rting embraces, and so forth; for it
was the absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because these subjects had
been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must remain so in saecula
saeculorum; because to these lofty heights giants had scaled, behold the
race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at them likewise! and on
the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs (excuse the pleasantry)
were instructed to swell out and roar as much as possible like bulls.

What was the consequence, my dear friend? In trying to make themselves
into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as might be
expected. For a hundred and ten years the classical humbug oppressed
the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy
years' specimens of the dulness which it engendered.

Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave
him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our
very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us
no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that
profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a
dustman up to AEschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of
Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit
itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not
the courage to utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked,
and quarrelled with the world; and found himself growing fat, and
quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-humored, did
not half Europe grow ill-humored too? Did not every poet feel his
young affections withered, and despair and darkness cast upon his soul?
Because certain mighty men of old could make heroical statues and
plays, must we not be told that there is no other beauty but classical
beauty?--must not every little whipster of a French poet chalk you out
plays, "Henriades," and such-like, and vow that here was the real thing,
the undeniable Kalon?

The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world
was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now are by
what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is curious to
look at the pictorial traditions as here handed down. The consequence
of them is, that scarce one of the classical pictures exhibited is worth
much more than two-and-sixpence. Borrowed from statuary, in the first
place, the