the
renderings of besotted, vicious, and vulgar human life perpetrated by
Dutch painters, or with the deathful formalism and fallacy of what was
once called "Historical Art." Also, this gentleness and veracity of
theirs, being in part communicable, are gradually learned, though in a
somewhat servile manner, yet not without a sincere sympathy, by many
inferior painters, so that our exhibitions and currently popular books
are full of very lovely and pathetic ideas, expressed with a care, and
appealing to an interest, quite unknown in past times. I will take two
instances of merely average power, as more illustrative of what I mean
than any more singular and distinguished work could be. Last year, in
the British Institution, there were two pictures by the same painter,
one of a domestic, the other of a sacred subject. I will say nothing of
the way in which they were painted; it may have been bad, or good, or
neither: it is not to my point. I wish to direct attention only to the
conception of them. One, "Cradled in his Calling," was of a fisherman
and his wife, and helpful grown-up son, and helpless new-born little
one; the two men carrying the young child up from the shore, rocking it
between them in the wet net for a hammock, the mother looking on
joyously, and the baby laughing. The thought was pretty and good, and
one might go on dreaming over it long--not unprofitably. But the second
picture was more interesting. I describe it only in the circumstances
of the invented scene--sunset after the crucifixion. The bodies have
been taken away, and the crosses are left lying on the broken earth; a
group of children have strayed up the hill, and stopped beside them in
such shadowy awe as is possible to childhood, and they have picked up
one or two of the drawn nails to feel how sharp they are. Meantime a
girl with her little brother--goat-herds both--have been watering their
flock at Kidron, and are driving it home. The girl, strong in grace and
honor of youth, carrying her pitcher of water on her erect head, has
gone on past the place steadily, minding her flock; but her little
curly-headed brother, with cheeks of burning Eastern brown, has lingered
behind to look, and is feeling the point of one of the nails, held in
another child's hand. A lovely little kid of the goats has stayed behind
to keep him company, and is amusing itself by jumping backwards and
forwards over an arm of the cross. The sister looks back, and, wondering