Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME NINE

All rights reserved

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
WILLIAM HAZLITT

EDITED BY A. R. WALLER

AND ARNOLD GLOVER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

W. E. HENLEY

❦

The Principal

Picture-Galleries in England

Notes of a Journey through France and Italy

Miscellaneous Essays on the Fine Arts

❦

1903

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

CONTENTS

SKETCHES OF THE PRINCIPAL PICTURE-GALLERIES IN ENGLAND WITH A CRITICISM ON ‘MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE’

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries in England. With a Criticism on ‘Marriage a-la-mode,’ appeared in a small 8vo. volume (6½ in. × 4 in.) in 1824, ‘Printed for Taylor and Hessey, 93, Fleet-Street, and 13, Waterloo-Place, Pall-Mall.’ The last page bears advertisements of the Characters of Shakspeare’s Plays, Lectures on the English Poets, and Lectures on the English Comic Writers. The printer’s name, given behind the half-title, is ‘T. Green, 76 Fleet-street.’

Four pages of Taylor & Hessey’s announcements (‘Booksellers to H.R.H. the Prince Leopold’) are bound up with the volume.

The present text is that of the 1824 volume.

The Sketches formed part of the two volumes of ‘Criticisms on Art,’ collected and edited by his son in 1843–4, and of the one volume of ‘Essays on the Fine Arts,’ edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in 1873.

ADVERTISEMENT

It is the object of the following little work to give an account of the principal Picture-Galleries in this country, and to describe the feelings which they naturally excite in the mind of a lover of art. Almost all those of any importance have been regularly gone through. One or two, that still remain unnoticed, may be added to our catalogue raisonnée at a future opportunity. It may not be improper to mention here that Mr. Angerstein’s pictures have been lately purchased for the commencement of a National Gallery, but are still to be seen in their old places on the walls of his house.

CONTENTS

PICTURE-GALLERIES IN ENGLAND

MR. ANGERSTEIN’S COLLECTION

Oh! Art, lovely Art! ‘Balm of hurt minds, chief nourisher in life’s feast, great Nature’s second course!’ Time’s treasurer, the unsullied mirror of the mind of man! Thee we invoke, and not in vain, for we find thee here retired in thy plentitude and thy power! The walls are dark with beauty; they frown severest grace. The eye is not caught by glitter and varnish; we see the pictures by their own internal light. This is not a bazaar, a raree-show of art, a Noah’s ark of all the Schools, marching out in endless procession; but a sanctuary, a holy of holies, collected by taste, sacred to fame, enriched by the rarest products of genius. For the number of pictures, Mr. Angerstein’s is the finest gallery, perhaps, in the world. We feel no sense of littleness: the attention is never distracted for a moment, but concentrated on a few pictures of first-rate excellence. Many of these chef-d’œuvres might occupy the spectator for a whole morning; yet they do not interfere with the pleasure derived from each other—so much consistency of style is there in the midst of variety!

We know of no greater treat than to be admitted freely to a Collection of this sort, where the mind reposes with full confidence in its feelings of admiration, and finds that idea and love of conceivable beauty, which it has cherished perhaps for a whole life, reflected from every object around it. It is a cure (for the time at least) for low-thoughted cares and uneasy passions. We are abstracted to another sphere: we breathe empyrean air; we enter into the minds of Raphael, of Titian, of Poussin, of the Caracci, and look at nature with their eyes; we live in time past, and seem identified with the permanent forms of things. The business of the world at large, and even its pleasures, appear like a vanity and an impertinence. What signify the hubbub, the shifting scenery, the fantoccini figures, the folly, the idle fashions without, when compared with the solitude, the silence, the speaking looks, the unfading forms within?—Here is the mind’s true home. The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of the soul, and of which it never tires. A capital print-shop (Molteno’s or Colnaghi’s) is a point to aim at in a morning’s walk—a relief and satisfaction in the motley confusion, the littleness, the vulgarity of common life: but a print-shop has but a mean, cold, meagre, petty appearance after coming out of a fine Collection of Pictures. We want the size of life, the marble flesh, the rich tones of nature, the diviner expanded expression. Good prints are no doubt, better than bad pictures; or prints, generally speaking, are better than pictures; for we have more prints of good pictures than of bad ones: yet they are for the most part but hints, loose memorandums, outlines in little of what the painter has done. How often, in turning over a number of choice engravings, do we tantalise ourselves by thinking ‘what a head that must be,’—in wondering what colour a piece of drapery is of, green or black,—in wishing, in vain, to know the exact tone of the sky in a particular corner of the picture! Throw open the folding-doors of a fine Collection, and you see all you have desired realised at a blow—the bright originals starting up in their own proper shape, clad with flesh and blood, and teeming with the first conceptions of the painter’s mind! The disadvantage of pictures is, that they cannot be multiplied to any extent, like books or prints; but this, in another point of view, operates probably as an advantage, by making the sight of a fine original picture an event so much the more memorable, and the impression so much the deeper. A visit to a genuine Collection is like going a pilgrimage—it is an act of devotion performed at the shrine of Art! It is as if there were but one copy of a book in the world, locked up in some curious casket, which, by special favour, we had been permitted to open, and peruse (as we must) with unaccustomed relish. The words would in that case leave stings in the mind of the reader, and every letter appear of gold. The ancients, before the invention of printing, were nearly in the same situation with respect to books, that we are with regard to pictures; and at the revival of letters, we find the same unmingled satisfaction, or fervid enthusiasm, manifested in the pursuit or the discovery of an old manuscript, that connoisseurs still feel in the purchase and possession of an antique cameo, or a fine specimen of the Italian school of painting. Literature was not then cheap and vulgar, nor was there what is called a reading public; and the pride of intellect, like the pride of art, or the pride of birth, was confined to the privileged few!

We sometimes, in viewing a celebrated Collection, meet with an old favourite, a first love in such matters, that we have not seen for many years, which greatly enhances the delight. We have, perhaps, pampered our imaginations with it all that time; its charms have sunk deep into our minds; we wish to see it once more, that we may confirm our judgment, and renew our vows. The Susannah and the Elders at Mr. Angerstein’s was one of those that came upon us under these circumstances. We had seen it formerly, among other visions of our youth, in the Orleans Collection,—where we used to go and look at it by the hour together, till our hearts thrilled with its beauty, and our eyes were filled with tears. How often had we thought of it since, how often spoken of it!—There it was still, the same lovely phantom as ever—not as when Rousseau met Madame de Warens, after a lapse of twenty years, who was grown old and wrinkled—but as if the young Jewish Beauty had been just surprised in that unguarded spot—crouching down in one corner of the picture, the face turned back with a mingled expression of terror, shame, and unconquerable sweetness, and the whole figure (with the arms crossed) shrinking into itself with bewitching grace and modesty! It is by Ludovico Caracci, and is worthy of his name, from its truth and purity of design, its expression and its mellow depth of tone. Of the Elders, one is represented in the attitude of advancing towards her, while the other beckons her to rise. We know of no painter who could have improved upon the Susannah, except Correggio, who, with all his capricious blandishments, and wreathed angelic smiles, would hardly have given the same natural unaffected grace, the same perfect womanhood.

There is but one other picture in the Collection, that strikes us, as a matter of taste or fancy, like this; and that is the Silenus teaching a Young Apollo to play on the pipe—a small oblong picture, executed in distemper, by Annibal Caracci. The old preceptor is very fine, with a jolly, leering, pampered look of approbation, half inclining to the brute, half-conscious of the God; but it is the Apollo that constitutes the charm of the picture, and is indeed divine. The whole figure is full of simple careless grace, laughing in youth and beauty; he holds the Pan’s-pipe in both hands, looking up with timid wonder; and the expression of delight and surprise at the sounds he produces is not to be surpassed. The only image we would venture to compare with it for innocent artless voluptuousness, is that of the shepherd-boy in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, ‘piping as though he should never be old!’ A comparison of this sort, we believe, may be made, in spite of the proverb, without injustice to the painter or the poet. Both gain by it. The idea conveyed by the one, perhaps, receives an additional grace and lustre, while a more beautiful moral sentiment hovers round the other, from thinking of them in this casual connection. If again it be asked, Which is the most admirable?—we should answer—Both are equally exquisite in their way, and yield the imagination all the pleasure it is capable of—and should decline giving an invidious preference to either. The cup can only be full. The young shepherd in the Arcadia wants no outward grace to recommend him; the stripling God no hidden charm of expression. The language of painting and poetry is intelligible enough to mortals; the spirit of both is divine, and far too good for him, who, instead of enjoying to the utmost height, would find an unwelcome flaw in either. The Silenus and Apollo has something of a Raffaellesque air, with a mixture of Correggio’s arch sensibility—there is nothing of Titian in the colouring—yet Annibal Caracci was in theory a deserter from the first to the two last of these masters; and swore with an oath, in a letter to his uncle Ludovico, that ‘they were the only true painters!’

We should nearly have exhausted our stock of enthusiasm in descanting on these two compositions, in almost any other case; but there is no danger of this in the present instance. If we were at any loss in this respect, we should only have to turn to the large picture of the Raising of Lazarus, by Sebastian del Piombo;

——‘and still walking under,

Find some new matter to look up and wonder.’

We might dwell on the masterly strength of the drawing, the gracefulness of the principal female figures, the high-wrought execution, the deep, rich, mosaic colouring, the massiness and bustle of the back-ground. We think this one of the best pictures on so large a scale that we are anywhere acquainted with. The whole management of the design has a very noble and imposing effect, and each part severally will bear the closest scrutiny. It is a magnificent structure built of solid and valuable materials. The artist has not relied merely on the extent of his canvas, or the importance of his subject, for producing a striking result—the effect is made out by an aggregate of excellent parts. The hands, the feet, the drapery, the heads, the features, are all fine. There is some satisfaction in looking at a large historical picture, such as this: for you really gain in quantity, without losing in quality; and have a studious imitation of individual nature, combined with masculine invention, and the comprehensive arrangement of an interesting story. The Lazarus is very fine and bold. The flesh is well-baked, dingy, and ready to crumble from the touch, when it is liberated from its dread confinement to have life and motion impressed on it again. He seems impatient of restraint, gazes eagerly about him, and looks out from his shrouded prison on this new world with hurried amazement, as if Death had scarcely yet resigned his power over the senses. We would wish our artists to look at the legs and feet of this figure, and see how correctness of finishing and a greatness of gusto in design are compatible with, and set off each other. The attendant female figures have a peculiar grace and becoming dignity, both of expression and attitude. They are in a style something between Michael Angelo and Parmegiano. They take a deep interest in the scene, but it is with the air of composure proper to the sex, who are accustomed by nature and duty to works of charity and compassion. The head of the old man, kneeling behind Christ, is an admirable study of drawing, execution, and character. The Christ himself is grave and earnest, with a noble and impressive countenance; but the figure wants that commanding air which ought to belong to one possessed of preternatural power, and in the act of displaying it. Too much praise cannot be given to the back-ground—the green and white draperies of some old people at a distance, which are as airy as they are distinct—the buildings like tombs—and the different groups, and processions of figures, which seem to make life almost as grave and solemn a business as death itself. This picture is said by some to have been designed by Michael Angelo, and painted by Sebastian del Piombo, in rivalship of some of Raphael’s works. It was in the Orleans Gallery.

Near this large historical composition stands (or is suspended in a case) a single head, by Raphael, of Pope Julius II. It is in itself a Collection—a world of thought and character. There is a prodigious weight and gravity of look, combined with calm self-possession, and easiness of temper. It has the cast of an English countenance, which Raphael’s portraits often have, Titian’s never. In Raphael’s the mind, or the body, frequently prevails; in Titian’s you always see the soul—faces ‘which pale passion loves.’ Look at the Music-piece by Titian, close by in this Collection—it is ‘all ear,’—the expression is evanescent as the sounds—the features are seen in a sort of dim chiaro scuro, as if the confused impressions of another sense intervened—and you might easily suppose some of the performers to have been engaged the night before in

‘Mask or midnight serenade,

Which the starved lover to his mistress sings,

Best quitted with disdain.’[^[1]]

The ruddy, bronzed colouring of Raphael generally takes off from any appearance of nocturnal watching and languid hectic passion! The portrait of Julius II. is finished to a great nicety. The hairs of the beard, the fringe on the cap, are done by minute and careful touches of the pencil. In seeing the labour, the conscientious and modest pains, which this great painter bestowed upon his smallest works, we cannot help being struck with the number and magnitude of those he left behind him. When we have a single portrait placed before us, that might seem to have taken half a year to complete it, we wonder how the same painter could find time to execute his Cartoons, the compartments of the Vatican, and a thousand other matchless works. The same account serves for both. The more we do, the more we can do. Our leisure (though it may seem a paradox) is in proportion to our industry. The same habit of intense application, which led our artist to bestow as much pains and attention on the study of a single head, as if his whole reputation had depended on it, enabled him to set about the greatest works with alacrity, and to finish them with ease. If he had done any thing he undertook to do, in a slovenly disreputable manner, he would (upon the same principle) have lain idle half his time. Zeal and diligence, in this view, make life, short as it is, long.—Neither did Raphael, it should seem, found his historical pretensions on his incapacity to paint a good portrait. On the contrary, the latter here looks very much like the corner-stone of the historical edifice. Nature did not put him out. He was not too great a genius to copy what he saw. He probably thought that a deference to nature is the beginning of art, and that the highest eminence is scaled by single steps!

