its use. He adds also his own experience. Having
applied this varnish to four old pictures, he proceeds:--

"After an interval of more than thirty years, those pictures have not only
retained their freshness, but it seems that the colours, and especially
the whites, have become more agreeable to the eye, exhibiting, not indeed
the lustre of glass, but a clearness like that of a recently painted
picture, and without yellowing in the least. I also applied the varnish
on the head of all Academy figure, painted by me about five-and-twenty
years since. On the rest of the figure I made experiments with other
varnishes and glazings. This head surpasses all the other portions in a
very striking manner; it appears freshly painted, and still moist with
oil, retaining its tints perfectly. The coat of varnish is extremely thin,
yet, on gently washing the surface, it has not suffered. The lustre is
uniform; it is not the gloss of enamel or glass, but precisely that degree
of shine which is most desirable in a picture."

Mr Eastlake enters upon a dissertation on the Italian and Flemish modes of
painting, discriminating the transparency by glazing, and the transparency
by preserving the light grounds. The ground does not appear throughout the
pictures of Correggio, universally so in those of Rubens and most of the
Flemish and Dutch schools. Both methods have their peculiar value. We
should be sorry to see the substantial richness of Correggio, with his
pearly grays seen under a body of transparent colouring, exchanged even
for the free first sketchy getting in of the subject by Rubens. On this
part of the subject it is scarcely wise to give a decided opinion. Every
artist will adapt either method to his own power, his own conceptions, and
intentions. Rembrandt struck out a method strictly belonging to neither
system, with a partial use of each. He would be unwise who would attempt
to limit the power of the palette--we speak here only of its materials.

At the end of the volume are extracts from the notes of Sir Joshua
Reynolds. They are extremely interesting, both from their examples of
success, and warnings by failure. We cannot help reflecting, on reading
these notes, upon the great importance of such a work as Mr Eastlake's.
Had Sir Joshua Reynolds been in possession of such a volume, how many of
his pictures, now perished and perishing, would have been preserved for
immortality! and how much better might even the best have been b