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
