duties of a theological
professorship, and dissipate unparalleled energies in splitting the
straws of a controversy, or deciding the dusty quibbles of an antiquated
lore. At the close of his academical career, GOTTFRIED KINKEL was
admitted into the university as a licentiate in theology; but shortly
after his promotion, he quitted his native country, and was for some
years a wanderer amongst the splendid ruins of Italy. The treasures of
art which mock the nakedness of this ill-starred country were to him
what they are ever to the mind of the artist,--they revealed a new
world. Unlike many others, however, Kinkel was not bewildered by the
beauty which so suddenly burst upon his view. He was not surfeited. His
enthusiasm, tempered by the metallic reasoning of the Hegel school, was
closely allied with the subtlest criticism. His admiration was never an
obstacle to comparison. Whilst he admired he remembered: individual
faults or excellencies, he found to be reducible to common causes. His
conclusions he drew from the objects: he did not force the one upon the
other.

In like manner, and intent upon the same purpose, the theological
licentiate travelled through France, Belgium, and Holland; and when he
returned to Bonn, his spirit as well as his habits of life were more
than ever wedded to the critical contemplation of the results of the
creative faculty in the mind of man. The annual exhibitions of paintings
in Cologne, Duesseldorf, and Frankfort, found in him an indulgent and
impartial critic. His researches on the monuments of ancient sacred
architecture were at intervals published in _The Domban Blatt_, and
immediately secured the attention and regard of all antiquarians.

The cherished pursuits, however, were ill calculated to reconcile Kinkel
to his adopted profession. In 1845, the licentiate in theology doffed
his gown, and was forthwith appointed a professor of philosophy in the
university of Bonn. It is to his lectures in this capacity that we owe
the treatise on Art in the Early Christian Ages. This remarkable book
was written with the purpose of instructing the public mind, and of
enabling the many to participate in the intellectual enjoyment as yet
confined to a favoured few. Its objects were to vindicate the merits of
Christianity as a fosterer of the arts, and to encourage, all lovers of
art by opening new fields for exploration.

The productions of real art are the most universally instructive of all
crea