exhibited was at the beatification of a Romish saint, (or the solemn announcement that he is enrolled in heaven,) a ceremony which always precedes his canonization. The period during which they were exposed to public view before St. Peter's was three days; after which they were hung up in an apartment within the Vatican for a few days more, before being again consigned to the usual receptacle. This continued to be the custom till the invasion of Italy by the French, in 1798, when they became part of the plunder of the conquerors.* Being, however, restored to the Vatican by purchase in 1814, the annual exhibition, on the feast of Corpus Christi, has been resumed, and, instead of the former limited display, they are now constantly open to public inspection in the chamber of Pope Pius V.

"The Cartoons at Hampton Court have been several times copied. Soon after their arrival in England, Francis Cleyne (already mentioned as the artist employed to superintend the royal manufactory at Mortlake) executed beautiful copies of them on a small scale, highly finished, with a pen. Cooke, whom King William III. employed to put in order the Royal Collection, made copies of them "in turpentine oil, in the manner of distemper, a way which he invented." Sir James Thornhill, indefatigable in whatever related to Raffaelle, employed three years on a set of copies the size of the originals, which were lately in the great room of the Royal Academy, having been presented to that body by the late Duke of Bedford, in 1800. Sir James likewise executed a smaller set, of one-fourth the dimensions of the original pictures: where these latter are preserved is not known. There is a third set in the Picture Gallery at Oxford, which was given to the University by his Grace the Duke of Marlborough.

"The only artist who has engraved the entire series is Sommereau; his plates are on a small scale, and in a style painfully minute: they are now rare. Michell Sorello, a native of Spain, is also said to have undertaken the complete series, but he does not appear to have actually engraved more than eight.

"Of the engravers who have employed their talents upon these noble monuments of the great era of painting, in our own country, the first was Gribelin, whose work is on too contracted a scale to convey any just idea of the originals. After him came Dorigny, who, having already produced successful prints of the Cupid and Pysche in the gallery of the Farnese Palace, at Rome, and of the Transfiguration, was invited over by some English travellers, admirers of his performances, to engrave the Hampton Court Cartoons. He commenced the work in 1711, under the patronage of the queen, being assisted for a time by Charles

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They were sold, with other objects of spoliation, to a Jew at Leghorn, by whom one was destroyed for the sake of the gold and silver threads worked into the fabric; this was the Descent into Hades, and is the only one now wanting to the set. The others were re-purchased for 13,000 crowns, and sent back to Pius VII.”

Dupuis and Claude Dubosc; and on its completion, in 1719, he had the honour of knighthood conferred on him by George I. It may, without hesitation, be asserted, that Dorigny's are still the best engravings that have been executed from these inestimable performances, notwithstanding the more careful labours of the late respected and ingenious Mr. Holloway, and his able coadjutors. For though Dorigny's prints may occasionally fall below those of his modern rivals, in accuracy of outline, as they unquestionably do in elaborate nicety of finish, yet they are superior in regard to the expression of that exquisite freedom of handling, which distinguishes those parts at least of the originals which were actually executed by the pencil of Raffaelle. After the publication of Dorigny's, his assistant, Dubosc, likewise produced a set of prints from the Cartoons, of considerable merit, on a scale between that of Dorigny and the miniature size of Gribelin.

"Respecting the fate of the larger number of the original Cartoons, little is known, Two are said to be in the possession of the King of Sardinia; and in a note to the Siena edition of Vasari's Life of Raffaelle, we are told, that towards the close of the seventeenth century, portions of five others were brought into England from Flanders; and, early in the eighteenth century, a considerable fragment of another, "the Murder of the Innocents." This picture was originally divided into three parts, apparently under the direction of Raffaelle himself. Portions of it (the note continues to inform us) came into the hands of the elder Richardson, whose writings on art tended so much to produce a just estimate of the importance of the Cartoons, in the mind of the English public. At the sale of his large collection they were dispersed. Mr. Gunn informs us that two fragments were in the possession of Flaxman; and that he presented one of them, a single head, said to have belonged to the Cartoon of the "Murder of the Innocents," to Mr. Saunders, of Bath. This was probably the same fragment which came into the possession of the late Mr. Prince Hoare, and which he bequeathed by his will to the Foundling Hospital, where it is now deposited.

"In the year 1824, nine pieces of tapestry, woven from Raffaelle's Cartoons, were publicly exhibited in London. The subjects were those of the seven now at Hampton Court, and of two others, viz. the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Stoning of St. Stephen. Their existence has been thus explained. Two entire sets of the Cartoons were originally wrought in tapestry; the one being sent to Rome, and the other, of which the specimens exhibited formed a part, was presented by Leo X. to our Henry VIII., by whom it was hung up in the Banqueting Room, at Whitehall. Another account says, that this set was purchased by Henry from the Venetians. It would appear, at least, to be certain that these hangings came over to England in the reign of that monarch; that they continued to be the property of our kings until the sale of King Charles's effects, after his death, and were then purchased, with

other works of art, by Don Alonzo de Cardenas, the Spanish ambassador. At the decease of this nobleman, the tapestries devolved to the house of Alva, and remained among its possessions until sold by the Duke of Alva, in 1824, to Mr. Tupper, British consul in Spain. After being exhibited during several months, they are said to have been then purchased by a foreigner, and once more conveyed to the continent.

