but also that she has been as a great archangel of mercy, devoting herself to the service of man. She has laboured, her votaries have laboured, not to increase the power of despots or add to the magnificence of courts, but to extend human happiness, to economize human effort, to extinguish human pain. Where of old men toiled, half-blinded and half-naked, in the mouth of the glowing furnace to mix the white-hot iron, she now substitutes the mechanical action of the viewless air. She has enlisted the sunbeam in her service, to limn for us, with absolute fidelity, the faces of the friends we love. She has shown the poor miner how he may work in safety, even amid the explosive fire-damp of the mine. She has, by her anæsthetics, enabled the sufferer to be hushed and unconscious while the delicate hand of some skilled operator cuts a fragment from the nervous circle of the unquivering eye. She points not to pyramids built during weary years by the sweat of miserable nations, but to the light-house and the steam-ship, to the railroad and the telegraph. She has restored eyes to the blind and hearing to the deaf. She has lengthened life, she has minimised danger, she has controlled madness, she has trampled on disease. And on all these grounds I think that none of our sons should grow up ignorant of studies which at once train the reason and fire the imagination, which fashion as well as forge, which can feed as well as fill the mind."

V.

YOUNG PAINTERS.

AINTING is one of the most ancient arts. In the

PAINTING

earliest forms of civilization which recent explorations have revealed there are many memorials of the care and labour which were bestowed upon this art. On the monuments in palaces and temples of Assyria and Babylon and in temples and tombs of Egypt there are striking evidences of drawing and painting which astonish our modern eyes. The Etruscans in Italy were distinguished in art, and painting flourished among them before it was practised in Greece. One of their cities was called by a name which is understood to signify "a town of artists," and the remains have been greatly admired for their beauty. Even in Central America this art was known and followed. When the Spaniards first landed, they were surprised by observing that the mode of conveying intelligence to Montezuma regarding themselves and their ships was by paintings representing the strangers and their dress and their vessels.

In Greece, where beauty was worshipped, artists were highly honoured as the ministers chosen to preserve the most exquisite forms of beauty for constant admiration. "Consider," says an eminent writer-" consider the respect which must have been paid to great artists when such a man as Socrates pronounced them the only wise men. Æsop took

the greatest pleasure in lounging in their painting-rooms; Marcus Aurelius took lessons in philosophy from an artist, and always said that the latter first taught him to distinguish the true from the false; and when Paulus Æmilius sent to the Athenians for one of their ablest philosophers to educate his children, they selected Metrodorus the painter, and let it be remembered that amongst the children placed under his care was one of the Scipios." Painters in Greece were regarded as the property of the nation, and were often maintained at the public expense. Art at length found its home in Italy, and penetrated to the West. Though requiring long and patient study, there have, nevertheless, been some remarkable achievements of youth in painting.

GIOTTO (1276-1336) became so eminent in painting, sculpture, and architecture, as to share the honour of creating these arts anew in the modern world. He was born at Vespignano, about fifteen miles from Florence, and was the son of a peasant. He was observed by the celebrated Cimabue drawing figures on a slate while feeding sheep. The artist was so interested in the young genius that, with consent of his parents, he took him to his own house and gave him lessons in painting, in which he soon far surpassed his kind master. It is said that his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes " was painted when he was twenty-two, and that it was not the first of his famous pictures. Petrarch, whose portrait he painted, asserted confidently that the art in Giotto had attained its highest perfection. He also painted the portrait of Dante, who was his personal friend. He was buried in the Cathedral of Santa Croce, at Florence; and the epitaph boasts that nothing was wanting to his powers but what was wanting to Nature herself. Raphael Santi had not then been born.

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI (1475-1564) was born at

While getting his

Caprese, in Tuscany, of noble lineage. education, he developed a taste for drawing. His father did not like this, but was induced to yield to the desires of the youth, and to place him under a master. His merits were so great, however, that instead of paying a premium he received one at the early age of fourteen. He was bound for three years, and became painter, sculptor, architect, and even poet. Lorenzo de Medici took him into his service when he was only eighteen; and even then he produced the magnificent bas-relief of the "Battle of the Centaurs." He lost his patron by death two years after, and soon had occasion to retire from Florence for a short time. Meanwhile the discoveries of ancient remains aroused a great passion for the antique, to the disparagement of modern art. Michael Angelo executed a "Sleeping Cupid," which was buried in the earth, and then offered for sale as a specimen of antique art. It was eagerly bought by a cardinal for a large sum. It was, however, found out that Michael Angelo had been the sculptor, and he was invited to visit Rome, where he wrought so many masterpieces both of sculpture and of painting in the full maturity of his powers. His group of the "Virgin Weeping over the Dead Body of Christ," now in St. Peter's Basilica, and his gigantic figure of "David," may be said to have been the achievements of his youth in sculpture.

His paintings are for the most part the work of his age. "The Last Judgment," which occupied him for eight years, was produced after he was sixty. It was after that age when he was appointed architect of St. Peter's. He has left behind him the noblest specimens of genius in each department. of art to which he turned his attention. They all show the effort of a great mind which had thoroughly mastered by study and patient exercise the great principles of art. Youth cannot realize this, though it may be dedicated to the pursuit.

Such works are the outcome of long practice and full years. "Michael Angelo was one of those rare beings who are wanted when they come, and have opportunities put in their way adequate to develop the powers with which they are gifted."

TIZIANO VECELLIO (1477-1576), one of the greatest painters that ever lived, was born in the small village of Cadore, at the foot of the Alps in the Venetian territory. He showed a taste for art when very young, and was instructed by a local artist. At the age of ten he was sent to Venice and placed under competent masters-Zuccati, and Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. His early extant works are wonderful productions for youth to execute. Of such is "Christ and the Tribute Money," now at Dresden. Few artists have lived so long, for he was ninety-nine when he died.

GIORGIO BARBARELLI, commonly called Giorgione (14771511), was a fellow-pupil of Titian, but died when he was only thirty-three. He was a native of Castelfranco, near Trevigi. He was early sent to Venice. In youth he introduced a new mode of colouring, and excelled in fresco-painting, while he also became one of the greatest portrait-painters. Titian admired him much, and learned both to copy his style and to improve upon it. The early death of Giorgione left Titian without a rival, and bequeathed to art a great achievement of youth.

RAPHAEL SANTI (1483-1520) "was a painter from his cradle. He played with the implements of his father's art, and in a short time exhibited a talent for drawing of such extraordinary precocity that his father chose for his master the most renowned painter of his day, Pietro Vanucci, called Il Perugino." He was born at Urbino, in the Papal States. He was an adept pupil, and when working on the same canvas with his master, was so careful and exact that the whole appeared as the workmanship of one hand. He faced the