On the same stand as the portrait of Julius II. is the much vaunted Correggio—the Christ in the Garden. We would not give a farthing for it. The drapery of the Christ is highly finished in a silver and azure tone—but high finishing is not all we ask from Correggio. It is more worthy of Carlo Dolce.—Lest we should forget it, we may mention here, that the admired portrait of Govarcius was gone to be copied at Somerset-house. The Academy have then, at length, fallen into the method pursued at the British Gallery, of recommending the students to copy from the Old Masters. Well—better late than never! This same portrait is not, we think, the truest specimen of Vandyke. It has not his mild, pensive, somewhat effeminate cast of colour and expression. His best portraits have an air of faded gentility about them. The Govarcius has too many streaks of blood-colour, too many marks of the pencil, to convey an exact idea of Vandyke’s characteristic excellence; though it is a fine imitation of Rubens’s florid manner. Vandyke’s most striking portraits are those which look just like a gentleman or lady seen in a looking-glass, and neither more nor less.

Of the Claudes, we prefer the St. Ursula—the Embarking of the Five thousand Virgins—to the others. The water is exquisite; and the sails of the vessels glittering in the morning sun, and the blue flags placed against the trees, which seem like an opening into the sky behind—so sparkling is the effect of this ambiguity in colouring—are in Claude’s most perfect manner. The Altieri Claude is one of his noblest and most classical compositions, with towers, and trees, and streams, and flocks, and herds, and distant sunny vales,

——‘Where universal Pan,

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,

Leads on the eternal spring:—’

but the effect of the execution has been deadened and rendered flat by time or ill-usage. There is a dull, formal appearance, as if the different masses of sky, of water, &c., were laid on with plates of tin or lead. This is not a general defect in Claude: his landscapes have the greatest quantity of inflection, the most delicate brilliancy, of all others. A lady had been making a good copy of the Seaport, which is a companion to the one we have described. We do not think these Claudes, famous as they are, equal to Lord Egremont’s Jacob and Laban; to the Enchanted Castle; to a green vernal Landscape, which was in Walsh Porter’s Collection, and which was the very finest we ever saw; nor to some others that have appeared from time to time in the British Institution. We are sorry to make this, which may be thought an ill-natured, remark: but, though we have a great respect for Mr. Angerstein’s taste, we have a greater for Claude Lorraine’s reputation. Let any persons admire these specimens of his art as much as they will (and the more they admire them, the more we shall be gratified), and then we will tell them, he could do far finer things than these!

There is one Rembrandt, and one N. Poussin. The Rembrandt (the Woman taken in Adultery) is prodigious in colouring, in light and shade, in pencilling, in solemn effect; but that is nearly all—

‘Of outward show

Elaborate, of inward less exact.’

Nevertheless, it is worth any money. The Christ has considerable seriousness and dignity of aspect. The marble pavement, of which the light is even dazzling; the figures of the two Rabbis to the right, radiant with crimson, green, and azure; the back-ground, which seems like some rich oil-colour smeared over a ground of gold, and where the eye staggers on from one abyss of obscurity to another,—place this picture in the first rank of Rembrandt’s wonderful performances. If this extraordinary genius was the most literal and vulgar of draughtsmen, he was the most ideal of colourists. When Annibal Caracci vowed to God, that Titian and Correggio were the only true painters, he had not seen Rembrandt;—if he had, he would have added him to the list. The Poussin is a Dance of Bacchanals: theirs are not ‘pious orgies.’ It is, however, one of this master’s finest pictures, both in the spirit of the execution, and the ingenuity and equivoque of the invention. If the purity of the drawing will make amends for the impurity of the design, it may pass: assuredly the same subject, badly executed, would not be endured; but the life of mind, the dexterity of combination displayed in it, supply the want of decorum. The old adage, that ‘Vice, by losing all its grossness, loses half its evil,’ seems chiefly applicable to pictures. Thus a naked figure, that has nothing but its nakedness to recommend it, is not fit to be hung up in decent apartments. If it is a Nymph by Titian, Correggio’s Iö, we no longer think of its being naked; but merely of its sweetness, its beauty, its naturalness. So far art, as it is intellectual, has a refinement and extreme unction of its own. Indifferent pictures, like dull people, must absolutely be moral! We suggest this as a hint to those persons of more gallantry than discretion, who think that to have an indecent daub hanging up in one corner of the room, is proof of a liberality of gusto, and a considerable progress in virtù. Tout au contraire.

We have a clear, brown, woody Landscape by Gaspar Poussin, in his fine determined style of pencilling, which gives to earth its solidity, and to the air its proper attributes. There are perhaps, no landscapes that excel his in this fresh, healthy look of nature. One might say, that wherever his pencil loves to haunt, ‘the air is delicate.’ We forgot to notice a St. John in the Wilderness, by A. Caracci, which has much of the autumnal tone, the ‘sear and yellow leaf,’ of Titian’s landscape-compositions. A Rape of the Sabines, in the inner room, by Rubens, is, we think, the most tasteless picture in the Collection: to see plump, florid viragos struggling with bearded ruffians, and tricked out in the flounces, furbelows, and finery of the court of Louis XIV. is preposterous. But there is another Rubens in the outer room, which, though fantastical and quaint, has qualities to redeem all faults. It is an allegory of himself and his three wives, as a St. George and Holy Family, with his children as Christ and St. John, playing with a lamb; in which he has contrived to bring together all that is rich in antique dresses, (black as jet, and shining like diamonds,) transparent in flesh-colour, agreeable in landscape, unfettered in composition. The light streams from rosy clouds; the breeze curls the branches of the trees in the back-ground, and plays on the clear complexions of the various scattered group. It is one of this painter’s most splendid, and, at the same time, most solid and sharply finished productions.

Mr. Wilkie’s Alehouse Door is here, and deserves to be here. Still it is not his best; though there are some very pleasing rustic figures, and some touching passages in it. As in his Blind-Man’s-buff, the groups are too straggling, and spread over too large a surface of bare foreground, which Mr. Wilkie does not paint well. It looks more like putty than earth or clay. The artist has a better eye for the individual details, than for the general tone of objects. Mr. Liston’s face in this ‘flock of drunkards’ is a smiling failure.

A portrait of Hogarth, by himself, and Sir Joshua’s half-length of Lord Heathfield, hang in the same room. The last of these is certainly a fine picture, well composed, richly coloured, with considerable character, and a look of nature. Nevertheless, our artist’s pictures, seen among standard works, have (to speak it plainly) something old-womanish about them. By their obsolete and affected air, they remind one of antiquated ladies of quality, and are a kind of Duchess-Dowagers in the art—somewhere between the living and the dead.

Hogarth’s series of the Marriage a-la-Mode[^[2]] (the most delicately painted of all his pictures, and admirably they certainly are painted) concludes the Catalogue Raisonnée of this Collection.—A study of Heads, by Correggio, and some of Mr. Fuseli’s stupendous figures from his Milton Gallery, are on the staircase.

A CATALOGUE OF THE PICTURES IN THE ANGERSTEIN GALLERY

THE DULWICH GALLERY

It was on the 5th of November that we went to see this Gallery. The morning was mild, calm, pleasant: it was a day to ruminate on the object we had in view. It was the time of year

‘When yellow leaves, or few or none, do hang

Upon the branches;’

their scattered gold was strongly contrasted with the dark green spiral shoots of the cedar trees that skirt the road; the sun shone faint and watery, as if smiling his last; Winter gently let go the hand of Summer, and the green fields, wet with the mist, anticipated the return of Spring. At the end of a beautiful little village, Dulwich College appeared in view, with modest state, yet mindful of the olden time; and the name of Allen and his compeers rushed full upon the memory! How many races of school-boys have played within its walls, or stammered out a lesson, or sauntered away their vacant hours in its shade: yet, not one Shakspeare is there to be found among them all! The boy is clothed and fed and gets through his accidence: but no trace of his youthful learning, any more than of his saffron livery, is to be met with in the man. Genius is not to be ‘constrained by mastery.’—Nothing comes of these endowments and foundations for learning,—you might as well make dirt-pies, or build houses with cards. Yet something does come of them too—a retreat for age, a dream in youth—a feeling in the air around them, the memory of the past, the hope of what will never be. Sweet are the studies of the school-boy, delicious his idle hours! Fresh and gladsome is his waking, balmy are his slumbers, book-pillowed! He wears a green and yellow livery perhaps; but ‘green and yellow melancholy’ comes not near him, or if it does, is tempered with youth and innocence! To thumb his Eutropius, or to knuckle down at taw, are to him equally delightful; for whatever stirs the blood, or inspires thought in him, quickens the pulse of life and joy. He has only to feel, in order to be happy; pain turns smiling from him, and sorrow is only a softer kind of pleasure. Each sensation is but an unfolding of his new being; care, age, sickness, are idle words; the musty records of antiquity look glossy in his sparkling eye, and he clasps immortality as his future bride! The coming years hurt him not—he hears their sound afar off, and is glad. See him there, the urchin, seated in the sun, with a book in his hand, and the wall at his back. He has a thicker wall before him—the wall that parts him from the future. He sees not the archers taking aim at his peace; he knows not the hands that are to mangle his bosom. He stirs not, he still pores upon his book, and, as he reads, a slight hectic flush passes over his cheek, for he sees the letters that compose the word Fame glitter on the page, and his eyes swim, and he thinks that he will one day write a book, and have his name repeated by thousands of readers, and assume a certain signature, and write Essays and Criticisms in a London Magazine, as a consummation of felicity scarcely to be believed. Come hither, thou poor little fellow, and let us change places with thee if thou wilt; here, take the pen and finish this article, and sign what name you please to it; so that we may but change our dress for yours, and sit shivering in the sun, and con over our little task, and feed poor, and lie hard, and be contented and happy, and think what a fine thing it is to be an author, and dream of immortality, and sleep o’nights!

There is something affecting and monastic in the sight of this little nursery of learning, simple and retired as it stands, just on the verge of the metropolis, and in the midst of modern improvements. There is a chapel, containing a copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration, by Julio Romano: but the great attraction to curiosity at present is the Collection of pictures left to the College by the late Sir Francis Bourgeois, who is buried in a mausoleum close by. He once (it is said) spent an agreeable day here in company with the Masters of the College and some other friends; and he determined, in consequence, upon this singular mode of testifying his gratitude and his respect. Perhaps, also, some such idle thoughts as we have here recorded might have mingled with this resolution. The contemplation and the approach of death might have been softened to his mind by being associated with the hopes of childhood; and he might wish that his remains should repose, in monumental state, amidst ‘the innocence and simplicity of poor Charity Boys!’ Might it not have been so?

The pictures are 356 in number, and are hung on the walls of a large gallery, built for the purpose, and divided into five compartments. They certainly looked better in their old places, at the house of Mr. Desenfans (the original collector), where they were distributed into a number of small rooms, and seen separately and close to the eye. They are mostly cabinet-pictures; and not only does the height, at which many of them are necessarily hung to cover a large space, lessen the effect, but the number distracts and deadens the attention. Besides, the skylights are so contrived as to ‘shed a dim,’ though not a ‘religious light’ upon them. At our entrance, we were first struck by our old friends the Cuyps; and just beyond, caught a glimpse of that fine female head by Carlo Maratti, giving us a welcome with cordial glances. May we not exclaim—

‘What a delicious breath painting sends forth!

The violet-bed’s not sweeter.’

