of any considerable amount of time, much less of money, unless with the expectation of a decidedly beneficial pecuniary return; yet this the Society does not give : we think it might. If, instead of offering small premiums in connexion with so many different subjects, it would yearly select a few of the most important, and promote them by large ones, the result, we think, would be a more decided success; the Society, it seems to us, would become a still more valuable agent for the promotion of all the great objects it has at heart. We now turn to an event in the history of the Society which has already done much to popularise it in years past, which may yet do much more, when the magnificent works which that event placed in their possession shall be as generally known and appreciated as they deserve. Some sixty years ago, there might have been seen daily passing in a direction between Oxford Street and the Adelphi, for years together, and through all kinds of weather, one whose appearance told, to even the most casual observer, he looked upon a remarkable man. Referring to himself, in one of his letters to a friend, he had once said," though the body and the soul of a picture will discover themselves on the slightest glance, yet you know it could not be the same with such a pock-fretted, hard-featured little fellow as I am also;" but neither these personal characteristics, nor the mean garb in which he usually appeared, could conceal the earnestness stamped upon his grave, saturnine countenance, or the air of entire absorption in some mental pursuit, having little in common with the bustle of the every-day business of the world around him. He was a man to make or to keep few friends, and to shun all acquaintances; it was not often therefore that, in these passages to and fro, he had any companion; but the event was noticeable when he had, from the striking change in his demeanour. He became full of animation, and of a kind of sparkling cheerfulness; his conversation was at once frank, weighty, and elevating, and even the oaths, with which he made somewhat free, could not spoil the delight of the most fastidious censor of words, whilst borne along on the full and free current of the painter's thoughts. No one but himself at such times would have called his countenance "hard-featured;" its smile was inexpressibly sweet, its look of scorn or anger, when roused, such as few men could have met unmoved. But what was the employment that thus determined for so long a period his daily movements? The answer will require a brief review of his past career. Whilst a young student at Rome, Barry-for it was he to whom we refer-had been often annoyed by the absurd taunts of foreigners as to the ungenial character of the British soil for the growth of Art, often seduced into answering them in such a manner as suited rather his fiery temper and indomitable will, than the cause which he so impatiently espoused. But a better result was his own quiet determination to devote his life to the disproof of the theory. He began admirably, by a strict analysis of his own powers, and by inquiring how they were best to be developed. Here is the result: the result: "If I should chance to have genius, or anything else," he observes, in a letter to Dr. Sleigh, "it is so much the better; but my hopes are grounded upon an unwearied, intense application, of which I am not sparing. At present I have little to show that I value; my work is all under ground, digging and laying foundations, which, with God's assistance, I may hereafter find the use of. I every day centre more and more upon the art; I give myself totally to it: and, except honour and conscience, am determined to renounce every thing else." But the writer was without a shilling in the world to call his own; and although he had friends, the best of friends, as they were, one of them at least, Burke, the best of men, he had already received from them the entire means of subsistence while he had been studying so long at Rome, and was determined therefore to be no longer a burden to them or to others; but how should he, renouncing all the ordinary blandishments of a young painter's career, the " face-painting" and other methods by which genius condescends to become fashionable, or, in other words, to lay down its immortality for the pleasure of being acknowledged immortal, how was he to subsist? It was whilst this question remained, we may suppose, not decisively answered, that the painter thus mournfully wrote to a friend :- O, I could be happy, on my going home, to find some corner where I could sit down in the middle of my studies, books, and casts after the antique, to paint this work and others, where I might have models of nature when necessary, bread and soup, and a coat to cover me! I should care not what became of my work when it was done; but I reflect with horror upon such a fellow as I am, and with such a kind of art in London, with house-rent to pay, duns to follow me, and employers to look for. Had I studied art in a manner more accommodated to the nation, there would be no dread of this." But from this state of despondency and dissatisfaction he was soon to rise triumphant. Again and again he asked himself how he was to subsist while the great things he meditated should be accomplished, and the answer came: the conclusion was anything but attractive or cheering, but he saw it was the conclusion: no cross, no crown; and accepted it ungrudgingly. It was not long before he could say, "I have taken great pains to fashion myself to this kind of Quixotism: to this end I have contracted and simplified my cravings and wants, and brought them into a very narrow compass." There are few, we think, of those who may have smiled with pity or contempt at the painter's mean garb, who would not have honoured it while they reverenced him, had they known this. The first apparent opportunity of achieving the object indicated, was in connexion with the proposed decoration of St. Paul's, of which we have already given an account. The very idea was enough to set Barry's soul on fire. It opened a field of exertion wider in its range, more magnificent in its nature, than in his cooler moments he could have expected would ever have been afforded him; though, from the following passage of one of his letters, it should seem that he had not only long meditated upon the scheme, but had been-in opposition to the general notion, which accords the merit to Reynolds-the first to propose it to the Academy." The dean and chapter have agreed to leave the ornamenting of St. Paul's to the Academy, and it now rests with us to give permission to such painters as we shall think qualified to execute historical pictures of a certain size, I believe from fifteen to twenty feet high. We also intend to set up a monument there-Pope is mentioned—the sculptor is to be paid by subscription, and a benefit from the play-house. I proposed this matter to the Academy about a year since, a little after my being admitted an associate, and I had long set my heart upon it, as the only means for establishing a solid, manly taste for real art, in place of our contemptible passion for the daubing of inconsequential things, portraits of dogs, landscapes, &c.