by improvements in which the Government has taken no active part, as by the elaborate mechanism of official management. Sir James Kay Shuttleworth himself says—.

They now

'The force which will ultimately transform the whole will be the result of education itself. When the people know that they have even more interest in the education of their children than their rulers have, they will more and more take charge of it. bear two-thirds of the burden; but that third which they do not pay has given value to what before was of little worth, and has thus created a transient power destined to pass from the Government into the hands of those who will take the charge. The transference of administrative power to the local managers and the parents will attend the gradual assumption by them of the payment of the pupilteachers, and of the whole of the stipends of certificated teachers, consequent on the effects of education on some generations of parents and on the middle classes.' (Letter to Earl Granville, p. 13.)

These are golden words, with which we cordially concur, and they are the more valuable as they proceed from the real author of the existing system. But as long as the promise and the enjoyment of State assistance continue unabated, and even extended, it is contrary to the first principles of human nature to expect that this salutary change can go on. The Government ought unquestionably to encourage that change, but the steady progress of the Government grants tends irresistibly to postpone and to prevent it. In our opinion, the time is come when the policy of the Government ought to take the opposite direction. The result of this inquiry appears to us to be, that although the Government deserves well of the country for having assumed the initiative at the time when a vigorous impulse was greatly needed, yet at the present time a more wholesome stimulus to the work of education would be given by drawing out a larger amount of local and personal effort, than by extending the Government grants, or even by continuing them on the present scale. We are fortified in this opinion by the deliberate judgment of Dr. Temple, who has had ample practical experience of the whole working of the system-indeed, we believe, that those officers of the department who have retired from the service have almost all expressed similar views. The Commissioners have rendered a service to the country by placing the whole evidence before it; and although we do not anticipate that the executive Government or the Legislature will give effect to their recommendations, it is demonstrated that there is great reason to reconsider the present state of the question, and to modify the system which has hitherto been pursued.

ART. II.-1. Reliquien von Albrecht Dürer. Von Dr. CAMPE. Nüremberg: 1828.

2. Das Leben und die Werke Albrecht Dürer's. Von JOSEPH HELLER. Bamberg: 1827.

3. Leben und Wirken Albrecht Dürer's. Von Dr. A. vON EYE. Nördlingen: 1860.

IN the fifth volume of the work entitled 'Modern Painters,' Mr. Ruskin has attempted, in his accustomed style, to relate the changes wrought by the era of the Reformation in the history of art; and he illustrates this revolution in the most imaginative minds of northern and southern Europe by a comparison, or rather by a contrast, between Albert Dürer and Salvator Rosa. The artist of Nüremberg he describes trained ' amidst the formal delights, the tender religions, and practical 'science of domestic life and honest commerce. Salvator amidst 'the pride of lascivious wealth and the outlawed distress of 'impious poverty.' An interval of almost one hundred years -an entire age of modern civilisation-elapsed between the death of the one and the birth of the other. The German was the contemporary and admirer of Erasmus, Melancthon, and Luther; the Italian was a pupil of the Neapolitan Jesuits, and a dependent of the voluptuous courts of the seventeenth century. Yet under circumstances so various, there was doubtless some touch of kinsmanship between these eccentric and ardent minds; life to both of them was a hard master; a vein of fierce irony runs through their works; and they stand apart from the mere traditions of the schools in the annals of their art. true key to the works of both these remarkable men lies, in an eminent degree, in the vicissitudes and internal history of their lives. In Albert Dürer especially the union and the conflict of the artist and the craftsman-of a man of lofty imagination but of homely character- of a great destiny but a narrow life -produce a strange and perplexing mixture, not unlike some of the creations of his own pencil. His life is, however, as yet, less familiar to the English public than that of many artists of inferior originality, and we receive with satisfaction the more recent contributions to his biography, which the affectionate admiration and careful researches of his own countrymen have laid before us.

The

Johann Neudorffer led the procession of writers on Dürer; his Notices of a Century of Nüremberg Painters' were pub

lished in 1546; but Karl von Mandler was the first who added any account of the artist's works to a biographical sketch. This was in 1604; the same strain was taken up later by Baldinucci, and imitated again by Joachim von Sandraat, the engraver, himself the owner of a collection in which many of Dürer's works were to be found. Vasari belongs to the same division of writers; while Hauer, though he never published a life of the painter, collected and printed many of Dürer's original writings, and added to these fragments, fac-similes of his etchings and woodcuts. Little authentic knowledge of his works can, however, be gathered from the catalogues and artistic notices of the two centuries following his death. Still he had abundance of commentators. Arend, Des Piles, D'Argensville, Descamps, have all written on the subject, following Sandraat in their plan; Doppelmayr contented himself mostly with a sketch of the painter's life, of which Melchior Adam, in his 'Vita Philosophorum Germanorum,' has given an accurate and interesting outline. In Spain (where several of his best works are still to be seen), the Franconian painter was not forgotten. Antonio de las Puentes refers to Dürer, and to the influence he exercised on Spanish art; but his remarks are perhaps as little appreciated by German critics as are those of Vasari, when he treats of similar results in Italy; and all these writers only preceded Roth, whose Leben A. Dürer's' was published about 1791. Since then books and authorities have multiplied, and articles on Dürer may be found in Müller, Kugler, Nagler, and Rettberg. In his native city a late remorse awakened; a statue was erected to his memory; everything bearing his name, or to which his name could be attached, received a tender homage; and the discovery of some original sketches and writings in the dusty archives of a patrician house added to the enthusiasm with which he was and is regarded. Meanwhile the most ardent of his admirers, the late Mr. J. Heller of Bamberg, determined to supply the defects of all former catalogues and annotators, and commenced a laborious account of the Works of Dürer. He did not live to complete this Magnum Opus; and the second volume (in three parts) is all that we possess of it. But this volume is fortunately complete in itself; the author claims to have there left no picture, engraving, woodcut, etching, proof, or rare example of the master, unnoticed; he furnishes an account of the origin of all the best collections of Dürer's drawings, and gives us, by his elaborate descriptions and researches, pleasant and touching glimpses into Dürer's life and studies. The task of supplying us with what Heller died too early to finish still remained; a biography of Dürer,