A fine gallery of pictures is a sort of illustration of Berkeley’s Theory of Matter and Spirit. It is like a palace of thought—another universe, built of air, of shadows, of colours. Every thing seems ‘palpable to feeling as to sight.’ Substances turn to shadows by the painter’s arch-chemic touch; shadows harden into substances. ‘The eye is made the fool of the other senses, or else worth all the rest.’ The material is in some sense embodied in the immaterial, or, at least, we see all things in a sort of intellectual mirror. The world of art is an enchanting deception. We discover distance in a glazed surface; a province is contained in a foot of canvass; a thin evanescent tint gives the form and pressure of rocks and trees; an inert shape has life and motion in it. Time stands still, and the dead re-appear, by means of this ‘so potent art!’ Look at the Cuyp next the door (No. 3). It is woven of etherial hues. A soft mist is on it, a veil of subtle air. The tender green of the vallies beyond the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills, have an effect like the down on an unripe nectarine. You may lay your finger on the canvass; but miles of dewy vapour and sunshine are between you and the objects you survey. It is almost needless to point out that the cattle and figures in the fore-ground, like dark, transparent spots, give an immense relief to the perspective. This is, we think, the finest Cuyp, perhaps, in the world. The landscape opposite to it (in the same room) by Albert Cuyp, has a richer colouring and a stronger contrast of light and shade, but it has not that tender bloom of a spring morning (so delicate, yet so powerful in its effect) which the other possesses. Two Horses, by Cuyp (No. 74), is another admirable specimen of this excellent painter. It is hard to say, which is most true to nature—the sleek, well-fed look of the bay horse, or the bone and spirit of the dappled iron-grey one, or the face of the man who is busy fastening a girth. Nature is scarcely more faithful to itself, than this delightfully unmannered, unaffected picture is to it. In the same room there are several good Tenierses, and a small Head of an old Man, by Rembrandt, which is as smoothly finished as a miniature. No. 10, Interior of an Ale-house, by Adrian Brouwer, almost gives one a sick head-ache; particularly, the face and figure of the man leaning against the door, overcome with ‘potations pottle deep.’ Brouwer united the depth and richness of Ostade to the spirit and felicity of Teniers. No. 12, Sleeping Nymph and Satyr, and 59, Nymph and Satyr, by Polemberg, are not pictures to our taste. Why should any one make it a rule never to paint any thing but this one subject? Was it to please himself or others? The one shows bad taste, the other wrong judgment. The grossness of the selection is hardly more offensive than the finicalness of the execution. No. 49, a Mater Dolorosa, by Carlo Dolce, is a very good specimen of this master; but the expression has too great a mixture of piety and pauperism in it. It is not altogether spiritual. No. 51, A School with Girls at work, by Crespi, is a most rubbishly performance, and has the look of a modern picture. It was, no doubt, painted in the fashion of the time, and is now old-fashioned. Every thing has this modern, or rather uncouth and obsolete look, which, besides the temporary and local circumstances, has not the free look of nature. Dress a figure in what costume you please (however fantastic, however barbarous), but add the expression which is common to all faces, the properties that are common to all drapery in its elementary principles, and the picture will belong to all times and places. It is not the addition of individual circumstances, but the omission of general truth, that makes the little, the deformed, and the short-lived in art. No. 183, Religion in the Desart, a sketch by Sir Francis Bourgeois, is a proof of this remark. There are no details, nor is there any appearance of permanence or sta[bility about it. It] seems to have been painted yesterday, and to labour under premature decay. It has a look of being half done, and you have no wish to see it finished. No. 53, Interior of a Cathedral, by Sanadram, is curious and fine. From one end of the perspective to the other—and back again—would make a morning’s walk.

In the Second Room, No. 90, a Sea Storm, by Backhuysen, and No. 93, A Calm, by W. Vandervelde, are equally excellent, the one for its gloomy turbulence, and the other for its glassy smoothness. 92, Landscape with Cattle and Figures, is by Both, who is, we confess, no great favourite of ours. We do not like his straggling branches of trees without masses of foliage, continually running up into the sky, merely to let in the landscape beyond. No. 96, Blowing Hot and Cold, by Jordaens, is as fine a picture as need be painted. It is full of character, of life, and pleasing colour. It is rich and not gross. 98, Portrait of a Lady, said in the printed Catalogue to be by Andrea Sacchi, is surely by Carlo Maratti, to whom it used to be given. It has great beauty, great elegance, great expression, and great brilliancy of execution; but every thing in it belongs to a more polished style of art than Andrea Sacchi. Be this as it may, it is one of the most perfect pictures in the collection. Of the portraits of known individuals in this room, we wish to say but little, for we can say nothing good. That of Mr. Kemble, by Beechey, is perhaps the most direct and manly. In this room is Rubens’s Sampson and Delilah, a coarse daub—at least, it looks so between two pictures by Vandyke, Charity, and a Madonna and Infant Christ. That painter probably never produced any thing more complete than these two compositions. They have the softness of air, the solidity of marble: the pencil appears to float and glide over the features of the face, the folds of the drapery, with easy volubility, but to mark every thing with a precision, a force, a grace indescribable. Truth seems to hold the pencil, and elegance to guide it. The attitudes are exquisite, and the expression all but divine. It is not like Raphael’s, it is true—but whose else was? Vandyke was born in Holland, and lived most of his time in England!—There are several capital pictures of horses, &c. by Wouvermans, in the same room, particularly the one with a hay-cart loading on the top of a rising ground. The composition is as striking and pleasing as the execution is delicate. There is immense knowledge and character in Wouvermans’ horses—an ear, an eye turned round, a cropped tail, give you their history and thoughts—but from the want of a little arrangement, his figures look too often like spots on a dark ground. When they are properly relieved and disentangled from the rest of the composition, there is an appearance of great life and bustle in his pictures. His horses, however, have too much of the manège in them—he seldom gets beyond the camp or the riding school.—This room is rich in master-pieces. Here is the Jacob’s Dream, by Rembrandt, with that sleeping figure, thrown like a bundle of clothes in one corner of the picture, by the side of some stunted bushes, and with those winged shapes, not human, nor angelical, but bird-like, dream-like, treading on clouds, ascending, descending through the realms of endless light, that loses itself in infinite space! No one else could ever grapple with this subject, or stamp it on the willing canvass in its gorgeous obscurity but Rembrandt! Here also is the St. Barbara, of Rubens, fleeing from her persecutors; a noble design, as if she were scaling the steps of some high overhanging turret, moving majestically on, with Fear before her, Death behind her, and Martyrdom crowning her:—and here is an eloquent landscape by the same master-hand, the subject of which is, a shepherd piping his flock homewards through a narrow defile, with a graceful group of autumnal trees waving on the edge of the declivity above, and the rosy evening light streaming through the clouds on the green moist landscape in the still lengthening distance. Here (to pass from one kind of excellence to another with kindly interchange) is a clear sparkling Waterfall, by Ruysdael, and Hobbima’s Water-Mill, with the wheels in motion, and the ducks paddling in the restless stream. Is not this a sad anti-climax from Jacob’s Dream to a picture of a Water-Mill? We do not know; and we should care as little, could we but paint either of the pictures.

‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’

If a picture is admirable in its kind, we do not give ourselves much trouble about the subject. Could we paint as well as Hobbima, we should not envy Rembrandt: nay, even as it is, while we can relish both, we envy neither!

The Centre Room commences with a Girl at a Window, by Rembrandt. The picture is known by the print of it, and is one of the most remarkable and pleasing in the Collection. For clearness, for breadth, for a lively, ruddy look of healthy nature, it cannot be surpassed. The execution of the drapery is masterly. There is a story told of its being his servant-maid looking out of a window, but it is evidently the portrait of a mere child.—A Farrier shoeing an Ass, by Berchem, is in his usual manner. There is truth of character and delicate finishing; but the fault of all Berchem’s pictures is, that he continues to finish after he has done looking at nature, and his last touches are different from hers. Hence comes that resemblance to tea-board painting, which even his best works are chargeable with. We find here one or two small Claudes of no great value; and two very clever specimens of the court-painter, Watteau, the Gainsborough of France. They are marked as Nos. 184 and 194, Fête Champêtre, and Le Bal Champêtre. There is something exceedingly light, agreeable, and characteristic in this artist’s productions. He might almost be said to breathe his figures and his flowers on the canvas—so fragile is their texture, so evanescent is his touch. He unites the court and the country at a sort of salient point—you may fancy yourself with Count Grammont and the beauties of Charles II. in their gay retreat at Tunbridge Wells. His trees have a drawing-room air with them, an appearance of gentility and etiquette, and nod gracefully over-head; while the figures below, thin as air, and vegetably clad, in the midst of all their affectation and grimace, seem to have just sprung out of the ground, or to be the fairy inhabitants of the scene in masquerade. They are the Oreads and Dryads of the Luxembourg! Quaint association, happily effected by the pencil of Watteau! In the Bal Champêtre we see Louis XIV. himself dancing, looking so like an old beau, his face flushed and puckered up with gay anxiety; but then the satin of his slashed doublet is made of the softest leaves of the water-lily; Zephyr plays wanton with the curls of his wig! We have nobody who could produce a companion to this picture now: nor do we very devoutly wish it. The Louis the Fourteenths are extinct, and we suspect their revival would hardly be compensated even by the re-appearance of a Watteau.—No. 187, the Death of Cardinal Beaufort, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a very indifferent and rather unpleasant sketch of a very fine picture. One of the most delightful things in this delightful collection is the Portrait (195) of the Prince of the Austurias, by Velasquez. The easy lightness of the childish Prince contrasts delightfully with the unwieldy figure of the horse, which has evidently been brought all the way from the Low Countries for the amusement of his rider. Velasquez was (with only two exceptions, Titian and Vandyke) as fine a portrait-painter as ever lived! In the centre room also is the Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, by Murillo—a sweet picture with a fresh green landscape, and the heart of Love in the midst of it.—There are several heads by Holbein scattered up and down the different compartments. We need hardly observe that they all have character in the extreme, so that we may be said to be acquainted with the people they represent; but then they give nothing but character, and only one part of that, viz. the dry, the literal, the concrete, and fixed. They want the addition of passion and beauty; but they are the finest caput mortuums of expression that ever were made. Hans Holbein had none of the volatile essence of genius in his composition. If portrait-painting is the prose of the art, his pictures are the prose of portrait-painting. Yet he is ‘a reverend name’ in art, and one of the benefactors of the human mind. He has left faces behind him that we would give the world to have seen, and there they are—stamped on his canvass for ever! Who, in reading over the names of certain individuals, does not feel a yearning in his breast to know their features and their lineaments? We look through a small frame, and lo! at the distance of three centuries, we have before us the figures of Anne Boleyn, of the virtuous Cranmer, the bigoted Queen Mary, the noble Surrey—as if we had seen them in their life-time, not perhaps in their best moods or happiest attitudes, but as they sometimes appeared, no doubt. We know at least what sort of looking people they were: our minds are made easy on that score; the ‘body and limbs’ are there, and we may ‘add what flourishes’ of grace or ornament we please. Holbein’s heads are to the finest portraits what state-papers are to history.

The first picture in the Fourth Room is the Prophet Samuel, by Sir Joshua. It is not the Prophet Samuel, but a very charming picture of a little child saying its prayers. The second is, The Education of Bacchus, by Nicholas Poussin. This picture makes one thirsty to look at it—the colouring even is dry and adust. It is true history in the technical phrase, that is to say, true poetry in the vulgate. The figure of the infant Bacchus seems as if he would drink up a vintage—he drinks with his mouth, his hands, his belly, and his whole body. Gargantua was nothing to him. In the Education of Jupiter, in like manner, we are thrown back into the infancy of mythologic lore. The little Jupiter, suckled by a she-goat, is beautifully conceived and expressed; and the dignity and ascendancy given to these animals in the picture is wonderfully happy. They have a very imposing air of gravity indeed, and seem to be by prescription ‘grand caterers and wet-nurses of the state’ of Heaven! Apollo giving a Poet a Cup of Water to drink is elegant and classical; and The Flight into Egypt instantly takes the tone of Scripture-history. This is strange, but so it is. All things are possible to a high imagination. All things, about which we have a feeling, may be expressed by true genius. A dark landscape (by the same hand) in a corner of the room is a proof of this. There are trees in the fore-ground, with a paved road and buildings in the distance. The Genius of antiquity might wander here, and feel itself at home.—The large leaves are wet and heavy with dew, and the eye dwells ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs.’ In the old collection (in Mr. Desenfans’ time) the Poussins occupied a separated room by themselves, and it was (we confess) a very favourite room with us.—No. 226, is a Landscape, by Salvator Rosa. It is one of his very best—rough, grotesque, wild—Pan has struck it with his hoof—the trees, the rocks, the fore-ground, are of a piece, and the figures are subordinate to the landscape. The same dull sky lowers upon the scene, and the bleak air chills the crisp surface of the water. It is a consolation to us to meet with a fine Salvator. His is one of the great names in art, and it is among our sources of regret that we cannot always admire his works as we would do, from our respect to his reputation and our love of the man. Poor Salvator! he was unhappy in his life-time; and it vexes us to think that we cannot make him amends by fancying him so great a painter as some others, whose fame was not their only inheritance!—227, Venus and Cupid, is a delightful copy after Correggio. We have no such regrets or qualms of conscience with respect to him. ‘He has had his reward.’ The weight of his renown balances the weight of barbarous coin that sunk him to the earth. Could he live now, and know what others think of him, his misfortunes would seem as dross compared with his lasting glory, and his heart would melt within him at the thought, with a sweetness that only his own pencil could express. 233, The Virgin, Infant Christ, and St. John, by Andrea del Sarto, is exceedingly good.—290, Another Holy Family, by the same, is an admirable picture, and only inferior to Raphael. It has delicacy, force, thought, and feeling. ‘What lacks it then,’ to be equal to Raphael? We hardly know, unless it be a certain firmness and freedom, and glowing animation. The execution is more timid and laboured. It looks like a picture (an exquisite one, indeed), but Raphael’s look like the divine reality itself!—No. 234, Cocles defending the Bridge, is by Le Brun. We do not like this picture, nor 271, The Massacre of the Innocents, by the same artist. One reason is that they are French, and another that they are not good. They have great merit, it is true, but their merits are only splendid sins. They are mechanical, mannered, colourless, and unfeeling.—No. 237, is Murillo’s Spanish Girl with Flowers. The sun tinted the young gipsey’s complexion, and not the painter.—No. 240, is The Casatella and Villa of Mæcenas, near Tivoli, by Wilson, with his own portrait in the fore-ground. It is an imperfect sketch; but there is a curious anecdote relating to it, that he was so delighted with the waterfall itself, that he cried out, while painting it: ‘Well done, water, by G—d!’—No. 243, Saint Cecilia, by Guercino, is a very pleasing picture, in his least gaudy manner.—No. 251, Venus and Adonis, by Titian. We see so many of these Venuses and Adonises, that we should like to know which is the true one. This is one of the best we have seen. We have two Francesco Molas in this room, the Rape of Proserpine, and a Landscape with a Holy Family. This artist dipped his pencil so thoroughly in Titian’s palette, that his works cannot fail to have that rich, mellow look, which is always delightful.—No. 303, Portrait of Philip the Fourth of Spain, by Velasquez, is purity and truth itself. We used to like the Sleeping Nymph, by Titian, when we saw it formerly in the little entrance-room at Desenfans’, but we cannot say much in its praise here.

