"being that they were a trifle too much in earnest in the passionate
parts, and too sculpturesque generally. He means by this that each
stanza stands too much alone, and has its own ideas too much to
itself."

By Ford Madox Brown: "The Love of Beauty: Sonnet."

By John L. Tupper: "The Subject in Art." Two papers, which do not
complete the important thesis here undertaken. Mr. Tupper was, for an
artist, a man of unusually scientific mind; yet he was not, I think,
distinguished by that power of orderly and progressive exposition
which befits an argumentation. These papers exhibit a good deal of
thought, and state several truths which, even if partial truths, are
not the less deserving of attention; but the dissertation does not
produce a very clear impression, inasmuch as there is too great a
readiness to plunge, _in medias res_, checked by too great a tendency
to harking back, and re-stating some conclusion in modified terms and
with insecure corollaries. Two points which Mr. Tupper chiefly
insists upon are: (1) that the subject in a work of art affects the
beholder in the same sort of way as the same subject, occurring as a
fact or aspect of Nature, affects him; and thus whatever in Nature
excites the mental and moral emotion of man is a right subject for
fine art; and (2), that subjects of our own day should not be
discarded in favour of those of a past time. These principles, along
with others bearing in the same direction, underlie the propositions
lately advanced by Count Leo Tolstoy in his most interesting and
valuable (though I think one-sided) book entitled "What is Art?"--and
the like may be said of the principles announced in the "Hand and
Soul" of Dante Rossetti, and in the "Dialogue on Art" by John
Orchard, through the mouths of two of the speakers, Christian and