unsatiated into the mysteries of colour and chiaro-scuro, receding
further as we look into an atmosphere pregnant with all uncertain
things? We think we have not mistaken the President's meaning. Mr Burnet
appears to agree with us: though he makes no remark upon the power of
raising curiosity, yet it surely is raised in the very picture to which
we presume he alludes, Raffaelle's "Death of Ananias;" the event, in
Sapphira, is intimated and suspended. "Though," says Mr Burnet, "the
painter has but one page to represent his story, he generally chooses
that part which combines the most illustrative incidents with the most
effective denouement of the event. In Raffaelle we often find not only
those circumstances which precede it, _but its effects upon the_
personages introduced after the catastrophe."

There is, however, a natural indolence of our disposition, which seeks
pleasure in repose, and the resting in old habits, which must not be too
violently opposed by "variety," "reanimating the attention, which is apt
to languish under a continual sameness;" nor by "novelty," making "more
forcible impression on the mind than can be made by the representation
of what we have often seen before;" nor by "contrasts," that "rouse the
power of comparison by opposition."

The mind, then, though an active principle, having likewise a
disposition to indolence, (might we have said repose?) limits the
quantity of variety, novelty, and contrast which it will bear;--these
are, therefore, liable to excesses. Hence arise certain rules of art,
that in a composition objects must not be too scattered and divided into
many equal parts, that perplex and fatigue the eye, at a loss where to
find the principal action. Nor must there be that "absolute unity,"
"which, consisting of one group or mass of light only, would be as
defective as an heroic poem without episode, or any collateral incidents