The Fifth Room is the smallest, but the most precious in its contents.—No. 322, Spanish Beggar Boys, by Murillo, is the triumph of this Collection, and almost of painting. In the imitation of common life, nothing ever went beyond it, or as far as we can judge, came up to it. A Dutch picture is mechanical, and mere still-life to it. But this is life itself. The boy at play on the ground is miraculous. It is done with a few dragging strokes of the pencil, and with a little tinge of colour; but the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the chin, are as brimful as they can hold of expression, of arch roguery, of animal spirits, of vigorous, elastic health. The vivid, glowing, cheerful look is such as could only be found beneath a southern sun. The fens and dykes of Holland (with all our respect for them) could never produce such an epitome of the vital principle. The other boy, standing up with the pitcher in his hand, and a crust of bread in his mouth, is scarcely less excellent. His sulky, phlegmatic indifference speaks for itself. The companion to this picture, 324, is also very fine. Compared with these imitations of nature, as faultless as they are spirited, Murillo’s Virgins and Angels however good in themselves, look vapid, and even vulgar. A Child Sleeping, by the same painter, is a beautiful and masterly study.—No. 329, a Musical Party, by Giorgione, is well worthy of the notice of the connoisseur. No. 331, St. John Preaching in the Wilderness, by Guido, is an extraordinary picture, and very unlike this painter’s usual manner. The colour is as if the flesh had been stained all over with brick-dust. There is, however, a wildness about it which accords well with the subject, and the figure of St. John is full of grace and gusto.—No. 344, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by the same, is much finer, both as to execution and expression. The face is imbued with deep passion.—No. 345, Portrait of a Man, by L. da Vinci, is truly simple and grand, and at once carries you back to that age.—Boors Merry Making, by Ostade, is fine; but has no business where it is. Yet it takes up very little room.—No. 347, Portrait of Mrs. Siddons, in the character of the Tragic Muse, by Sir Joshua, appears to us to resemble neither Mrs. Siddons, nor the Tragic Muse. It is in a bastard style of art. Sir Joshua had an importunate theory of improving upon nature. He might improve upon indifferent nature, but when he had got the finest, he thought to improve upon that too, and only spoiled it.—No. 349, The Virgin and Child, by Correggio, can only be a copy.—No. 332, The Judgment of Paris, by Vanderwerf, is a picture, and by a master, that we hate. He always chooses for his subjects naked figures of women, and tantalises us by making them of coloured ivory. They are like hard-ware toys.—No. 354, a Cardinal Blessing a Priest, by P. Veronese, is dignified and picturesque in the highest degree.—No. 355, The Adoration of the Shepherds, by Annibal Caracci, is an elaborate, but not very successful performance.—No. 356, Christ bearing his Cross, by Morales, concludes the list, and is worthy to conclude it.

THE MARQUIS OF STAFFORD’S GALLERY

Our intercourse with the dead is better than our intercourse with the living. There are only three pleasures in life, pure and lasting, and all derived from inanimate things—books, pictures, and the face of nature. What is the world but a heap of ruined friendships, but the grave of love? All other pleasures are as false and hollow, vanishing from our embrace like smoke, or like a feverish dream. Scarcely can we recollect that they were, or recall without an effort the anxious and momentary interest we took in them.—But thou, oh! divine Bath of Diana, with deep azure eyes, with roseate hues, spread by the hand of Titian, art still there upon the wall, another, yet the same that thou wert five-and-twenty years ago, nor wantest

——‘Forked mountain or blue promontory

With Trees upon’t that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air!’

And lo! over the clear lone brow of Tuderley and Norman Court, knit into the web and fibres of our heart, the sighing grove waves in the autumnal air, deserted by Love, by Hope, but forever haunted by Memory! And there that fine passage stands in Antony and Cleopatra as we read it long ago with exalting eyes in Paris, after puzzling over a tragedy of Racine’s, and cried aloud: ‘Our Shakspeare was also a poet!’ These feelings are dear to us at the time; and they come back unimpaired, heightened, mellowed, whenever we choose to go back to them. We turn over the leaf and ‘volume of the brain,’ and there see them face to face.—Marina in Pericles complains that

‘Life is as a storm hurrying her from her friends!’

Not so from the friends above-mentioned. If we bring but an eye, an understanding, and a heart to them, we find them always with us, always the same. The change, if there is one, is in us, not in them. Oh! thou then, whoever thou art, that dost seek happiness in thyself, independent on others, not subject to caprice, not mocked by insult, not snatched away by ruthless hands, over which Time has no power, and that Death alone cancels, seek it (if thou art wise) in books, in pictures, and the face of nature, for these alone we may count upon as friends for life! While we are true to ourselves, they will not be faithless to us. While we remember any thing, we cannot forget them. As long as we have a wish for pleasure, we may find it here; for it depends only on our love for them, and not on theirs for us. The enjoyment is purely ideal, and is refined, unembittered, unfading, for that reason.

A complaint has been made of the short-lived duration of works of art, and particularly of pictures; and poets more especially are apt to lament and to indulge in an elegiac strain over the fragile beauties of the sister-art. The complaint is inconsiderate, if not invidious. They will last our time. Nay, they have lasted centuries before us, and will last centuries after us; and even when they are no more, will leave a shadow and a cloud of glory behind them, through all time. Lord Bacon exclaims triumphantly, ‘Have not the poems of Homer lasted five-and-twenty hundred years, and not a syllable of them is lost?’ But it might be asked in return, ‘Have not many of the Greek statues now lasted almost as long, without losing a particle of their splendour or their meaning, while the Iliad (except to a very few) has become almost a dead letter?’ Has not the Venus of Medicis had almost as many partisans and admirers as the Helen of the old blind bard? Besides, what has Phidias gained in reputation even by the discovery of the Elgin Marbles? Or is not Michael Angelo’s the greatest name in modern art, whose works we only know from description and by report? Surely, there is something in a name, in wide-spread reputation, in endless renown, to satisfy the ambition of the mind of man. Who in his works would vie immortality with nature? An epitaph, an everlasting monument in the dim remembrance of ages, is enough below the skies. Moreover, the sense of final inevitable decay humanises, and gives an affecting character to the triumphs of exalted art. Imperishable works executed by perishable hands are a sort of insult to our nature, and almost a contradiction in terms. They are ungrateful children, and mock the makers. Neither is the noble idea of antiquity legibly made out without the marks of the progress and lapse of time. That which is as good now as ever it was, seems a thing of yesterday. Nothing is old to the imagination that does not appear to grow old. Ruins are grander and more venerable than any modern structure can be, or than the oldest could be if kept in the most entire preservation. They convey the perspective of time. So the Elgin Marbles are more impressive from their mouldering, imperfect state. They transport us to the Parthenon, and old Greece. The Theseus is of the age of Theseus: while the Apollo Belvidere is a modern fine gentleman; and we think of this last figure only as an ornament to the room where it happens to be placed.—We conceive that those are persons of narrow minds who cannot relish an author’s style that smacks of time, that has a crust of antiquity over it, like that which gathers upon old wine. These sprinklings of archaisms and obsolete turns of expression (so abhorrent to the fashionable reader) are intellectual links that connect the generations together, and enlarge our knowledge of language and of nature. Of the two, we prefer black-letter to hot-pressed paper. Does not every language change and wear out? Do not the most popular writers become quaint and old-fashioned every fifty or every hundred years? Is there not a constant conflict of taste and opinion between those who adhere to the established and triter modes of expression, and those who affect glossy innovations, in advance of the age? It is pride enough for the best authors to have been read. This applies to their own country; and to all others, they are ‘a book sealed.’ But Rubens is as good in Holland as he is in Flanders, where he was born, in Italy or in Spain, in England, or in Scotland—no, there alone he is not understood. The Scotch understand nothing but what is Scotch. What has the dry, husky, economic eye of Scotland to do with the florid hues and luxuriant extravagance of Rubens? Nothing. They like Wilkie’s pauper style better. It may be said that translations remedy the want of universality of language: but prints give (at least) as good an idea of pictures as translations do of poems, or of any productions of the press that employ the colouring of style and imagination. Gil Blas is translateable; Racine and Rousseau are not. The mere English student knows more of the character and spirit of Raphael’s pictures in the Vatican, than he does of Ariosto or Tasso from Hoole’s Version. There is, however, one exception to the catholic language of painting, which is in French pictures. They are national fixtures, and ought never to be removed from the soil in which they grow. They will not answer any where else, nor are they worth Custom-House Duties. Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, are all good and intelligible in their several ways—we know what they mean—they require no interpreter: but the French painters see nature with organs and with minds peculiarly their own. One must be born in France to understand their painting, or their poetry. Their productions in art are either literal, or extravagant—dry, frigid fac-similes, in which they seem to take up nature by pin-points, or else vapid distorted caricatures, out of all rule and compass. They are, in fact, at home only in the light and elegant; and whenever they attempt to add force or solidity (as they must do in the severer productions of the pencil) they are compelled to substitute an excess of minute industry for a comprehension of the whole, or make a desperate mechanical effort at extreme expression, instead of giving the true, natural, and powerful workings of passion. Their representations of nature are meagre skeletons, that bear the same relation to the originals that botanical specimens, enclosed in a portfolio, flat, dry, hard, and pithless, do to flourishing plants and shrubs. Their historical figures are painful outlines, or graduated elevations of the common statues, spiritless, colourless, motionless, which have the form, but none of the power of the antique. What an abortive attempt is the Coronation of Napoleon, by the celebrated David, lately exhibited in this country! It looks like a finished sign-post painting—a sea of frozen outlines.—Could the artist make nothing of ‘the foremost man in all this world,’ but a stiff, upright figure? The figure and attitude of the Empress are, however, pretty and graceful; and we recollect one face in profile, of an ecclesiastic, to the right, with a sanguine look of health in the complexion, and a large benevolence of soul. It is not Monsieur Talleyrand, whom the late Lord Castlereagh characterised as a worthy man and his friend. His Lordship was not a physiognomist! The whole of the shadowed part of the picture seems to be enveloped in a shower of blue powder.—But to make amends for all that there is or that there is not in the work, David has introduced his wife and his two daughters; and in the Catalogue has given us the places of abode, and the names of the husbands of the latter. This is a little out of place: yet these are the people who laugh at our blunders. We do not mean to extend the above sweeping censure to Claude, or Poussin: of course they are excepted: but even in them the national character lurked amidst unrivalled excellence. If Claude has a fault, it is that he is finical; and Poussin’s figures might be said by a satirist to be antique puppets. To proceed to our task.—

