text:  "If then " says our author "truth of imitation is the first business of works of art; if without that no picture is in a situation to please; if all that is visible over the whole face of nature be included in the domain of painting how is it that among the exclusive partisans of historical subjects there are persons so blind as not to see that the marvellous productions of this school and of the Flemish have filled with admirable success the immense gaps which their vaunted Italian schools have left in different parts of art?" The very first sentence of this passage is of very undefined sense; we can guess at what is meant by the sneer upon the "_vaunted Italian schools_