great difference between a Christian subject, and a subject that merely belongs to some time or country in which Christianity reigns. Human things, and historical actions and persons, may always, in art, be considered as distinct from religion. The hero of the poet and the painter may always be transformed by metaphor, and transposed into an imaginary order of things, whatever be the religion of his time and country, without any outrage on religious belief, provided such transpositions have no relation with it.

Now the above distinction is dictated by fitness of taste, even though it were not by the spirit of Christianity itself.

Though the spirit of the Christian religion rejects the profane admixture of mythological fictions with its articles of faith, alike in the composition of the poet and the painter, it does not the less admit of, and approve, the employment of allegorical figures in the representations and images which concern it, which figures, as personified virtues, assume every form of the ancient mythological sculpture. The same toleration is extended towards the representations of the Eternal Father, the angels, and other mysterious beings, the forms of which have been borrowed from those in which ancient art invested its Pagan creations.

Returning to the question of taste and fitness we would remark that, supposing all the conditions of the subject observed, the artist's error

does not consist in mingling allegorical beings with historical personages. His error most frequently consists in not knowing how to assimilate the style, character, and design of the one with that of the other. Now, we have seen that the historical personage must as much as possible be clothed with the appearance of the allegorical order of things, because the allegorical personage cannot, in painting, change its appearance without ceasing to be allegorical.

A striking example of the error of employing allegory in a subject, the historical personages of which cannot admit of a change of appearance or costume, is that afforded by a picture in the gallery of Marie de Medicis in which Rubens has associated, under the positive form of the Mercury of fable, the messenger who is bearing the emblem of peace to two cardinals, one of whom is persuading the queen to accept the olive branch, while the other dissuades her from it. Here is a twofold contradiction, the one between the mythological character of Mercury represented naked, and the appearance of the two personages dressed in the costume of one of the chief dignities of the Christian church, the other between the altogether metaphorical style of the two allegorical beings, Prudence and Peace, and the wholly positive style of imitation in the personages that attend on the queen.

I must remark, in order to the better under

standing of this theory, that Rubens has not, so often as some are pleased to think, fallen into this kind of incongruity. Not only are the greater number of the pictures in his gallery exempt from it, but the general system that reigns throughout in the composition of that series of historico-poetical subjects, agrees more than is supposed with that which I am endeavouring to establish.

In the greater number of those pictures, setting aside such as contain only portraits, Marie de Medicis, from her infancy, which Minerva, Mercury, and the Graces combine to instruct, to her death, is always represented according to an abstract and ideal system of composition. The painter has nowhere expressed an absolute and material action. All the compositions that are explained by personages apparently taking a more or less active part in them, have only for their subjects, either the motives and results of the queen's undertakings, or the causes and effects of the acts of her government and councils. The different circumstances of the stormy period in which she lived are not so shown in detail as to present the facts in their reality, but by metaphorical images of the passions that influenced events. In fact, she is concerned in no material action; every situation in which she is associated by the painter with metaphorical personages, gives rise on her part but to an allegorical action.

But for some inconsistencies such as that we

have remarked above and, putting out of the question his not sufficiently ideal style of design, and that tendency which the great colourist evinced towards the incorrect and somewhat low style of portraiture, Rubens might be cited as having for the most part in the compositions of his gallery, furnished a true model of the manner most in accordance with the system of transforming historical subjects by the admixture of allegory, and the method of generalizing actions, by exchanging their real and absolute aspect for that point of view in which their political causes and effects, their general results and relations, may be considered.

I cannot then refrain from further contending against the opinions of the Abbe Dubos who, in his critical reflections, seems to me to have never entered into any of the considerations relative to generalized imitation. He thinks that the picture of the accouchement of Marie de Medicis, would please more, had Rubens, instead of the Genius and allegorical figures introduced in the composition, substituted those of the ladies of that time who might have been present at the bed-side of the queen, &c.

This means nothing more than that Rubens might have conceived and executed this subject according to the system of reality. Who doubts it? And further, who would doubt but that as a great portrait painter he would, by a group of ladies of that time, have represented a domestic

scene affording another kind of interest? But these portrait ladies would have served only to express a particular idea. Rubens, on the contrary, wished by his allegorical figures to represent collective beings, signs of general ideas, and the universality of the public sentiments and affections, that is, the moral and political effect that must be produced by the birth of an heir to the throne, bringing destruction to the hopes of the promoters of discord. It was, therefore, necessary that he should avail himself of allegorical composition. Had he substituted that proposed by the Abbe Dubos he would merely have given a scene in the private life of Marie de Medicis. We may add to the farther praise of Rubens as regards this picture, that he has neither belied the style of the allegorical image, nor weakened its effect on the mind by any admixture of personages seemingly real or appertaining to the opposite style.

Lebrun, on the ceiling of the gallery of Versailles, has represented the principal passages in the life of Louis XIV. with a still closer observance of the allegorical style, both as regards conception and execution. But this painter's style and taste of design were more accordant with the poetical and ideal style of allegory than was that of Rubens.

I have merely cited these examples the better to explain wherein the artist is sometimes wanting,