first that disproportion in the structure of his mind which tends to eventual insanity. But the history of our national progress during the last half century is now receding into distance. It assumes as a picture its due gradation of light and shade; the figures take their proper place and comparative prominence; and now it has really become a question whether Haydon, with all his inordinate egotism, did overrate the importance of his objects, though he may have overrated his own ability to achieve them. His mistake, his misfortune, lay in the self-willed arrogance which, perpetually irritated by contradiction and stimulated by opposition, saw only Haydon wherever he looked, whereever he moved,' as the great first cause, the primum mobile, of the grand revolution he meditated; whereas there were many other existing causes, all tending to the same result, - elements in which and through which he might have worked instead of setting them, as he did, in opposition against himself. Still, when we review the rise and progress of that comprehensive and enlightened code of criticism to which Lessing and Goethe had given the first impulse in Germany, we see Haydon standing out among us here, not owing any thing to the great Germans, not even taking up the same ground, yet in his own way an original thinker, a powerful writer, a passionate pleader for the true objects and interests of his art, a daring exposer of the mean mistaken aims and subserviency of artists; a fearless denouncer of the short-sighted neglect and consummate ignorance of those in high places who had to decide on the ultimate uses of the Fine Arts, as a part of the culture of a people, and their protection and encouragement as a part of the duty of a government. These ideas sound trite at present; they were then new. The fashionable faith of our day was then the creed of a small set of pioneers, ill understood by others, not always understanding themselves. Haydon led this forlorn hope with an impetuosity which threw him quite beyond the reach of less ardent, less sanguine spirits. It is not his eminence as an artist, but the story of his relations with Arthis battles with the Academy, his intercourse with painters, with patrons, with poets, with men of letters and statesmen these form the artistic and historical value of the book. The man's peculiar idiosyncracy, his undoubted talent, his really noble aspirations, and the terrible demonstration before us that, thus richly gifted, thus loftily ambitious, thus undauntedly persevering, his career was a wretched failure, ending in selfinflicted death these form the moral interest of the book. Under both aspects it is full of matter, and might well claim,

with the concomitant and contemporary interests touched upon, more ample consideration than can be given to it here.

We observe that among the critics who have been, we must think prudishly, severe in their strictures on this remarkable book, some are shocked by the tragic depth, the pitiable weakness, the careless indiscretion of the revelations contained in it, and have thence decided that it has been prematurely given to the world. Others go so far as to pronounce that it ought not to have been published at all. From such critics we differ wholly. We account it good service to the cause of truth generally, and of Art particularly, that this strange history, with all its manifold faults and mistakes, has seen the light. We think it could hardly have appeared at a more fitting moment than now, amid the awakened interest and keen discussion in and out of Parliament bearing on the very topics which fill its pages. We do not cavil with Mr. Tom Taylor for suppressing what he has suppressed, since the whole, as it now stands, coheres into completeness in story and character, at least sufficiently so for the best uses to be derived from either. But we are especially thankful that he has not been led, by the scruples of others or his own, to suppress more. It has been said that pain has been inflicted, or may be inflicted, on many worthy and sensitive people by certain allusions to them or their friends, or their relations to the sixth degree of cousinship, and therefore this and similar publications involve a moral wrong of which public morality should take cognisance. We really do not see the question in this serious point of view. Those who read these volumes through-and read aright the peculiar temperament of the man-will surely not be guided in their estimate of character by any opinion of his, however honest in intent, nor rely on the accuracy of his portraiture, however vivid. No fear, we think, that our idea of the wit and the wisdom of Sydney Smith should be lowered because Haydon saw in him only the 'careless cassock,' the 'jocular parson.' Sir George Beaumont remains to us the accomplished gentleman, the generous, amiable patron and judge of Art, though brought into collision with the unruly self-love of his way ward protégé. Mr. William Hamilton's beneficent nature and exquisite taste shine out not the less because of the passing ungrateful sneer which Haydon, in one of his distempered moods, bestows upon his much enduring friend. If Mr. Taylor has suppressed many notices of this kind, no doubt he has been guided by deliberate reflection and good feeling; but we really think that in most cases it will be found to have been superfluous as regards the reputation or

the feelings of the supposed victims, and, if a charity at all, one only to the memory of the author.

For, with regard to the autobiographies of distinguished men, it is undeniable that no portrait drawn of a man of genius equals in truth, and therefore often in severity, that which unconsciously and involuntarily he exhibits of himself. Let him suppress what he may, let him excuse what he can, let him throw over his actions and motives whatever colouring may be derived from the most ingenious logic, aided by the most captivating graces of style, he will yet reveal such unmistakeable features of the inner self that he shall be more justly judged out of his own words than by any portrait which the ablest, most acute, most impartial of observers could have drawn of him. There are abysses of passion and of pain which no observer can fathom; impelling motives of which no observer can estimate the force; associated influences of which no observer can trace the link. The man himself uses the best gifts with which God has graced him to hold up the mirror truly to himself, as if driven by some power, some pressure from within, which is not conscience, rather an instinct, a fatality, arising out of the very structure of his being. We have alluded to Rousseau. Who could have painted that compound of mud and fire as he has painted himself? Who could have placed before us the meanness, profligacy, vanity, falsehood, the utter degradation of that most miserable and most gifted of the sons of men with such a wondrous truth? Who that knew Moore, the lively, ever welcome, genial singer of Ireland, would have ventured-in the slang phrase to show him up' as he has shown up' himself? His bitterest enemy, we think, would not have had the heart, certainly not the power, to do it. Such men, under such influences, become like the unwilling prophet of old, unconscious utterers of the truths they see not, and wiser than they know.'