"The Cartoons do not, in general, at first view delight the spectator, or extort unthinking admiration by superficial and alluring beauties. Without any of the obvious artifices of arrangement-without striking brilliancy of colour, or violent contrasts of light and shade-without extravagance or exaggeration of any kind-they are calculated to disappoint those who seek nothing further in this highly intellectual art than the mere gratification of the eye; while into the mind even of the patient and reflective student, a sense of their supreme excellence only finds its way by degrees: commencing in something like a chill of surprise, that to performances of such a sober character the first place in the first rank of the art should have been assigned, but increasing in brightness by its own light, as it proceeds, it can scarcely, nevertheless, stop short, in such a mind, of an ardent and affectionate though calm admiration. It ought to be remembered, in order to form a just estimate of the Cartoons, that they were intended as patterns to be worked after, not for the usual purpose of finished pictures; for which reason they were not executed in oils, but in distemper, a method which never can rival oil-painting in richness and mellowness of effect. Time also has evidently altered the tints, in many parts: yet the colouring is, upon the whole, pleasing and consistent with the gravity of the subjects. When it is considered that more than three hundred years have passed over them-of what perishable materials they are executed-and that they have been, besides, exposed to neglect and ill usage, it is surprising that so much of their first freshness remains. It is not, however, by rules derived from schools in which powerful or harmonious colouring, and the skilful arrangement of what is called effect, are chiefly prized, that Raffaelle is to be judged. Even in the beauty of individual figures, and in anatomical accuracy of drawing-though great in these he has, no doubt, been excelled. Higher merits are claimed for him; and in particular, as the painter of the Cartoons :-facility and propriety of invention, the most admirable skill in composition and grouping-above all, appropriateness of expression. Among his excellencies are particularly to be noted the variety and noble air of the heads, their exquisite individualization, without the sacrifice of any portion of the ideal or historical character, and the remarkable beauty and expressiveness (if the term may be so applied) of the drapery. That quality, however, which has entitled Raffaelle to be justly regarded as one in the first rank of minds most highly gifted by the Creator, is the uniform subordination, in these works, of the means to the end-the predominance of

the intellectual and permanent over the sensual and the conventional. We behold in him, not only the Italian of the sixteenth century, but the contemporary and denizen of all enlightened times and Christian landsnot the painter merely, but the historian, the poet, the philosopher, the ennobling expounder of human character and emotions in their universal elements!

"Of the seven Cartoons in the National Collection, only two relate to events in the personal history of our Saviour; the other five being all illustrative of occurrences in the lives of the apostles, after his ascension. The whole are given in this work, in the chronological order of the respective subjects represented."-Pp. 6-24.

Of the just and chaste descriptions given of each picture, it would be improper in us, after having drawn so largely upon the author's observations, to quote; we can, however, recommend this elegant volume as being the most popular and sensible illustration of these justly admired works, that has come under our notice.

LITERARY REPORT.

The Paragraph Bible. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, translated out of the Original Tongues, and with the former Translations diligently compared and revised. By His Majesty's special Command. Arranged in Paragraphs and Parallelisms. London: printed for the Religious Tract Society. 1838. 8vo.

THE honour of giving to the public new and commodious editions of the English Bible, in various forms, is due to the late John Reeves, Esq. one of the patentees of the office of King's Printer. Upwards of thirty years since he published several editions, some with and others without short notes; the text of which, in the historical parts, was divided into paragraphs in long lines, the divisions of chapters and verses being thrown into the margin, and the poetical parts being printed in verses as usual. A beautiful duodecimo Oxford edition, on Mr. Reeves's plan, which was printed in 1828, served as the basis of an American reprint in 1834, under the editorial care of the Rev. T. W. Coit, D. D., at that time rector of Christ Church, Cambridge, in the state of Massachu

setts. This appeared in a thick duodecimo volume of many pages, with numerous glossarial notes, and considerable improvements in the mechanical execution of the work. The text was divided into paragraphs, of convevient length; and the poetical parts of the Old Testament, as well as the Hymns of the Virgin Mary and of Zacharias, in the first chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, together with part of the Revelations, were all printed in hemistichs and parallelisms, conformable to the genius of Hebrew poetry, as settled by Bishops Lowth and Jebb. Of this edition, the "Paragraph Bible" is a beautifully and accurately executed reprint, with considerable improvements in the divisions of the paragraphs. The marginal renderings are very properly given at the foot of the page. Besides collation with the best modern editions of the English Bible, frequent reference has been made to the first edition printed in 1611; and various errors in punctuation, &c., which had crept in at different times, have been detected and removed. Some curious instances of such errors are given in the preface. In addition to these important corrections, we have been