The first picture that struck us on entering the Marquis of Stafford’s Gallery (a little bewildered as we were with old recollections, and present objects) was the Meeting of Christ and St. John, one of Raphael’s master-pieces. The eager ‘child-worship’ of the young St. John, the modest retirement and dignified sweetness of the Christ, and the graceful, matron-like air of the Virgin bending over them, full and noble, yet feminine and elegant, cannot be surpassed. No words can describe them to those who have not seen the picture:—the attempt is still vainer to those who have. There is, however, a very fine engraving of this picture, which may be had for a trifling sum.—No glory is around the head of the Mother, nor is it needed: but the soul of the painter sheds its influence over it like a dove, and the spirit of love, sanctity, beauty, breathes from the divine group. There are four Raphaels (Holy Families) in this collection, two others by the side of this in his early more precise and affected manner, somewhat faded, and a small one of the Virgin, Sleeping Jesus, and St. John, in his finest manner. There is, or there was, a duplicate of this picture (of which the engraving is also common) in the Louvre, which was certainly superior to the one at the Marquis of Stafford’s. The colouring of the drapery in that too was cold, and the face of the Virgin thin and poor; but never was infancy laid asleep more calmly, more sweetly, more soundly, than in the figure of Our Saviour—the little pouting mouth seemed to drink balmy, innocent sleep—and the rude expression of wonder and delight in the more robust, sun-burnt, fur-clad figure of St. John was as spirited in itself as it was striking, when contrasted with the meeker beauties of the figure opposed to it.—From these we turn to the Four Ages, by Titian, or Giorgione, as some say. Strange that there should have lived two men in the same age, on the same spot of earth, with respect to whom it should bear a question—which of them painted such a picture! Barry, we remember, and Collins, the miniature-painter, thought it a Giorgione, and they were considered two of the best judges going, at the time this picture was exhibited, among others, in the Orleans Gallery. We cannot pretend to decide on such nice matters ex cathedra; but no painter need be ashamed to own it. The gradations of human life are marked with characteristic felicity, and the landscape, which is thrown in, adds a pastoral charm and naïveté to the whole. To live or to die in such a chosen, still retreat must be happy!—Certainly, this composition suggests a beautiful moral lesson; and as to the painting of the group of children in the corner, we suppose, for careless freedom of pencil, and a certain milky softness of the flesh, it can scarcely be paralleled. Over the three Raphaels is a Danae, by Annibal Caracci, which we used to adore where it was hung on high in the Orleans Gallery. The face is fine, upturned, expectant; and the figure no less fine, desirable, ample, worthy of a God.—The golden shower is just seen descending; the landscape at a distance has (so fancy might interpret) a cold, shuddering aspect. There is another very fine picture of the same hand close by, St. Gregory with Angels. It is difficult to know which to admire most, the resigned and yet earnest expression of the Saint, or the elegant forms, the graceful attitudes, and bland, cordial, benignant faces of the attendant angels. The artist in these last has evidently had an eye to Correggio, both in the waving outline, and in the charm of the expression; and he has succeeded admirably, but not entirely. Something of the extreme unction of Correggio is wanting. The drawing of Annibal’s Angels is, perhaps, too firm, too sinewy, too masculine. In Correggio, the Angel’s spirit seemed to be united to a human body, to imbue, mould, penetrate every part with its sweetness and softness: in Caracci, you would say that a heavenly spirit inhabited, looked out of, moved a goodly human frame,

‘And o’er-informed the tenement of clay.’

The composition of this picture is rather forced (it was one of those made to order for the monks) and the colour is somewhat metallic; but it has, notwithstanding, on the whole, a striking and tolerably harmonious effect.—There is still another picture by Caracci (also an old favourite with us, for it was in the Orleans set) Diana and Nymphs bathing, with the story of Calisto. It is one of his very best, with something of the drawing of the antique, and the landscape-colouring of Titian. The figures are all heroic, handsome, such as might belong to huntresses, or Goddesses: and the coolness and seclusion of the scene, under grey over-hanging cliffs, and brown overshadowing trees, with all the richness and truth of nature, have the effect of an enchanting reality.—The story and figures are more classical and better managed than those of the Diana and Calisto by Titian; but there is a charm in that picture and the fellow to it, the Diana and Actæon, (there is no other fellow to it in the world!) which no words can convey. It is the charm thrown over each by the greatest genius for colouring that the world ever saw. It is difficult, nay, impossible to say which is the finest in this respect: but either one or the other (whichever we turn to, and we can never be satisfied with looking at either—so rich a scene do they unfold, so serene a harmony do they infuse into the soul) is like a divine piece of music, or rises ‘like an exhalation of rich distilled perfumes.’ In the figures, in the landscape, in the water, in the sky, there are tones, colours, scattered with a profuse and unerring hand, gorgeous, but most true, dazzling with their force, but blended, softened, woven together into a woof like that of Iris—tints of flesh colour, as if you saw the blood circling beneath the pearly skin; clouds empurpled with setting suns; hills steeped in azure skies; trees turning to a mellow brown; the cold grey rocks, and the water so translucent, that you see the shadows and the snowy feet of the naked nymphs in it. With all this prodigality of genius, there is the greatest severity and discipline of art. The figures seem grouped for the effect of colour—the most striking contrasts are struck out, and then a third object, a piece of drapery, an uplifted arm, a bow and arrows, a straggling weed, is introduced to make an intermediate tint, or carry on the harmony. Every colour is melted, impasted into every other, with fine keeping and bold diversity. Look at that indignant, queen-like figure of Diana (more perhaps like an offended mortal princess, than an immortal Goddess, though the immortals could frown and give themselves strange airs), and see the snowy, ermine-like skin; the pale clear shadows of the delicately formed back; then the brown colour of the slender trees behind to set off the shaded flesh; and last, the dark figure of the Ethiopian girl behind, completing the gradation. Then the bright scarf suspended in the air connects itself with the glowing clouds, and deepens the solemn azure of the sky: Actæon’s bow and arrows fallen on the ground are also red; and there is a little flower on the brink of the Bath which catches and pleases the eye, saturated with this colour. The yellowish grey of the earth purifies the low tone of the figures where they are in half-shadow; and this again is enlivened by the leaden-coloured fountain of the Bath, which is set off (or kept down in its proper place) by the blue vestments strown near it. The figure of Actæon is spirited and natural; it is that of a bold rough hunter in the early ages, struck with surprise, abashed with beauty. The forms of some of the female figures are elegant enough, particularly that of Diana in the story of Calisto; and there is a very pretty-faced girl mischievously dragging the culprit forward; but it is the texture of the flesh that is throughout delicious, unrivalled, surpassingly fair. The landscape canopies the living scene with a sort of proud, disdainful consciousness. The trees nod to it, and the hills roll at a distance in a sea of colour. Every where tone, not form, predominates—there is not a distinct line in the picture—but a gusto, a rich taste of colour is left upon the eye as if it were the palate, and the diapason of picturesque harmony is full to overflowing. ‘Oh Titian and Nature! which of you copied the other?’

We are ashamed of this description, now that we have made it, and heartily wish somebody would make a better. There is another Titian here (which was also in the Orleans Gallery),[^[3]] Venus rising from the sea. The figure and face are gracefully designed and sweetly expressed:—whether it is the picture of the Goddess of Love, may admit of a question; that it is the picture of a lovely woman in a lovely attitude, admits of none. The half-shadow in which most of it is painted, is a kind of veil through which the delicate skin shows more transparent and aerial. There is nothing in the picture but this single exquisitely turned figure, and if it were continued downward to a whole-length, it would seem like a copy of a statue of the Goddess carved in ivory or marble; but being only a half-length, it has not this effect at all, but looks like an enchanting study, or a part of a larger composition, selected a l’envie. The hair, and the arm holding it up, are nearly the same as in the well-known picture of Titian’s Mistress, and as delicious. The back-ground is beautifully painted. We said before, that there was no object in the picture detached from the principal figure. Nay, there is the sea, and a sea-shell, but these might be given in sculpture.—Under the Venus, is a portrait by Vandyke, of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, a most gentleman-like performance, mild, clear, intelligent, unassuming; and on the right of the spectator, a Madonna, by Guido, with the icy glow of sanctity upon it; and to the left, the Fable of Salmacis, by Albano (saving the ambiguity of the subject), exquisitely painted. Four finer specimens of the art can scarcely be found again in so small a compass. There is in another room a portrait, said to be by Moroni, and called Titian’s School-master, from a vague tradition, that he was in the habit of frequently visiting, in order to study and learn from it. If so, he must have profited by his assiduity; for it looks as if he had painted it. Not knowing any thing of Moroni, if we had been asked who had done it, we should have replied, ‘Either Titian or the Devil.’[^[4]] It is considerably more laboured and minute than Titian; but the only objection at all staggering is, that it has less fiery animation than is ordinarily to be found in his pictures. Look at the portrait above it, for instance—Clement VII. by the great Venetian; and you find the eye looking at you again, as if it had been observing you all the time: but the eye in Titian’s School-master is an eye to look at, not to look with,[^[5]] or if it looks at you, it does not look through you, which may be almost made a test of Titian’s heads. There is not the spirit, the intelligence within, moulding the expression, and giving it intensity of purpose and decision of character. In every other respect but this (and perhaps a certain want of breadth) it is as good as Titian. There is (we understand) a half-length of Clement VII. by Julio Romano, in the Papal Palace at Rome, in which he is represented as seated above the spectator, with the head elevated and the eye looking down like a camel’s, with an amazing dignity of aspect. The picture (Mr. Northcote says) is hard and ill-coloured, but, in strength of character and conception, superior to the Titian at the Marquis of Stafford’s. Titian, undoubtedly, put a good deal of his own character into his portraits. He was not himself filled with the ‘milk of human kindness.’ He got his brother, who promised to rival him in his own art, and of whom he was jealous, sent on a foreign embassy; and he so frightened Pordenone while he was painting an altar-piece for a church, that he worked with his palette and brushes in his hand, and a sword by his side.

We meet with one or two admirable portraits, particularly No. 112, by Tintoretto, which is of a fine fleshy tone, and A Doge of Venice, by Palma Vecchio, stamped with an expressive look of official and assumed dignity. There is a Bassan, No. 95, The Circumcision, the colours of which are somewhat dingy with age, and sunk into the canvas; but as the sun shone upon it while we were looking at it, it glittered all green and gold. Bassan’s execution is as fine as possible, and his colouring has a most striking harmonious effect.—We must not forget the Muleteers, supposed to be by Correggio, in which the figure of the Mule seems actually passing across the picture (you hear his bells); nor the little copy of his Marriage of St. Catherine, by L. Caracci, which is all over grace, delicacy, and sweetness. Any one may judge of his progress in a taste for the refinements of art, by his liking for this picture. Indeed, Correggio is the very essence of refinement. Among other pictures in the Italian division of the gallery, we would point out the Claudes (particularly Nos. 43 and 50,) which, though inferior to Mr. Angerstein’s as compositions, preserve more of the delicacy of execution, (or what Barry used to call ‘the fine oleaginous touches of Claude‘)—two small Gaspar Poussins, in which the landscape seems to have been just washed by a shower, and the storm blown over—the Death of Adonis, by Luca Cambiasi, an Orleans picture, lovely in sorrow, and in speechless agony, and faded like the life that is just expiring in it—a Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, by Alessandro Veronese, a very clever, and sensible, but rigidly painted picture[^[6]]—an Albert Durer, the Death of the Virgin—a Female head, by Leonardo da Vinci—and the Woman taken in Adultery, by Pordenone, which last the reader may admire or not, as he pleases. We cannot close this list without referring to the Christ bearing his cross, by Domenichino, a picture full of interest and skill; and the little touching allegory of the Infant Christ sleeping on a cross, by Guido.

The Dutch School contains a number of excellent specimens of the best masters. There are two Tenierses, a Fair, and Boors merry-making, unrivalled for a look of the open air, for lively awkward gesture, and variety and grotesqueness of grouping and rustic character. There is a little picture, by Le Nain, called the Village Minstrel, with a set of youthful auditors, the most incorrigible little mischievous urchins we ever saw, but with admirable execution and expression. The Metzus are curious and fine—the Ostades admirable. Gerard Douw’s own portrait is certainly a gem. We noticed a Ruysdael in one corner of the room (No. 221), a dark, flat, wooded country, but delectable in tone and pencilling. Vandevelde’s Sea-pieces are capital—the water is smooth as glass, and the boats and vessels have the buoyancy of butterflies on it. The Seaport, by A. Cuyp, is miraculous for truth, brilliancy, and clearness, almost beyond actual water. These cannot be passed over; but there is a little picture which we beg to commend to the gentle reader, the Vangoyen, at the end of the room, No. 156, which has that yellow-tawny colour in the meads, and that grey chill look in the old convent, that give one the precise feeling of a mild day towards the end of winter, in a humid, marshy country. We many years ago copied a Vangoyen, a view of a Canal ‘with yellow tufted banks and gliding sail,’ modestly pencilled, truly felt—and have had an affection for him ever since. There is a small inner room with some most respectable modern pictures. Wilkie’s Breakfast-table is among them.

The Sacraments, by N. Poussin, occupy a separate room by themselves, and have a grand and solemn effect; but we could hardly see them where they are; and in general, we prefer his treatment of light and classical subjects to those of sacred history. He wanted weight for the last; or, if that word is objected to, we will change it, and say force.

On the whole, the Stafford Gallery is probably the most magnificent Collection this country can boast. The specimens of the different schools are as numerous as they are select; and they are equally calculated to delight the student by the degree, or to inform the uninitiated by the variety of excellence. Yet even this Collection is not complete. It is deficient in Rembrandts, Vandykes, and Rubenses; except one splendid allegory and fruit-piece by the last.

THE PICTURES AT WINDSOR CASTLE

The palaces of Windsor and Hampton-court contain pictures worthy of the feelings we attach to the names of those places. The first boasts a number of individual pictures of great excellence and interest, and the last the Cartoons.

