and amazing contempt for the feelings
of any such unhappy modern professors
of art as may happen to be within hearing.
Indeed, these "knowers" set themselves in
open opposition to the Doers.

Now there can exist no doubt in the
mind of any reasonable person that finer
work, in certain departments of art, has
been produced in old than in modern
times. This holds true with regard to all
forms of art. The Iliad, the Parthenon,
the Elgin Marbles, are grander specimens
in their different kinds than any which have
been produced since. So again, it may be
said of the religious painting of the middle
ages and of the period which next succeeded
them, that it, in its peculiar way, has never
been surpassed. The fact is, however, by
no means to be fairly quoted in evidence
of the decay of painting generally. A fair
chronological survey of the history of art
will always show that it has various
developments, and goes through various
phases; and that it passes on from one to
another of these, in implicit obedience to
that fundamental law of change and
progress which affects all things.

That certain branches of art have been
brought to greater perfection in former
times than they ever attain now, may,
then, be safely asserted by the modern critic;
but he should by no means go further than
this. Unfortunately a great many critics of
this our day do go further, and much further.
They assert, on behalf of the ancient
masters, a claim to an amount of superiority
over the modern which is overstrained and
exaggerated. They admit of no defects in
the former, and allow of no merits in the
latter. Yet, that there might be assigned,
with perfect fairness, a considerable share
of both, to both, might easily be proved by
an impartial examination of those very
pictures at Burlington House. In that
collection there can be no doubt that there
are pictures by old masters of unsurpassed
and unsurpassable excellence. Such a
portrait, for instance, as that of Andrade, by
Murillo, is alike magnificent, whether
regarded as a mere piece of painting, or as a
faithful rendering of strong individuality.
Nothing, again, can be more exquisite than
some of the Vandykes; especially the well-
known three heads of Charles the First.
They are beautiful beyond praise as mere
works of art, and are so perfectly right and
satisfying as delineations of character that
it seems as though the value of physiognomy
as a science were for ever established
by the correspondence between face and
character, of which these portraits give so
admirable an illustration. Of such pictures
—and many more in this collection might
be included with them—no expressions of
admiration, however strong, can be regarded
as overstrained: except only such as claim
for them a degree of merit with which no
art of more recent date may venture to
compete. Yet, strange to say, there are those
who do demand this position for them, in
the teeth of the strongest evidence of the
successful rivalry of the old masters by
the comparatively new. That any
admirer of the old masters, however fervent,
should assert their unapproachable superiority,
having two such pictures before him
as the Tragic Muse and the Blue Boy—not
to mention others by the same masters—
would seem almost impossible. For, surely,
the merit of these two works is not inferior
to that of any of the pictures exhibited in
this gallery. Indeed, in the case of the
Siddons portrait, there is in one respect a
certain superiority over those other master-
pieces. There is a soul painted here, as
well as a body: a soul, too, in the highest
condition of spiritual exaltation. There is
no such instance of painted thought, of
a glance of the mind into the spiritual
world, in this collection, or perhaps in
any other. In this regard, there is positive
superiority on the part of the Reynolds
picture to the works by old masters
exhibited here. In other respects, this and
the Gainsborough Blue Boy are simply
not better and not worse than the finest
of the pictures around them; since what
may be said of the finest among the "old
masters"—that they are simply of the
highest order of merit attainable in this
world—must be said, too, of these
comparatively modern productions.

It is, probably, from a conviction
entertained by the exclusive admirers of the
ancient masters, that any admission of a
claim on the part of such moderns as
Reynolds and Gainsborough to an equality of
merit with the older painters, might
injure their whole case, that such claim
is sturdily resisted by the fraternity of
knowers. What an interruption in the
course of that continuous decline, which
these knowing ones love to dwell on, would
be effected by the appearance on the scene, at
a period so late as the end of the eighteenth
century, of two artists capable of producing
work as fine as that of Titian or Vandyke!
To make any such concession would be
ruinous. The simplest way is to deny to
more recent art achievements all right