ries, we trace them step by step, and find them advance with rapid progression, till the last fifty years have effected more than all preceding times. It is in these, indeed, that the Fine Arts have become truly familiar, and every where extended their influence. It is now no more, that a few travellers, animated by uncommon curiosity, are compelled to explore through long journeys and dangerous paths, those wonders whose existence was once but doubtfully known. At present the whole world is open to us. In the ninth century a bishop of Italy, setting out on an embassy to Paris, was obliged to search for a guide to point out the way-and England had again become the 'penitùs toto orbe divisa.' Now Italy is familiar to every step-Greece, though wrapped in hostility, is the attainable object of every inquisitive traveller— the ransack of the ancient arts is extended to the remotest corners of Egypt, Syria, Persia and Hindostan-and from all, whatever wealth or the rapaciousness of taste can obtain, is collected to increase the vast storehouse of Europe.

It would be an envious and useless task, to draw comparisons between modern states or cities, to determine which has derived most advantage from the ancient arts, or which possesses the most magnificent collections of them. About the middle of the seventeenth century, they were introduced in the courts of Europe, the buildings were formed on the Grecian style, and the works of taste

collected together, though these were chiefly the paintings of the Italian and Flemish schools. In England and France especially, this spirit began to prevail, and they became in modern times the great seats of the Arts, and the rivals of each other in the pursuits of peace, as they had been for centuries in those of war. The age of taste in England may be said to have commenced with Charles the First, who was himself an exquisite judge of the Arts; and the buildings of Jones, and the pictures of Vandyke, are among the best that the English now possess. A period still more accomplished, succeeded under Louis the Fourteenth in France, and the second Charles, about which period a few collections of statues, relievos and other works of ancient sculpture were formed, and have continued since to increase. Among these were the Sandwich marbles, the records of the temple of Delos-and the celebrated Arundel marbles now at Oxford, which, though no more than plain tablets similar to grave stones, are the most valuable perhaps of all that has been snatched from the tomb of antiquity, since they contain that record, which is resorted to above all others, for the knowledge of the history and chronology of Greece. Towards the middle. of the last century the collections became numerous and splendid, and they were to be found not only in the palaces of princes and the higher orders of the nobility, but in the mansions of many private gentlemen. Among these no one was superior to that of the late Charles Townly of

London, which served as a model of the residence, at once, of a Roman and a modern gentleman. Of distinguished family and fortune, but debarred, by his profession of the Catholic faith, from taking part in public affairs, he devoted a large part of his life and wealth to the Arts, and after a long residence abroad, carried home a collection, which, taken altogether, was perhaps the most choice, that had ever crossed the Alps. It was composed not of trunkless busts or broken torsos, which, however exquisite, afford little satisfaction, except to the artist or connoisseur-but it was a rich assemblage of works of exquisite taste, in the finest preservation. For these he formed a house in London, where every work was placed in its appropriate department-in his dining room were the statues of Bacchus and Silenus-he adorned his drawing room with the Graces, and his library with the Muses-and in his hall might be seen the figures of Apollo and Mars, or the bust of Alexander, while the walls around were enriched with relievos of exquisite workmanship-and thus in the midst of a busy city, he reclined at his ease, in rooms which might resemble those of Cicero and Lucullus.

These marbles are now placed in the British Museum, where rooms have been erected for them, and to them have been added many other collections, constituting altogether one of the richest repositories of modern times. Among them may be particularly named, Sir William Hamilton's fine collection of antiquities from Hercula

neum and Pompeii, the sarcophagi of Alexander and Cleopatra, and numerous other works which have since been obtained from Egypt and Greece. Of these none are more justly celebrated, than the marbles brought by Lord Elgin, which contain no less than the actual pediments of the finest temple of Athens, and the statues of the gods, the works of Phidias in Greece's best age. These, indeed, have formed a theme for the noblest poet of our times, not to describe or comment upon, but to assail as an act of sacrilege to Greece and her arts. Yet, however the sensibility or genius of Lord Byron has been awakened by the event, we may hesitate to join in his complaint. If, indeed, these marbles had been uplifted from Athens, in her polished though depressed age, when her land, though even in affliction, was still the abode of taste and genius-the poet might have been just, and the act would be regretted and condemned; but at the time they were brought away, now about twenty years, that country was a desert, peopled by barbarians, and the only question that existed was, whether the beautiful monuments of its ancient days should remain to be pounded into dust or turned into mortar, to patch or to build the wretched huts which surrounded them, or be redeemed from Turkish sloth, and transplanted to countries where they might become the studies of admiring genius and meet with kindred arts, and the enthusiasm to cherish, preserve and devote them to the uses of man

During the late long war between France and England, circumstances occurred to make those countries the great rivals of each other, not in arms alone, but in arts, and between them to render the north of Europe their immense repository. The conquests of France extending over every land, enabled her to grasp the hoard of tasteful treasures, and to mix them with her laurels-to adorn her triumphs and her capital as Rome had done before. England on the contrary, becoming the asylum for many exiled nobles, was stored with a profusion of the finest collections of statues and paintings from every quarter, to save them from conquest, or to feed their former owners. All these, the vast wealth of the British nation has enabled her to retain; and continually to add to them, insomuch that the palaces and houses of the British nobility and gentry, are stored beyond credibility with collections which rival those of Italy itself. In the peculiar taste of the British character, retired and unostentatious, these collections, instead of being thrown open to the public, form the silent enjoyment of their owners, accessible to the rest of mankind only through formal and limited means, and a large portion of them not at ell.

It is, indeed, in her private palaces, and rural residences, that the taste of England is to be most seen and appreciated; but her surface is a vast arena on which the effects of the Arts are visible at every step, in works of