TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

ALTHOUGH M. Burtin's work, which was published in 1808, at Brussels, in the French language, cannot now be considered as new, and makes no pretensions to the character of a profound disquisition on the art of painting, yet no publication that has appeared, before or since, addresses itself so directly to the wants and wishes of amateurs, or supplies so compendious a general view of the subject of which it treats. It contains, indeed, so much of that kind of practical information which amateurs must acquire, either through some such aid, or through the more tedious path of their own individual experience, and at the same time affords to persons of more matured taste such an insight into the state of connoisseurship on the Continent, that it is to be wondered that no one has, until now, endeavoured to make it more generally accessible by means of an English version.