Windsor Castle is remarkable in many respects. Its tall, grey, square towers, seated on a striking eminence, overlook for many miles the subjacent country, and, eyed in the distance, lead the mind of the solitary traveller to romantic musing; or, approached nearer, give the heart a quicker and stronger pulsation. Windsor, besides its picturesque, commanding situation, and its being the only palace in the kingdom fit for the receptacle of ‘a line of kings,’ is the scene of many classical associations. Who can pass through Datchet, and the neighbouring greensward paths, and not think of Falstaff, of Ann Page, and the oak of Herne the hunter? Or if he does not, still he is affected by them as if he did. The tall slim deer glance startled by, in some neglected track of memory, and fairies trip it in the unconscious haunts of the imagination! Pope’s lines on Windsor Forest also suggest themselves to the mind in the same way, and make the air about it delicate. Gray has consecrated the same spot by his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College; and the finest passage in Burke’s writings is his comparison of the British Monarchy to ‘the proud Keep of Windsor.’ The walls and massy towers of Windsor Castle are indeed built of solid stone, weather-beaten, time-proof; but the image answering to them in the mind’s eye is woven of pure thought and the airy films of the imagination—Arachne’s web not finer!

The rooms are chill and comfortless at this time of the year,[^[7]] and gilded ceilings look down on smoky fire-places. The view from the windows, too, which is so rich and glowing in the summer-time, is desolate and deformed with the rains overflowing the marshy grounds. As to physical comfort, one seems to have no more of it in these tapestried halls and on marble floors, than the poor bird driven before the pelting storm, or the ploughboy seeking shelter from the drizzling sky, in his sheep-skin jacket and clouted shoes, beneath the dripping, leafless spray. The palace does not (more than the hovel) always defend us against the winter’s cold. The apartments are also filled with too many rubbishly pictures of kings and queens—there are too many of Verrio’s paintings, and a whole roomful of West’s; but there are ten or twenty pictures which the eye, having once seen, never loses sight of, and that make Windsor one of the retreats and treasuries of art in this country. These, however, are chiefly pictures which have a personal and individual interest attached to them, as we have already hinted: there are very few historical compositions of any value, and the subjects of the others are so desultory that the young person who shows them, and goes through the names of the painters and portraits very correctly, said she very nearly went out of her mind in the three weeks she was ‘studying her part.’ It is a matter of nomenclature: we hope we shall make as few blunders in our report as she did.

In the first room the stranger is shown into, there are two large landscapes by Zuccarelli. They are clever, well-painted pictures; but they are worth nothing. The fault of this artist is, that there is nothing absolutely good or bad in his pictures. They are mere handicraft. The whole is done with a certain mechanical ease and indifference; but it is evident no part of the picture gave him any pleasure, and it is impossible it should give the spectator any. His only ambition was to execute his task so as to save his credit; and your first impulse is, to turn away from the picture, and save your time.

In the next room, there are four Vandykes—two of them excellent. One is the Duchess of Richmond, a whole-length, in a white satin drapery, with a pet lamb. The expression of her face is a little sullen and capricious. The other, the Countess of Carlisle, has a shrewd, clever, sensible countenance; and, in a certain archness of look, and the contour of the lower part of the face, resembles the late Mrs. Jordan.—Between these two portraits is a copy after Rembrandt, by Gainsborough, a fine sombre, mellow head, with the hat flapped over the face.

Among the most delightful and interesting of the pictures in this Collection, is the portrait by Vandyke, of Lady Venetia Digby. It is an allegorical composition: but what truth, what purity, what delicacy in the execution! You are introduced into the presence of a beautiful woman of quality of a former age, and it would be next to impossible to perform an unbecoming action with that portrait hanging in the room. It has an air of nobility about it, a spirit of humanity within it. There is a dove-like innocence and softness about the eyes; in the clear, delicate complexion, health and sorrow contend for the mastery; the mouth is sweetness itself, the nose highly intelligent, and the forehead is one of ‘clear-spirited thought.’ But misfortune has touched all this grace and beauty, and left its canker there. This is shown no less by the air that pervades it, than by the accompanying emblems. The children in particular are exquisitely painted, and have an evident reference to those we lately noticed in the Four Ages, by Titian. This portrait, both from the style and subject, reminds one forcibly of Mrs. Hutchinson’s admirable Memoirs of her own Life. Both are equally history, and the history of the female heart (depicted, in the one case, by the pencil, in the other, by the pen) in the finest age of female accomplishment and pious devotion. Look at this portrait, breathing the beauty of virtue, and compare it with the ‘Beauties’ of Charles II.’s court, by Lely. They look just like what they were—a set of kept-mistresses, painted, tawdry, showing off their theatrical or meretricious airs and graces, without one trace of real elegance or refinement, or one spark of sentiment to touch the heart. Lady Grammont is the handsomest of them; and, though the most voluptuous in her attire and attitude, the most decent. The Duchess of Portsmouth, in her helmet and plumes, looks quite like a heroine of romance or modern Amazon; but for an air of easy assurance, inviting admiration, and alarmed at nothing but being thought coy, commend us to my lady——above, in the sky-blue drapery, thrown carelessly across her shoulders! As paintings, these celebrated portraits cannot rank very high. They have an affected ease, but a real hardness of manner and execution; and they have that contortion of attitude and setness of features which we afterwards find carried to so disgusting and insipid an excess in Kneller’s portraits. Sir Peter Lely was, however, a better painter than Sir Godfrey Kneller—that is the highest praise that can be accorded to him. He had more spirit, more originality, and was the livelier coxcomb of the two! Both these painters possessed considerable mechanical dexterity, but it is not of a refined kind. Neither of them could be ranked among great painters, yet they were thought by their contemporaries and themselves superior to every one. At the distance of a hundred years we see the thing plainly enough.

In the same room with the portrait of Lady Digby, there is one of Killigrew and Carew, by the same masterly hand. There is spirit and character in the profile of Carew, while the head of Killigrew is surprising from its composure and sedateness of aspect. He was one of the grave wits of the day, who made nonsense a profound study, and turned trifles into philosophy, and philosophy into a jest. The pale, sallow complexion of this head is throughout in wonderful keeping. The beard and face seem nearly of the same colour. We often see this clear uniform colour of the skin in Titian’s portraits. But then the dark eyes, beard, and eye-brows, give relief and distinctness. The fair hair and complexions, that Vandyke usually painted, with the almost total absence of shade from his pictures, made the task more difficult; and, indeed, the prominence and effect he produces in this respect, without any of the usual means, are almost miraculous.

There are several of his portraits, equestrian and others, of Charles I. in this Collection, some of them good, none of them first-rate. Those of Henrietta (his Queen) are always delightful. The painter has made her the most lady-like of Queens, and of women.

The family picture of the Children of Charles I. is certainly admirably painted and managed. The large mastiff-dog is inimitably fine and true to nature, and seems as if he was made to be pulled about by a parcel of royal infants from generation to generation. In general, it may be objected to Vandyke’s dressed children, that they look like little old men and women. His grown-up people had too much stiffness and formality; and the same thing must quite overlay the playfulness of infancy. Yet what a difference between these young princes of the House of Stuart, and two of the princes of the reigning family with their mother, by Ramsay, which are evident likenesses to this hour!

We have lost our reckoning as to the order of the pictures and rooms in which they are placed, and must proceed promiscuously through the remainder of our Catalogue.

One of the most noted pictures at Windsor is that of the Misers, by Quintin Matsys. Its name is greater than its merits, like many other pictures which have a lucky or intelligible subject, boldly executed. The conception is good, the colouring bad; the drawing firm, and the expression coarse and obvious. We are sorry to speak at all disparagingly of Quintin Matsys; for the story goes that he was originally bred a blacksmith, and turned painter to gain his master’s daughter, who would give her hand to no one but on that condition. Happy he who thus gained the object of his love, though posterity may differ about his merits as an artist! Yet it is certain, that any romantic incident of this kind, connected with a well-known work, inclines us to regard it with a favourable instead of a critical eye, by enhancing our pleasure in it; as the eccentric character, the wild subjects, and the sounding name of Salvator Rosa have tended to lift him into the highest rank of fame among painters.

In the same room with the Misers, by the Blacksmith of Antwerp, is a very different picture by Titian, consisting of two figures also, viz. Himself and a Venetian Senator. It is one of the finest specimens of this master. His own portrait is not much: it has spirit, but is hard, with somewhat of a vulgar, knowing look. But the head of the Senator is as fine as anything that ever proceeded from the hand of man. The expression is a lambent flame, a soul of fire dimmed, not quenched by age. The flesh is flesh. If Rubens’s pencil fed upon roses, Titian’s was carnivorous. The tone is betwixt a gold and silver hue. The texture and pencilling are marrowy. The dress is a rich crimson, which seems to have been growing deeper ever since it was painted. It is a front view. As far as attitude or action is concerned, it is mere still-life; but the look is of that kind that goes through you at a single glance. Let any one look well at this portrait, and if he then sees nothing in it, or in the portraits of this painter in general, let him give up virtù and criticism in despair.

This room is rich in valuable gems, which might serve as a test of a real taste for the art, depending for their value on intrinsic qualities, and not on imposing subjects, or mechanical arrangement or quantity. As where ‘the still, small voice of reason’ is wanting, we judge of actions by noisy success and popularity; so where there is no true moral sense in art, nothing goes down but pomp, and bustle, and pretension. The eye of taste looks to see if a work has nature’s finest image and superscription upon it, and for no other title and passport to fame. There is a Young Man’s Head, (we believe in one corner of this room) by Holbein, in which we can read high and heroic thoughts and resolutions, better than in any Continence of Scipio we ever saw, or than in all the Battles of Alexander thrown into a lump. There is a Portrait of Erasmus, by the same, and in the same or an adjoining room, in which we see into the mind of a scholar and of an amiable man, as through a window. There is a Head by Parmegiano, lofty, triumphant, showing the spirit of another age and clime—one by Raphael, studious and self-involved—another, said to be by Leonardo da Vinci (but more like Holbein) grown crabbed with age and thought—and a girl reading, by Correggio, intent on her subject, and not forgetting herself. These are the materials of history; and if it is not made of them, it is a nickname or a mockery. All that does not lay open the fine net-work of the heart and brain of man, that does not make us see deeper into the soul, is but the apparatus and machinery of history-painting, and no more to it than the frame is to the picture.

We noticed a little Mater Dolorosa in one of the rooms, by Carlo Dolci, which is a pale, pleasing, expressive head. There are two large figures of his, a Magdalen and another, which are in the very falsest style of colouring and expression; and Youth and Age, by Denner, which are in as perfectly bad a taste and style of execution as anything we ever saw of this artist, who was an adept in that way.

We are afraid we have forgotten one or two meritorious pictures which we meant to notice. There is one we just recollect, a Portrait of a Youth in black, by Parmegiano. It is in a singular style, but very bold, expressive, and natural. There is (in the same apartment of the palace) a fine picture of the Battle of Norlingen, by Rubens. The size and spirit of the horses in the fore-ground, and the obvious animation of the riders, are finely contrasted with the airy perspective and mechanical grouping of the armies at a distance; and so as to prevent that confusion and want of positive relief, which usually pervade Battle-pieces. In the same room (opposite) is Kneller’s Chinese converted to Christianity—a portrait of which he was justly proud. It is a fine oil-picture, clear, tawny, without trick or affectation, and full of character. One of Kneller’s fine ladies or gentlemen, with their wigs and toupées, would have been mortally offended to have been so painted. The Chinese retains the same oily sly look, after his conversion as before, and seems just as incapable of a change of religion as a piece of terra cotta. On each side of this performance are two Guidos, the Perseus and Andromeda, and Venus attired by the Graces. We give the preference to the former. The Andromeda is a fine, noble figure, in a striking and even daring position, with an impassioned and highly-wrought expression of features; and the whole scene is in harmony with the subject. The Venus attired by the Graces (though full of beauties, particularly the colouring of the flesh in the frail Goddess) is formal and disjointed in the composition; and some of the actions are void of grace and even of decorum. We allude particularly to the Maid-in-waiting, who is combing her hair, and to the one tying on her sandals, with her arm crossing Venus’s leg at right angles. The Cupid in the window is as light and wanton as a butterfly flying out of it. He may be said to flutter and hover in his own delights. There are two capital engravings of these pictures by Strange.

THE PICTURES AT HAMPTON COURT

This palace is a very magnificent one, and we think, has been undeservedly neglected. It is Dutch-built, of handsome red brick, and belongs to a class of houses, the taste for which appears to have been naturalised in this country along with the happy introduction of the Houses of Orange and Hanover. The approach to it through Bushy-Park is delightful, inspiriting at this time of year; and the gardens about it, with their close-clipped holly hedges and arbours of evergreen, look an artificial summer all the year round. The statues that are interspersed do not freeze in winter, and are cool and classical in the warmer seasons. The Toy-Inn stands opportunely at the entrance, to invite the feet of those who are tired of a straggling walk from Brentford or Kew, or oppressed with thought and wonder after seeing the Cartoons.

Besides these last, however, there are several fine pictures here. We shall pass over the Knellers, the Verrios, and the different portraits of the Royal Family, and come at once to the Nine Muses, by Tintoret. Or rather, his Nine Muses are summed up in one, the back-figure in the right-hand corner as you look at the picture, which is all grandeur, elegance, and grace.—We should think that in the gusto of form and a noble freedom of outline, Michael Angelo could hardly have surpassed this figure. The face too, which is half turned round, is charmingly handsome. The back, the shoulders, the legs, are the perfection of bold delicacy, expanded into full-blown luxuriance, and then retiring as it were from their own proud beauty and conscious charms into soft and airy loveliness—

‘Fine by degrees, and beautifully less.’

