but as the commencement of one much more valuable and magnificent, and he proceeded to collect materials with taste and enthusiasm. By a letter, written with his own hand, he invited, though in vain, Albano into England. Buckingham exhausted all his arts of persuasion to entice over Carlo Marratti; and Venet, a

French painter of eminence, was solicited with the same bad success. What money failed to purchase or patronage to secure was obtained by chance. The Infanta of Spain sent, as her representative to the English Court, the accomplished Rubens. He was welcomed with great honour, and during the remission of public duty was prevailed upon to embellish the banqueting room of Whitehall with the Apotheosis of King James-a work distinguished by such freedoom and vigour of drawing, and such magnificence of colour, as excited general admiration. To the fame of this great painter nothing can now be added by praise, and as little can be taken from it by censure. The singular ease, vigour, and life which he imparted to all that he touched, the freedom and truth of his drawing, and the glowing and unlaboured excellence of his colouring, have been written upon and talked about in every nation; and the universal eulogy need not be repeated here.*-Rubens remained one year in England, and gave by his works a visible impulse to art. Frigid imitation, and cold and mechanical colouring, began to rise into boldness and varied richness; we had no longer forms without freedom, and faces without life. We have at present in Britain eighty-eight paintings by the hand of this great master.

Charles was equally fortunate in obtaining the aid of Vandyke; it came, too, as many things of much value come, in a way that may be called accidental. The painter had heard of the honour which art received in England, and arrived in London in 1632, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. He remained a short time quite unnoticed, and retired to the conti

*From fame thus established the sharp censure with which Fuseli visits the allegories of the school of Rubens can subtract little. There is much bitterness, but there is also not a little of truth, in the remarks. "Those allegorical histories are empty representations of themselves, the supporters of nothing but clumsy forms and clumsier conceits; they can only be considered as splendid irnproprieties, as the substitute for wants which no colour can palliate and no tints supply."

nent in disgust. The king then learning what a treasure he had lost, employed Sir Kenelm Digby to sooth him and bring him back; and in this he was successful. Vandyke returned, was admitted into the ranks of the royal painters, and as he wrought with equal rapidity and success, soon gave such evidence of his abilities as delighted the monarch, and consequently captivated the whole court. The queen, then young and lovely, sat to him, and so did her sons; her example was followed by many lords and ladies of the court, and also by the king, who bestowed a knighthood and a pension of two hundred a year upon the fortunate artist. No portrait painter indeed ever merited royal favour more.

"Fame,"

Vandyke had studied under Rubens. says Walpole, "attributes to his master an envy of which his liberal nature was, I believe, incapable, and makes him advise Vandyke to apply himself chiefly to portraits. If Rubens gave the advice in question, he gave it with reason, not maliciously. Vandyke had a peculiar genius for portraits; his draperies are finished with a minuteness of truth not demanded in historic compositions; besides his invention was cold and tame; nor does he any where seem to have had much idea of the passions and their expression-portraits require none." This seems but a cold acknowledgment of the talents of this great artist, whose portraits are now, and are likely to remain, the wonder of all nations. Of those

works, this island alone possesses more than two hundred. He has been equalled in freedom by Reynolds, and surpassed in the fascination of female loveliness by Lawrence: but no one has yet equalled him in manly dignity; in the rare and important gift of endowing his heads with power to think and act. With all his vigour, he has no violent attitudes, no startling postures; all is natural and graceful. Whatever his figures do, they do easily; there is no straining. Man in his noblest form and attitudes was ever

present to his fancy; he strikes his subjects clearly and cleverly out; he disdains to retire into the darkness of backgrounds, or to float away the body into a cloud or a vapour. All his men are of robust intellect, for he is a painter of mind more than of velvet or silk; yet he throws a cloak over a cavalier with a grace which few have attained. His ladies are inferior to his men; they seldom equal the fresh innocent loveliness of nature. He remained long in this country; and to his pencil we owe many portraits of the eminent persons who embellished or embroiled the most unfortunate of English reigns.

"Vandyke's pictures," observes Barry, "are evidently painted at once, with sometimes a little retouching, and they are not less remarkable for the truth, beauty, and freshness of the tints, than for the masterly manner of their handling or execution." Of the St. Sebastian and Susanna by the same artist, in the Dusseldorf gallery, Reynolds remarks, "they were done when he was very young; he never afterward had so brilliant a manner of colouring; it kills every thing near it. Behind are figures on horseback, touched with great spirit. This is Vandyke's first manner when he imitated Rubens and Titian, which supposes the sun in the room; in his pictures afterward he represented common daylight."

The public mind during this period was laden and heaving with another leaven; and that fierce spirit was visibly at work which turned our churches into stables, and levelled the ancient fabric of our monarchy with the dust. Men of talent turned their attention to more important matters than those of art, and I cannot help feeling surprised that a time teeming with the elements of strife and commotion should have produced an artist of such merit as George Jamesone. Of this painter, distinguished by the name of the Scottish Vandyke, less is known than I could wish. He was the son of an architect,

and was born at Aberdeen in the year 1586. He went abroad; studied under Rubens in the company of Vandyke; returned to Scotland in 1628; and commenced his professional career at Edinburgh. His earliest works are chiefly painted on panel; he afterward used fine linen cloth. Having made some successful attempts in landscape and history, he relinquished them for portraiture-a branch of the art which this island has never failed to patronise. He acquired much fame in his day, and was considered, after Vandyke, the ablest of the scholars of Rubens. His excellence consists in softness and delicacy, and in a manner broad and transparent. His colouring is beautiful; his shades not changed, but helped by varnish; and there is very little appearance of the pencil.

When Charles visited Scotland in 1633, he sat for his portrait to Jamesone, and rewarded him with a diamond ring from his own finger. Many of his portraits are still to be found in the houses of the Scottish nobility and gentry. So well had he caught the manner and spirit of Vandyke, that several of his heads have been imputed to his more famous contemporary. I must not omit to mention that some of his pictures are in the college of his native place, and that " The Sybils," a work of merit, was copied, according to tradition, from two of the beauties of Aberdeen.

The prices which he received for his pictures seem small, even in the swelling numbers of the Scottish currency. In the genealogy of the house of Braedalbane occurs the following singular memorandum -it is dated 1635. "Sir Colin Campbell, eighth laird of Glenorchy, gave unto George Jamesone, painter in Edinburgh, for Robert and David Bruces, kings of Scotland, and Charles the First, king of Great Britain, and his majesty's queen, and for nine more of the queens of Scotland, their portraits which are in the hall of Balloch (now Taymouth),