shoulders of his victorious sons: Pericles is seen speaking to Cimon; while Socrates, Anaxagoras, and Euripides listen, and Aristophanes laughs and scoffs.

The fourth piece descends to modern times, and the scene is laid at home. The Thames triumphs in the presence of Drake, Raleigh, Cabot, and Cooke. Mercury, as Commerce, accompanies them; and Nereids are carrying articles of manufacture and industry. Some of these demi-celestial porters are more sportive than laborious, and others still more wanton than sportive. As music is connected closely with all matters of joy and triumph, Burney, the composer, accompanies Drake and Raleigh, and cheers them with his instrument.

The fifth picture is a meeting of the members of the Society of Arts, discoursing on the manufactures, commerce, and liberal pursuits of the country, and distributing the annual premiums. It is an assemblage of the chief promoters of the institution, male and female, with the gratuitous addition of Johnson and Burke.

The sixth picture is a view of Elysium. Mental Culture conducts to Piety and Virtue, and Piety and Virtue are rewarded by Immortal Happiness. In a picture forty-two feet long, the artist had room for the admission of many of the great and the good of all nations. Greece and Rome, France, Italy, and England, supplied him largely; and he has endeavoured to bring together the chief of their distinguished sons in one connected group, over which a splendour is shed from between the wings of angels.

Those who have examined these extraordinary works will hardly dispute that the artist grappled with a subject too varied, complicated, and profound for the pencil. The moral grandeur of the undertaking, and the historical associations which it awakened, together with the room which it afforded

fo the display of imagination, imposed upon the arden and indiscriminating Barry, and he pro bably began

With desperate charcoal round the darken'd walls

of the Adelphi,—in the belief that the subject would unfold and brighten upon him by degrees. But the sunrise of knowledge, and the full day of art and science, involved discoveries and inventions which painting could not well find shape nor colour to express. The fault of the work lies in the subject: he that runs cannot read, and he who reads cannot always understand. The description, by Barry's own pen, opens the secret somewhat: without it these six pictures, instead of presenting one continual story-simple in conception and unembarrassed in detail-would appear like so many splendid riddles. The grand style (which our artist thought to revive in this fashion) is the simplest of all, and can be comprehended without comment.

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That Jonas Hanway left a guinea instead of a shilling, for his admission to see the Adelphi pictures-that Johnson beheld "a grasp of mind in them which he could find nowhere else"-and that Townley declared they were composed upon the true principles of the best paintings," are sayings and doings sufficiently notorious, and which have had and will have their weight with the world. Nay, Lord Aldborough wrote to the artist such praise as I am half afraid to transcribe. "When I return to town, I shall again and again visit these unequalled performances: they will stand the comparison of the past and the test of future ages, for originality of design, instruction, colouring, energy and disposition of figure, and judgment and success in the invention and execution. You have taken in all the perfections, combined all the qualities of Raphael Titian, Guido, and the most celebrated artists of

the Grecian and Roman schools; and your literary works prove that you possess all the liberal arts as well as painting; and reflect equal honour on the age we live in, as shame on this country for the want of due encouragement. My house and fortune are at your service till your fortune equal your abilities." I know not what answer was returned to this splendid offer.

On those six pictures Barry spent six years-instead of three, which he had originally contemplated—a miscalculation that involved him in many difficulties, out of which he strove to extricate himself by uncommon frugality, self-denial, and labour during the periods he should have reserved for repose. He gave his day to the Adelphi, and much of his night to hurried drawings and hasty engravings, by the profits of which he sustained life. "He has recorded some of his prints," says Dr. Fryer, "as done at this time-such as his Job, Birth of Venus, head of Lord Chatham, King Lear. Many lighter things were done at the pressure of the moment, and never owned." During the progress of the work he began to perceive, and perhaps to feel, the approaches of want; and to keep. this adversary of genius at bay, he applied to Sir George Savile-a leading member of the Society of Artsto communicate his situation to his brethren, and by a small subscription enable him to exist till he had finished the undertaking. The appeal was in vain. Nay, he experienced some difficulty in ob taining that allowance for models and colours for which he had expressly stipulated, and was subjected to the official insolence of the acting secretary. The Society afterward reflected, that it would be injurious to allow a man to starve whom they might have to bury, and they accordingly kept his soul and body together-first, by two donations of fifty guineas each, and the gift of a gold medal, and, lastly, two hundred guineas at the conclusion of the work.

That Barry was very proud of his performance may be easily believed. "It will be exceedingly hard," he says, in his celebrated letter to the Dilettanti Society, "if the benefit of the laws should be withheld from the painter of such a work as that on Human Culture; which, for public interest and ethical utility of subject-for the castigated purity of Grecian design-for beauty, grace, vigorous effect, and execution-stands so successfully in the view and neighbourhood of the so justly celebrated Orleans collection." There were many to smile at the absurdities of some parts of the Six Pictures, who could not feel the depth of mind which sought to unite them into one harmonious whole. To see the River Thames carried by Tritons, and Dr. Burney in the costume of the year 1778 playing a tune to Drake and Raleigh, excited laughter. "I am by no means pleased," said a Dowager, putting her fan before her face, "to see good Dr. Burney with a parcel of naked girls dabbling in a horse pond." A young lady from the north, of great beauty and wit, went to take a look at the painter's Elysium. She looked earnestly for a while, and said to Mr. Barry, "The ladies have not yet arrived in this Paradise of yours." O, but they have, madam," said the painter, with a smile; "they reached Elysium some time ago; but I could find no place so fit for creatures so bright and beautiful as behind yon very luminous cloud-they are there, and very happy, I assure you."

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As a relief from the toil of this extensive work, he took up his pen, and in a long and able description and dissertation maintained the excellence both of the subject he had chosen, and the way in which he had handled it. This performance, amid all its knowledge and eloquence, has a strong infusion of bitter feeling; the allusions to those who grow rich and important in pursuing the more sordid branches of art, are frequent and sharp. "Mr. Barry's exhi

bition," writes Dr. Johnson, "was opened the same day, and a book was published to recommend it, which, if you read, you will find decorated with some satirical strictures of Sir Joshua Reynolds and others. I have not escaped. You must think with some esteem of Barry for the comprehension of his design." These sarcasms of Barry produced a letter bearing in every line the mental impress of Edmund Burke: it was universally ascribed to his pen, though to this moment unacknowledged. The imagination, the vigour of thought, the varied knowledge and skill of hand which the Six Pictures display, are at the outset admitted, and then the critic quits the canvass to fall sharply upon the dissertation. Barry had spoken with levity or irreverence of the art of portrait-painting; he had drawn a distinction between the poetic and the merely imitative, which separated them as far as the south is from the north. Burke urges the propriety of uniting both in historic composition, thus:

"Without the power of combining and abstracting, the most accurate knowledge of forms and colours will produce only uninteresting trifles; but without any accurate knowledge of forms and colours, the most happy power of combining and abstracting will be absolutely useless; for there is no faculty of the mind which can bring its energy into effect, unless the memory be stored with ideas or it to work upon. These ideas are the materials of invention, which is only a power of combining and abstracting, and which, without such materials, would be in the same state as a painter without canvass, boards, and colours. Experience is the only means of acquiring ideas of any kind, and continued observation and study upon one class of objects the only way of rendering them accurate. The painter who wishes to make his picture what fine pictures must be-nature elevated and improved