Is it a Muse? Or is it not a figure formed for action more than contemplation? Perhaps this hypercritical objection may be true; and it might without any change of character or impropriety be supposed, from its buoyancy, its ease, and sinewy elasticity, to represent the quivered Goddess shaping her bow for the chase. But, at any rate, it is the figure of a Goddess, or of a woman in shape equal to a Goddess. The colour is nearly gone, so that it has almost the tone of a black and white chalk-drawing; and the effect of form remains pure and unrivalled. There are several other very pleasing and ably-drawn figures in the group, but they are eclipsed in the superior splendour of this one. So far the composition is faulty, for its balance is destroyed; and there are certain critics who could probably maintain that the picture would be better, if this capital excellence in it had been deliberately left out: the picture would, indeed, have been more according to rule, and to the taste of those who judge, feel, and see by rule only! Among the portraits which are curious, is one of Baccio Bandinelli, with his emblems and implements of sculpture about him, said to be by Correggio. We cannot pretend to give an opinion on this point; but it is a studious, powerful, and elaborately painted head. We find the name of Titian attached to two or three portraits in the Collection. There is one very fine one of a young man in black, with a black head of hair, the face seen in a three-quarter view, and the dark piercing eye, full of subtle meaning, looking round at you; which is probably by Titian, but certainly not (as it is pretended) of himself. It has not the aquiline cast of features by which his own portraits are obviously distinguished. We have seen a print of this picture, in which it is said to be done for Ignatius Loyola. The portrait of a lady with green and white purfled sleeves (like the leaves and flower of the water-lily, and as clear!) is admirable. It was in the Pall-Mall exhibition of the Old Masters a short time ago; and is by Sebastian del Piombo.—The care of the painting, the natural ease of the attitude, and the steady, sensible, conversable look of the countenance, place this in a class of pictures, which one feels a wish to have always by one’s side, whenever there is a want of thought, or a flaw in the temper, that requires filling up or setting to rights by some agreeable and at the same time not over-exciting object. There are several soi-disant Parmegianos; one or two good Bassans; a Battle-Piece set down to Julio Romano; a coloured drawing (in one corner of a room) of a Nymph and Satyr is very fine; and some of Polemberg’s little disagreeable pictures of the same subject, in which the Satyrs look like paltry bits of painted wood, and the Nymphs like glazed China-ware. We have a prejudice against Polemberg, which is a rare thing with us!

The Cartoons occupy a room by themselves—there are not many such rooms in the world. All other pictures look like oil and varnish to these—we are stopped and attracted by the colouring, the pencilling, the finishing, or the want of it, that is, by the instrumentalities of the art—but here the painter seems to have flung his mind upon the canvas; his thoughts, his great ideas alone prevail; there is nothing between us and the subject; we look through a frame, and see scripture-histories, and are made actual spectators of miraculous events. Not to speak it profanely, they are a sort of revelation of the subjects, of which they treat; there is an ease and freedom of manner about them, which brings preternatural characters and situations home to us, with the familiarity of common every-day occurrences; and while the figures fill, raise, and satisfy the mind, they seem to have cost the painter nothing. The Cartoons are unique productions in the art. They are mere intellectual, or rather visible abstractions of truth and nature. Every where else we see the means; here we arrive at the end apparently without any means. There is a Spirit at work in the divine creation before us. We are unconscious of any details, of any steps taken, of any progress made; we are aware only of comprehensive results, of whole masses and figures. The sense of power supersedes the appearance of effort. It is like a waking dream, vivid, but undistinguishable in member, joint, or limb; or it is as if we had ourselves seen the persons and things at some former period of our being, and that the drawing certain dotted lines upon coarse paper, by some unknown spell, brought back the entire and living images, and made them pass before us, palpable to thought, to feeling, and to sight. Perhaps not all is owing to genius: something of this effect may be ascribed to the simplicity of the vehicle employed in embodying the story, and something to the decayed and dilapidated state of the pictures themselves. They are the more majestic for being in ruin: we are struck chiefly with the truth of proportion, and the range of conception: all the petty, meretricious part of the art is dead in them; the carnal is made spiritual, the corruptible has put on incorruption, and, amidst the wreck of colour, and the mouldering of material beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad, imminent shadows of ‘calm contemplation and majestic pains!’

The first in order is the Death of Ananias; and it is one of the noblest of these noble designs. The effect is striking; and the contrast between the steadfast, commanding attitude of the Apostles, and the convulsed and prostrate figure of Ananias on the floor, is finely imagined. It is much as if a group of persons on shore stood to witness the wreck of life and hope on the rocks and quicksands beneath them. The abruptness and severity of the transition are, however, broken and relieved by the other human interests in the picture. The Ananias is a masterly, a stupendous figure. The attitude, the drawing, the expression, the ease, the force, are alike wonderful. He falls so naturally, that it seems as if a person could fall in no other way; and yet of all the ways in which a human figure could fall, it is probably the most expressive of a person overwhelmed by and in the grasp of Divine vengeance. This is in some measure, we apprehend, the secret of Raphael’s success. Most painters, in studying an attitude, puzzle themselves to find out what will be picturesque, and what will be fine, and never discover it: Raphael only thought how a person would stand or fall naturally in such or such circumstances, and the picturesque and the fine followed as matters of course. Hence the unaffected force and dignity of his style, which are only another name for truth and nature under impressive and momentous circumstances. The distraction of the face, the inclination of the head on one side, are as fine as possible, and the agony is just verging to that point, in which it is relieved by death. The expression of ghastly wonder in the features of the man on the floor next him is also remarkable; and the mingled beauty, grief, and horror in the female head behind can never be enough admired or extolled. The pain, the sudden and violent contraction of the muscles, is as intense as if a sharp instrument had been driven into the forehead, and yet the same sweetness triumphs there as ever, the most perfect self-command and dignity of demeanour. We could hazard a conjecture that this is what forms the great distinction between the natural style of Raphael and the natural style of Hogarth. Both are equally intense; but the one is intense littleness, meanness, vulgarity; the other is intense grandeur, refinement, and sublimity. In the one we see common, or sometimes uncommon and painful, circumstances acting with all their force on narrow minds and deformed bodies, and bringing out distorted and violent efforts at expression; in the other we see noble forms and lofty characters contending with adverse, or co-operating with powerful impressions from without, and imparting their own unaltered grace, and habitual composure to them. In Hogarth, generally, the face is excited and torn in pieces by some paltry interest of its own; in Raphael, on the contrary, it is expanded and ennobled by the contemplation of some event or object highly interesting in itself: that is to say, the passion in the one is intellectual and abstracted; the passion in the other is petty, selfish, and confined. We have not thought it beneath the dignity of the subject to make this comparison between two of the most extraordinary and highly gifted persons that the world ever saw. If Raphael had seen Hogarth’s pictures, he would not have despised them. Those only can do it (and they are welcome!) who, wanting all that he had, can do nothing that he could not, or that they themselves pretend to accomplish by affectation and bombast.

Elymas the Sorcerer stands next in order, and is equal in merit. There is a Roman sternness and severity in the general look of the scene. The figure of the Apostle, who is inflicting the punishment of blindness on the impostor, is grand, commanding, full of ease and dignity: and the figure of Elymas is blind all over, and is muffled up in its clothes from head to foot. A story is told of Mr. Garrick’s objecting to the natural effect of the action, in the hearing of the late Mr. West, who, in vindication of the painter, requested the celebrated comedian to close his eyes and walk across the room, when he instantly stretched out his hands, and began to grope his way with the exact attitude and expression of this noble study. It may be worth remarking here, that this great painter and fine observer of human nature has represented the magician with a hard iron visage, and strong uncouth figure, made up of bones and muscles, as one not troubled with weak nerves, nor to be diverted from his purpose by idle scruples, as one who repelled all sympathy with others, who was not to be moved a jot by their censures or prejudices against him, and who could break with ease through the cobweb snares which he laid for the credulity of mankind, without being once entangled in his own delusions. His outward form betrays the hard, unimaginative, self-willed understanding of the Sorcerer.—There is a head (a profile) coming in on one side of the picture, which we would point out to our readers as one of the most finely relieved, and best preserved, in this series. The face of Elymas, and some others in the picture, have been a good deal hurt by time and ill-treatment. There is a snuffy look under the nose, as if the water colour had been washed away in some damp lumber-room, or unsheltered out-house. The Cartoons have felt ‘the seasons’ difference,’ being exposed to wind and rain, tossed about from place to place, and cut down by profane hands to fit them to one of their abodes; so that it is altogether wonderful, that ‘through their looped and tattered wretchedness,’ any traces are seen of their original splendour and beauty. That they are greatly changed from what they were even a hundred years ago, is evident from the heads in the Radcliffe library at Oxford, which were cut out from one of them that was nearly destroyed by some accident, and from the large French engravings of single heads, done about the same time, which are as finished and correct as possible. Even Sir James Thornhill’s copies bear testimony to the same effect. Though without the spirit of the originals, they have fewer blots and blotches in them, from having been better taken care of. A skeleton is barely left of the Cartoons: but their mighty relics, like the bones of the Mammoth, tell us what the entire and living fabric must have been!

In the Gate Beautiful there is a profusion of what is fine, and of imposing contrasts. The twisted pillars have been found fault with; but there they stand, and will for ever stand to answer all cavillers with their wreathed beauty. The St. John in this Cartoon is an instance of what we have above hinted as to the ravages of time on these pictures. In the old French engraving (half the size of life) the features are exceedingly well marked and beautiful, whereas they are here in a great measure defaced; and the hair, which is at present a mere clotted mass, is woven into graceful and waving curls,

‘Like to those hanging locks

Of young Apollo.’

Great inroads have been made on the delicate outline of the other parts, and the surface has been generally injured. The Beggars are as fine as ever: they do not lose by the squalid condition of their garb or features, but remain patriarchs of poverty, and mighty in disease and infirmity, as if they crawled and grovelled on the pavement of Heaven. They are lifted above this world! The child carrying the doves at his back is an exquisite example of grace, and innocence, and buoyant motion; and the face and figure of the young woman seen directly over him give a glad welcome to the eye in their fresh, unalloyed, and radiant sweetness and joy. This head seems to have been spared from the unhallowed touch of injury, like a little isle or circlet of beauty. It was guarded, we may suppose, by its own heavenly, feminine look of smiling loveliness. There is another very fine female head on the opposite side of the picture, of a graver cast, looking down, and nearly in profile. The only part of this Cartoon that we object to, or should be for turning out, is the lubberly naked figure of a boy close to one of the pillars, who seems to have no sort of business there, and is an obvious eye-sore.

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes is admirable for the clearness and prominence of the figures, for the vigorous marking of the muscles, for the fine expression of devout emotion in the St. Peter, and for the calm dignity in the attitude, and divine benignity in the countenance of the Christ. Perhaps this head expresses, more than any other that ever was attempted, the blended meekness, benevolence, and sublimity in the character of our Saviour. The whole figure is so still, so easy, it almost floats in air, and seems to sustain the boat by the secret sense of power. We shall not attempt to make a formal reply to the old objection to the diminutive size of the boat, but we confess it appears to us to enhance the value of the miracle. Its load swells proportionably in comparison, and the waves conspire to bear it up. The Storks on the shore are not the least animated or elevated part of the picture; they exult in the display of divine power, and share in the prodigality of the occasion.

The Sacrifice at Lystra has the marks of Raphael’s hand on every part of it. You see and almost hear what is passing. What a pleasing relief to the confused, busy scene, are the two children piping at the altar! How finely, how unexpectedly, but naturally, that innocent rustic head of a girl comes in over the grave countenances and weighty, thoughtful heads of the group of attendant priests! The animals brought to be sacrificed are equally fine in the expression of terror, and the action of resistance to the rude force by which they are dragged along.

A great deal has been said and written on the St. Paul preaching at Athens. The features of excellence in this composition are indeed so bold and striking as hardly to be mistaken. The abrupt figure of St. Paul, his hands raised in that fervent appeal to Him who ‘dwelleth not in temples made with hands,’ such as are seen in gorgeous splendour all around, the circle of his auditors, the noble and pointed diversity of heads, the one wrapped in thought and in its cowl, another resting on a crutch and earnestly scanning the face of the Apostle rather than his doctrine, the careless attention of the Epicurean philosopher, the fine young heads of the disciples of the Porch or the Academy, the clenched fist and eager curiosity of the man in front as if he was drinking sounds, give this picture a superiority over all the others for popular and intelligible effect. We do not think that it is therefore the best; but it is the easiest to describe and to remember.