But it will be said that such revelations, even when spontaneous and authorised, are dishonouring to our common nature, inasmuch as they lower at once our standard of virtue and our estimate of genius, or rather our estimate of the men on whom genius has been bestowed; and that it is a killing blow to our faith in good if we must needs behold in the greatest-wisest,' also the meanest of mankind.' It may be answered, in the first place, that nothing can dishonour our common nature which enlightens us as to its true conditions; nothing can lower our moral standard which enlarges our moral sympathies. And secondly, that it is a too common mistake to defer to the

opinions and feelings of gifted men on all subjects because they have shown themselves great in some, -to set them up as gods indeed, because they have given forth one or two divine oracles. Better is it that we should learn discrimination in our heroworship: better that we hold fast to the principles that truth in the long run is worth the price, whatever it may be, that we are called on to pay for it. Do we despond over our beautiful idols cast down to earth before the coming of the purer, the diviner light? Let us remember that the inestimable gain to the future is worth the present loss to ourselves. It is through such data as these before us,-painful often, and often humiliating, -that we shall at length be enabled to solve some of those momentous problems in ethics and education, on the solution of which the moral well being of mankind as a race must ultimately depend. What is understood as yet of the training of genius and exceptional character? How are we to recognise their presence and their power before it be too late, before we are called upon to answer the fearful question as to how far excelling and commanding genius shall be at once indulged and outlawed? Would it not be well that men of rare endowments should know, and lay to heart, that henceforth they shall be amenable to the rising moral sense of mankind? that henceforth they shall not skulk behind their glory to conceal their shame, nor plead their great gifts in extenuation of judgment? that those who in life have not feared the everlasting face to face 'with God,' must stand, after life, face to face with humanity, and answer, like the dead Egyptian kings, its appeal against them? 'Cruel,' will it be said? Yes, as all that is immutable, all that is inevitable, all that is inexorable in God's moral law seems cruel where we have to make the application in particular cases, be it in that of a Bacon, a Rousseau, a Byron, or in that of a poor, distracted, self-immolated Haydon.

There is another lesson conveyed in this book and others of its kind, and one of not less solemn import. They enlarge our experience of the conditions on which men of an anomalous temperament, or devoted to some one soul-absorbing pursuit, may hope to preserve unimpaired mental and moral health. In common with many who knew Haydon in the later years of his life, we had the impression that his mind was disordered. No one, we think, can read this autobiography without a conviction that the seeds of disease were early to be traced in an organisation from the first distempered and disproportioned, and that the latent evil was developed by sudden vicissitudes of fortune, by the wear and tear of an unquiet life, and an

habitual neglect of all the conditions of physical health. It is clear that he had a mournful consciousness of the dangerous tendencies of his own mind. In more than one place we find dark communings with himself as to the causes, and the right or wrong of suicide, as if his fate had been foreshadowed, as if in the midst of triumphant anticipation a spectre of despair were looming in the distance. Frequently he alludes to his want of early training as one cause of his arrogance and obstinacy; Why did I not yield?' he says, on the occasion of his quarrel with Sir George Beaumont, because my mind wanted the discipline of early training. I trace all the misfortunes of my life to this early and irremediable want; my 'will had not been curbed, or my will was too stubborn to 'submit to curbing.'-Perhaps,' he adds, mine is a character ' in which all the parts would have harmonised if my will had been broken early.' Such self-justification we reject while a man is living, while he can give us blow after blow on the heart, and then plead as an excuse for obstinacy in wrong his want of early training. But when he is dead, and can no longer injure or wound, we are willing to admit-not without a sigh of compassion and forgiveness-the validity of the plea.

It does not suit, however, with all men to stand up before the bar of posterity either self-excused or self-condemned. How many, rather than plead at all, would call on the darkness to shroud them and the hills to cover them! The publication of recent memoirs, and the comments to which they have given rise, have dismayed some people remarkable for nice scruples, if not for high principles. There has ensued, it is said, of late a vast burning of papers, letters, private journals, and such memoranda. Be it so. Burn by all means. But of utterances out of the heart and life of man addressed to man, there will always be enough, and more than enough,. The same strong human sympathies which crave to know, prompt also to reveal. Vanity will not refrain; passion will not be silent; conviction will speak; anguish, which has bled in silence, will utter at last the long-suppressed cry, if not for justice if not for pityyet for relief:-'As the beast crieth, expansive not appealing;' and the echoes of humanity will catch it up, and respond to it, as they do now to this wild reproachful voice, startling us from the tomb.

The narrative before us is divided into two parts; we have, first, Haydon's autobiography from his birth to his thirty-sixth year. It appears to have been compiled partly from recollec