ng seen; the oratory, if the signs are those we
use for the purpose of voluntary communication.

The narrative style answers to what is called historical painting,
which it is the fashion among connoisseurs to treat as the climax of
the pictorial art. That it is the most difficult branch of the art we
do not doubt, because, in its perfection, it includes the perfection
of all the other branches: as in like manner an epic poem, though in
so far as it is epic (i. e. narrative) it is not poetry at all, is yet
esteemed the greatest effort of poetic genius, because there is no
kind whatever of poetry which may not appropriately find a place in
it. But an historical picture as such, that is, as the representation
of an incident, must necessarily, as it seems to us, be poor and
ineffective. The narrative powers of painting are extremely limited.
Scarcely any picture, scarcely even any series of pictures, tells its
own story without the aid of an interpreter. But it is the single
figures which, to us, are the great charm even of an historical
picture. It is in these that the power of the art is really seen. In
the attempt to narrate, visible and permanent signs are too far behind
the fugitive audible ones, which follow so fast one after another,
while the faces and figures in a narrative picture, even though they
be Titian's, stand still. Who would not prefer one Virgin and Child of
Raphael, to all the pictures which Rubens, with his fat, frouzy Dutch
Venuses, ever painted? Though Rubens, besides excelling almost every
one in his mastery over the mechanical parts of his art, often shows
real genius in _grouping_ his figures, the peculiar problem of
historical painting. But then, who, except a mere student of drawing
and colouring, ever cared to look twice at any of the figures
themselves? The power of painting lies in poetry, of which Rubens had
not the slightest tincture--not in narrative, wherein he might have
excelled.

The single figures, however, in an historical picture, are rather the
eloquence of painting than the poetry: they mostly (unless they are
quite out of place in the picture) express the feelings of one person
as modified by the presence of others. Accordingly the minds whose
bent leads them rather to eloquence than to poetry, rush to historical
painting. The French painters, for instance, seldom attempt, because
they could make nothing of, single heads, like those glorious ones of
the Italian masters, with w