Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/129

 There is at least another refuge. Paintings are now rendered as permanent as books by engraving, or statuary, by mosaics. In the time of Pliny, there were Greek paintings in Rome 600 years old. There is a painting at Florence dated 886. It is also to be hoped that christianity and civilization have made such advances, that no more Goths, Vandals, Turks, and fanatics, will take pleasure in demolishing works of art as in ages past.

THE ENGLISH NATIONAL GALLERY.

"A fine gallery of pictures is a sort of illustration of Berkeley's theory of matter and spirit. It is like a palace of thought—another universe, built of air, of shadows, of colors. Everything seems palpable to feeling as to sight: substances turn to shadows by the arch-chemic touch; shadows harden into substances; 'the eye is made the fool of the other senses, or else worth all the rest.' The material is in some sense embodied in the immaterial, or at least we see all things in a sort of intellectual mirror. The world of art is an enchanting deception. We discover distance in a glazed surface; a province is contained in a foot of canvass; a thin evanescent tint gives the form and pressure of rocks and trees; an inert shape has life and motion in it. Time stands still, and the dead reappear by means of this so potent art!

"What hues (those of nature mellowed by time) breathe around, as we enter! What forms are there