The Dublin
the premium men, while the with- drawal of premium from the upper classes operates to the discouragement of classical studies, just then when they become most interesting, and ought by all fair means to be promoted.
It would also be well worthy of be- ing, if possible, specifically ascertain- ed, whether the increase which has taken place in the courses of physics and mathematics has been productive or not of any very decisive advantage. Has the average knowledge of the stu- dents in general been increased or di- minished since the course became more difficult and extended ? Has the an- swering, on the whole, been better or worse? We well know that Indivi- duals, who possess sufficient of talent and energy to master all the difficul- ties which at present lie in their way, must be superior, in point of actual attainment, to their predecessors, who were called upon to conquer no such difficulties. But we also know, that there are many who will be discoura- ged from making any attempt to gain even a very moderate degree of scien- tific information, from the very hope- lessness of overcoming, what appear to them as insuperable impediments. Seeing clearly that they cannot accom- plish all, they are disheartened from endeavouring to accomplish any thing; and, like the Indian who was caught in the rapids of Niagara, and who, when he found all his efforts to stem the tide unavailing, lay down in his boat, and, with his pipe in his mouth, suffered himself, most composedly, to be precipitated down the cataract, they learn to acquiesce in a kind of " fat
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contented ignorance" of those things, the value of which they are ready enough to admit, but which had never been presented to them except under such an aspect as rendered the attain- ment even of a moderate acquaintance with them, apparently as impracticable as it was confessedly important.
But we must not be led out of our depth, or trespass longer on the pa- tience of the reader. We have endea- voured, in the preceding pages, to sketch the history, detail the regula- tions, and estimate the worth, of the Dublin University. We have done so, because it appears to us especially im- portant, that at the present time it should be known and valued ; and be- cause we were anxious to point out not only the degree in which it has been hitherto serviceable to the cause of literature, but the still greater de- gree in which it is capable of being made so. Our suggestions may be crude, they may be impracticable; but they are offered in the sincerest spirit of good will towards an institution, which we have ever venerated and lo- ved, by which the intentions of its royal founders have been already so much more than fulfilled which can number amongst its sons some of the brightest ornaments of the pulpit, the senate, and the bar, which have ever illustrated any age, or adorned any country and which seems desti- ned, if justice be done it, to accom- plish still higher objects, and to make national improvement and national re- nown subservient to the union, the glory, the happiness, and the prospe- rity of the empire.
SKETCHES OF ITALY AND THE ITALIANS, WITH REMARKS ON ANTIQUITIES
AND FINE ARTS. Continued.
XLIII. THE TINMAN OF NAPLES.
THE romantic adventures of the Neapolitan painter, Antonio Solario, better known under the name of " II Zingaro," (the Tinman,) are worth recording, as, although an able artist, and well known in Rome, Bologna, and Venice, he is not mentioned by Vasari or Baldinucci. The son of an artizan at Chieti, in the Abruzzi, he came to Naples early in the fifteenth century to exercise the trade of his father, and was occasionally employed in the house of Colantonio del Fiore, one of the most celebrated painters of
his time. Here he saw and loved the artist's daughter, and so ardent was his attachment, that he had the teme- rity to demand her in marriage of her father. Colantonio, although a dis- tinguished and wealthy man, betrayed no irritation at this audacious propo- sal, which appeared rather to amuse than offend him, and, without posi- tively rejecting it, told the tinman that he would give him his daughter in marriage whenever he became as good a painter as her father. The ena- moured artisan was not dismayed by
