Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Anx. IV.?A History of Painting in North Italy, Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from tlut fourteenth to the sixteenth century. By J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle. London, 2 vols. 8vo. 1871. THE publication of two additional volumes of Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle's ' History of Painting1 in Italy,' prove that the interest long felt in this country in the Fine Arts has not diminished. The success of recent exhibitions of the works of the old masters at the Royal Academy, and of pictures br English and foreign painters elsewhere shows, indeed, that this interest is increasing. No one who desires to see the taste and amusements of the people improved and refined can regret that this is so. We believe it to be of the utmost importance that in these days, when the different classes of society are being politically amalgamated and confounded, working men should be taught that, after all, there is something in the cultivation of the intellect, and that the high state of civilization to which we have attained, and our advancement in prosperity, happiness, and comfort, are not unconnected with the development of the human faculties, whether in the direction of literature, science, or art. It is, therefore, with concern, if not with fear, that we observe a disposition in certain persons hitherto entrusted with the direction, as far as Government can affect it, of public opinion in these matters, to sneer at the arts and taste, and to treat with contempt, if not with something worse, those who profess them. That in these days of ' Communism ' and ' Internationalism ' this tendency is positively mischievous, and even dangerous, we need scarcely point out. It is more than desirable, it is necessary, that those who are seeking to control society, and t...