-things which the mind, which is the soul of art, having no concern in, have hitherto served to disgrace us over all Europe."* The enthusiasm of the Academy seems to have been all expended in its offer respecting St. Paul's; for, on the refusal of the Bishop of London, they allowed the matter to drop; and when the Society which forms the subject of this paper very wisely stepped forward and offered its room for decoration, the Academy declined. No wonder that Barry's dislike of the Academy grew more and more decided, member of it though he was; or that he could no longer allow his life to glide away without the accomplishment of any of its great objects: it was soon rumoured through the academic circle, with such comments as ill-nature, jealousy, and personal dislike would prompt, that Barry himself, single-handed, had offered to undertake the great work they had refused, and that the Society had accepted his offer. Barry, at the time of his offer, is said to have had just sixteen shillings in his possession; but he says, referring to his writings, "I thought myself bound, in duty to the country, to art, and to my own character, to try whether my abilities would enable me to exhibit the proof as well as the argument." And so, merely stipulating for the exercise of his own independent judgment, free admission at all times, and that the necessary models should be furnished at the Society's expense, he began his undertaking. Such was the man, such the nature of the avocations that drew him daily, at the period we have mentioned, towards the Adelphi. Let us now ascend the stairs to the first floor, passing through the little anteroom where the alto relievos of Bacon and Nollekens are mounted high upon the walls, and beneath the portrait of the founder of the Society, which appropriately hangs over the door of the great room, where the painter's works are to be found. The first glance shows us in one way the magnitude of the undertaking; the upper portion of the walls of the whole of the noble room, or hall, as it should rather be called, is covered by the six paintings of which the series consists; as we step from one to another, we perceive that these large spaces have been wrought upon in a large spirit, and a still closer examination opens to our view pictures of surpassing beauty and grandeur, and scarcely less remarkable as a * Letter to the Duke of Richmond, whole for the successful manner in which they have been executed, than for the daring originality of their conception. His leading object, it seems, was to convey the idea, "That the attainment of happiness, individual as well as public, depends on the development, proper cultivation, and perfection of the human faculties, physical and moral, which are so well calculated to lead human nature to its true rank, and the glorious designation assigned for it by Providence." A truth of the mightiest import, and for all time, and, of course, one that a painter requires every fair indulgence in the attempt to illustrate by the mere representation of half a dozen scenes. In the first of these, the principle of civilization is at once forcibly and poetically embodied in the picture of Orpheus, in the combined characters of legislator, priest, poet, philosopher, and musician, addressing a wild and uncultivated people, in a country but too much in harmony with themselves. As he pours forth his songs of instruction, accompanied by the music of his lyre,-types of the instruments by and through which he works, the understanding, and the feelings,-the rapt savage fresh from the chace, with his female partner, to whom he has delegated the task of carrying the dead fawn, leaning upon his shoulders, the old man looking up with the scepticism natural to age overborne by wonder and admiration, and him who sits by his side, lost in surprise, at the new views opening upon him of what may be done by so small and as yet comparatively untried an instrument as the hand, all betoken the potency of the "minister and interpreter of the gods," as Horace calls him. Comments have been made on the delicacy of the female above mentioned, as inconsistent with the painter's own view of showing "that the value and estimation of women increase according to the growth and cultivation of society, and that, amongst savage nations, they are in a condition little better than the beasts of burden." Barry seems to have perceived this himself; for in his etchings of the picture in the great work published by him, which lies on the table, the objection seems to be completely obviated. He has there removed the censer, the fumes of which, winding upwards, veil the undressed limbs in the picture, and made it prominent to the eye, and, at the same time, by other alterations, removed the air of excessive delicacy, and made the figure as we now see it in our engraving. The second picture presents us with a lovely view of a 'Grecian Harvest Home;' the inhabitants are no longer such as Orpheus addressed, but such as his teachings and time have made them, civilized, gentle, and happy, the cultivation of their fields and the tending of their flocks their chief avocation, the dance and the song their chief enjoyment, the honour of success in a wrestling match their highest ambition. The thoroughly Grecian air of this picture must enchant every one. Barry, as well as Wordsworth, felt that— " in despite Of the gross fictions, chanted in the streets and, like the poet, he has made us feel it too. This is the triumph of art. The third picture of the series, that facing you as you enter the room, is perhaps, taken altogether, as great a picture as ever was painted. We have advanced from savage life and the earliest stage of civilization, to that where poets, painters, sculptors, philosophers, have arisen to shed a new glory over the earth, and where the heroes have become more essentially because more ideally heroic. Most happily has the painter chosen the one event that above all others could best enable him to express this new position in the history of man, and the acknowledgments due to the people to whom we owe so much: the Victors at Olympia is the subject of the third picture; the age of Pericles, the most brilliant in Grecian history, the time. Beneath the seat of the judges are portraits reminding us of the illustrious men who have helped to make Greece what she here appears, Solon, Lycurgus, and others; and trophies telling of the grander events of her history, of Salamis, of Marathon, and of Thermopyla; whilst in the crowds congregated about the victors, we have Pindar leading the chorus in the singing of one of his own odes; behind him, in the chariot, is Hiero of Syracuse; Pericles is seen in another direction speaking to Cimon; whilst Socrates, Anaxagoras, Euripides listen, and Aristophanes scoffs. The chief group represents Diagoras of Rhodes, who had in his youth been celebrated for his own victories in the -- |