compiled from the best sources, and enriched by modern criticism, was until last year a desideratum in literature, when it was undertaken by Dr. Eye, whose volume well repays perusal ; and who may be congratulated on the successful accomplishment of what has evidently been to him a labour of love. Thus far we have pursued the race of critics and biographers, but there yet remains, what is of far more real interest, the authentic notice of Dürer under his own hand; it is this that Dr. Campe, the well known printer of Nüremberg, has given to the world in his 'Remains of Albert Dürer.' Here we have Dürer's life by himself: quaint fragments of an autobiography never anything but fragmentary; letters of business; letters of friendship; letters written in travel; attempts at verse, as unhappy as those of our own Turner; and last, not least, his diary in the Netherlands, kept with great regularity during the years 1520 and '21.

Except in greatly abridged or garbled forms, these MSS. have never been made known to the English public. We therefore propose to follow Dr. Campe's arrangement, by introducing our readers at once to the short memoir Dürer wrote of his family in the year 1524. He prefaces it with these words:

'I, Albert Dürer, the younger, have gathered from my father's writings and papers what was his parentage, from whence he came, how he lived, and how he drew to his end in peace. So may God have mercy on him and us. Amen.

'Albert Dürer, the elder, was by reason of his birth a native of the kingdom of Hungary, and of the village called Eytas, in which he was born. It is not far from the little town of Jula, or Kula, lying eight miles below Wardein. His family had maintained themselves by rearing horses and cattle; but my grandfather, one Antony Dürer by name, came as a boy to the above-named town of Jula to a goldsmith's, and there under him learnt his trade.'

Already we see in the bucolical mind some strugglings towards the exercise of the mechanical arts. This Antony Dürer had three sons, of whom the first-born was the father of the painter, likewise a worker in gold and silver, and a blame'less and ingenious man.'

'Item.—It was not till later than this my dear father, Albrecht Dürer, came into Germany. He had been for a long season in the Netherlands among the great masters there, and did not arrive in Nüremberg until the year, as reckoned from the birth of Christ, 1455; it

6

Some use was made of them in Mr. Ottley's History of Engraving,' and in Mr. Jackson's History of Wood Engraving,' p. 314. The Diary was published by Murr in the seventh volume of his Journal.

was on St. Aloysius' Day (25th of June), the same day that Philip Pirkheimer was married, and his wedding celebrated in the finest way, with a great dance under the lime-trees.'

The elder Dürer seems to have served for many years subsequent to his arrival in Nuremberg under old Jeremy Haller the goldsmith. In the year 1467 Haller gave him his daughter to wife. This was a step upwards on the social ladder for Dürer, as the Hallers were among the best burgher families of the town, while on the mother's side, the bride could boast of something more than even burgher blood: and the marriage seems to have been a happy one, though there was a great disparity of years between the pair: Barbara Haller had been only three years of age when the Hungarian apprentice came to her father's house, and she was now, as her son informs us, a tall fair girl, fifteen years of age.' 'Let it be known,' he goes on to say, my father did with his spouse beget the following children; and then follows a list of the eighteen children with which this union was blessed; but we will spare our readers the enumeration of their respective names, sponsors, and dates of birth. It was on St. Prudentia's Day, May 20th, 1471, that a second son was born to Albert and Barbara Dürer. He received his father's name at baptism, and received it from Antony Koberger, the great printer of the day. Of the other children Dürer writes:

'Now, of this brotherhood, children of my dear father, all are dead: some in childhood, some as they grew up; but three brothers remain to live as long as God willeth-namely, I, Albert, Andreas, and Hans.'

Both these brothers survived the great artist: Andreas to inherit his brother's property and works of art, and Hans or John Durer to become court painter to the king of Poland: his name we are accustomed to hear attached (but erroneously so) to a portrait in the Pinacothek at Munich, painted by Albert. There is something of mournful interest in Dürer's reference to his parent's struggles, and his own early recollections, related in his own simple language:

'Item.—The life of this Albert Dürer the elder was spent in great trouble and in hard labour; he had no other means of subsistence than that which he, his wife, and his children could gain by the work of their own hands; and in this way he had often little enough. He endured likewise much sorrow, many temptations, and manifold adversities. But he won also, from as many as were conversant with him, just praise and commendation; for he led an honoured and a Christian life, was a man patient of spirit, peaceable with his fellows, and thankful towards God. He drew to himself little of this world's