The Giving of the Keys is the last of them: it is at present at Somerset-House. There is no set purpose here, no studied contrast: it is an aggregation of grandeur and high feeling. The disciples gather round Christ, like a flock of sheep listening to some divine shepherd. The figure of their master is sublime: his countenance and attitude ‘in act to speak.’ The landscape is also extremely fine and of a soothing character.—Every thing falls into its place in these pictures. The figures seem to stop just where their business and feelings bring them: not a fold in the draperies can be disposed of for the better or otherwise than it is.

It would be in vain to enumerate the particular figures, or to explain the story of works so well known: what we have aimed at has been to shew the spirit that breathes through them, and we shall count ourselves fortunate, if we have not sullied them with our praise. We do not care about some works: but these were sacred to our imaginations, and we should be sorry indeed to have profaned them by description or criticism. We have hurried through our unavoidable task with fear, and look back to it with doubt.

LORD GROSVENOR’S COLLECTION OF PICTURES

We seldom quit a mansion like that of which we have here to give some account, and return homewards, but we think of Warton’s Sonnet, written after seeing Wilton-house.

‘From Pembroke’s princely dome, where mimic art

Decks with a magic hand the dazzling bowers,

Its living hues where the warm pencil pours,

And breathing forms from the rude marble start,

How to life’s humbler scenes can I depart?

My breast all glowing from those gorgeous tow’rs,

In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours?

Vain the complaint! For Fancy can impart

(To Fate superior, and to Fortune’s doom)

Whate’er adorns the stately-storied hall:

She, mid the dungeon’s solitary gloom,

Can dress the Graces in their Attic pall:

Bid the green landscape’s vernal beauty bloom;

And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall.’

Having repeated these lines to ourselves, we sit quietly down in our chairs to con over our task, abstract the idea of exclusive property, and think only of those images of beauty and of grandeur, which we can carry away with us in our minds, and have every where before us. Let us take some of these, and describe them how we can.

There is one—we see it now—the Man with a Hawk, by Rembrandt. ‘In our mind’s eye, Horatio!’ What is the difference between this idea which we have brought away with us, and the picture on the wall? Has it lost any of its tone, its ease, its depth? The head turns round in the same graceful moving attitude, the eye carelessly meets ours, the tufted beard grows to the chin, the hawk flutters and balances himself on his favourite perch, his master’s hand; and a shadow seems passing over the picture, just leaving a light in one corner of it behind, to give a livelier effect to the whole. There is no mark of the pencil, no jagged points or solid masses; it is all air, and twilight might be supposed to have drawn his veil across it. It is as much an idea on the canvas, as it is in the mind. There are no means employed, as far as you can discover—you see nothing but a simple, grand, and natural effect. It is impalpable as a thought, intangible as a sound—nay, the shadows have a breathing harmony, and fling round an undulating echo of themselves,

‘At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness till it smiles!’

In the opposite corner of the room is a Portrait of a Female (by the same), in which every thing is as clear, and pointed, and brought out into the open day, as in the former it is withdrawn from close and minute inspection. The face glitters with smiles as the ear-rings sparkle with light. The whole is stiff, starched, and formal, has a pearly or metallic look, and you throughout mark the most elaborate and careful finishing. The two pictures make an antithesis, where they are placed; but this was not probably at all intended: it proceeds simply from the difference in the nature of the subject, and the truth and appropriate power of the treatment of it.—In the middle between these two pictures is a small history, by Rembrandt, of the Salutation of Elizabeth, in which the figures come out straggling, disjointed, quaint, ugly as in a dream, but partake of the mysterious significance of preternatural communication, and are seen through the visible gloom, or through the dimmer night of antiquity. Light and shade, not form or feeling, were the elements of which Rembrandt composed the finest poetry, and his imagination brooded only over the medium through which we discern objects, leaving the objects themselves uninspired, unhallowed, and untouched!

We must go through our account of these pictures as they start up in our memory, not according to the order of their arrangement, for want of a proper set of memorandums. Our friend, Mr. Gummow, of Cleveland-house, had a nice little neatly-bound duodecimo Catalogue, of great use as a Vade Mecum to occasional visitants or absent critics—but here we have no such advantage; and to take notes before company is a thing that we abhor. It has a look of pilfering something from the pictures. While we merely enjoy the sight of the objects of art before us, or sympathise with the approving gaze of the greater beauty around us, it is well; there is a feeling of luxury and refinement in the employment; but take out a pocket-book, and begin to scribble notes in it, the date of the picture, the name, the room, some paltry defect, some pitiful discovery (not worth remembering), the non-essentials, the mechanic common-places of the art, and the sentiment is gone—you shew that you have a further object in view, a job to execute, a feeling foreign to the place, and different from every one else—you become a butt and a mark for ridicule to the rest of the company—and you retire with your pockets full of wisdom from a saloon of art, with as little right as you have to carry off the dessert, (or what you have not been able to consume,) from an inn, or a banquet. Such, at least, is our feeling; and we had rather make a mistake now and then, as to a numero, or the name of a room in which a picture is placed, than spoil our whole pleasure in looking at a fine Collection, and consequently the pleasure of the reader in learning what we thought of it.

Among the pictures that haunt our eye in this way is the Adoration of the Angels, by N. Poussin. It is one of his finest works—elegant, graceful, full of feeling, happy, enlivening. It is treated rather as a classical than as a sacred subject. The Angels are more like Cupids than Angels. They are, however, beautifully grouped, with various and expressive attitudes, and remind one, by their half antic, half serious homage, of the line—

‘Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.’

They are laden with baskets of flowers—the tone of the picture is rosy, florid; it seems to have been painted at

‘The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,’

and the angels over-head sport and gambol in the air with butterfly-wings, like butterflies. It is one of those rare productions that satisfy the mind, and from which we turn away, not from weariness, but from a fulness of delight.—The Israelites returning Thanks in the Wilderness is a fine picture, but inferior to this. Near it is a group of Angels, said to be by Correggio. The expressions are grotesque and fine, but the colouring does not seem to us to be his. The texture of the flesh, as well as the hue, too much resembles the skin of ripe fruit. We meet with several fine landscapes of the two Poussins, (particularly one of a rocky eminence by Gaspar,) in the room before you come to the Rembrandts, in which the mixture of grey rock and green trees and shrubs is beautifully managed, with striking truth and clearness.

Among detached and smaller pictures, we would wish to point out to the attention of our readers, an exquisite head of a Child, by Andrea del Sarto, and a fine Salvator in the inner room of all: in the room leading to it, a pleasing, glassy Cuyp, an airy, earthy-looking Teniers, and a Mother and a Sleeping Child, by Guido: in the Saloon, a St. Catherine, one of Parmegiano’s most graceful pictures; a St. Agnes, by Domenichino, full of sweetness, thought, and feeling; and two pictures by Raphael, that have a look as if painted on paper: a Repose in Egypt, and St. Luke painting the Virgin, both admirable for drawing and expression, and a rich, purple, crayon tone of colouring. Wherever Raphael is, there is grace and dignity, and an informing soul. In the last-mentioned room, near the entrance, is also a Conversion of Saint Paul, by Rubens, of infinite spirit, brilliancy, and delicacy of execution.

But it is in the large room to the right, that the splendour and power of Rubens reign triumphant and unrivalled, and yet he has here to contend with highest works and names. The four large pictures of ecclesiastical subjects, the Meeting of Abram and Melchisedec, the Gathering of Manna, the Evangelists, and the Fathers of the Church, have no match in this country for scenic pomp, and dazzling airy effect. The figures are colossal; and it might be said, without much extravagance, that the drawing and colouring are so too.[^[8]] He seems to have painted with a huge sweeping gigantic pencil, and with broad masses of unalloyed colour. The spectator is (as it were) thrown back by the pictures, and surveys them, as if placed at a stupendous height, as well as distance from him. This, indeed, is their history: they were painted to be placed in some Jesuit’s church abroad, at an elevation of forty or fifty feet, and Rubens would have started to see them in a drawing-room or on the ground. Had he foreseen such a result, he would perhaps have added something to the correctness of the features, and taken something from the gorgeous crudeness of the colour. But there is grandeur of composition, involution of form, motion, character in its vast, rude outline, the imposing contrast of sky and flesh, fine grotesque heads of old age, florid youth, and fawn-like beauty! You see nothing but patriarchs, primeval men and women, walking among temples, or treading the sky—or the earth, with an ‘air and gesture proudly eminent,’ as if they trod the sky—when man first rose from nothing to his native sublimity. We cannot describe these pictures in their details; they are one staggering blow after another of the mighty hand that traced them. All is cast in the same mould, all is filled with the same spirit, all is clad in the same gaudy robe of light. Rubens was at home here; his forte was the processional, the showy, and the imposing; he grew almost drunk and wanton with the sense of his power over such subjects; and he, in fact, left these pictures unfinished in some particulars, that, for the place and object for which they were intended, they might be perfect. They were done (it is said) for tapestries from small designs, and carried nearly to their present state of finishing by his scholars. There is a smaller picture in the same room, Ixion embracing the false Juno, which points out and defines their style of art and adaptation for remote effect. There is a delicacy in this last picture (which is, however of the size of life) that makes it look like a miniature in comparison. The flesh of the women is like lilies, or like milk strewed upon ivory. It is soft and pearly; but, in the larger pictures, it is heightened beyond nature, the veil of air between the spectator and the figures, when placed in the proper position, being supposed to give the last finishing. Near the Ixion is an historical female figure, by Guido, which will not bear any comparison for transparency and delicacy of tint with the two Junos.—Rubens was undoubtedly the greatest scene-painter in the world, if we except Paul Veronese, and the Fleming was to him flat and insipid. ‘It is place which lessens and sets off.’ We once saw two pictures of Rubens’ hung by the side of the Marriage of Cana in the Louvre; and they looked nothing. The Paul Veronese nearly occupied the side of a large room (the modern French exhibition-room) and it was like looking through the side of a wall, or at a splendid banquet and gallery, full of people, and full of interest. The texture of the two Rubenses was woolly, or flowery, or satiny: it was all alike; but in the Venetian’s great work the pillars were of stone, the floor was marble, the tables were wood, the dresses were various stuffs, the sky was air, the flesh was flesh; the groups were living men and women. Turks, emperours, ladies, painters, musicians—all was real, dazzling, profuse, astonishing. It seemed as if the very dogs under the table might get up and bark, or that at the sound of a trumpet the whole assembly might rise and disperse in different directions, in an instant. This picture, however, was considered as the triumph of Paul Veronese, and the two by the Flemish artist that hung beside it were very inferior to some of his, and assuredly to those now exhibited in the Gallery at Lord Grosvenor’s. Neither do we wish by this allusion to disparage Rubens; for we think him on the whole a greater genius, and a greater painter, than the rival we have here opposed to him, as we may attempt to shew when we come to speak of the Collection at Blenheim.

There are some divine Claudes in the same room; and they too are like looking through a window at a select and conscious landscape. There are five or six, all capital for the composition, and highly preserved. There is a strange and somewhat anomalous one of Christ in the Mount, as if the artist had tried to contradict himself, and yet it is Claude all over. Nobody but he could paint one single atom of it. The Mount is stuck up in the very centre of the picture, against all rule, like a huge dirt-pye: but then what an air breathes round it, what a sea encircles it, what verdure clothes it, what flocks and herds feed round it, immortal and unchanged! Close by it is the Arch of Constantine; but this is to us a bitter disappointment. A print of it hung in a little room in the country, where we used to contemplate it by the hour together, and day after day, and ‘sigh our souls’ into the picture. It was the most graceful, the most perfect of all Claude’s compositions. The Temple seemed to come forward into the middle of the picture, as in a dance, to show its unrivalled beauty, the Vashti of the scene! Young trees bent their branches over it with playful tenderness; and, on the opposite side of a stream, at which cattle stooped to drink, there grew a stately grove, erect, with answering looks of beauty: the distance between retired into air and gleaming shores. Never was there scene so fair, ‘so absolute, that in itself summ’d all delight.’ How did we wish to compare it with the picture! The trees, we thought, must be of vernal green—the sky recalled the mild dawn, or softened evening. No, the branches of the trees are red, the sky burned up, the whole hard and uncomfortable. This is not the picture, the print of which we used to gaze at enamoured—there is another somewhere that we still shall see! There are finer specimens of the Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire, at Lord Radnor’s, in Wiltshire. Those here have a more polished, cleaned look, but we cannot prefer them on that account. In one corner of the room is a St. Bruno, by Andrea Sacchi—a fine study, with pale face and garments, a saint dying (as it should seem)—but as he dies, conscious of an undying spirit. The old Catholic painters put the soul of religion into their pictures—for they felt it within themselves.

There are two Titians—the Woman taken in Adultery, and a large mountainous landscape with the story of Jupiter and Antiope. The last is rich and striking, but not equal to his best; and the former, we think, one of his most exceptionable pictures, both in character, and (we add) colouring. In the last particular, it is tricky, and discovers, instead of concealing its art. The flesh is not transparent, but a transparency! Let us not forget a fine Synders, a Boar-hunt, which is highly spirited and natural, as far as the animals are concerned; but is patchy, and wants the tone and general effect that Rubens would have thrown over it. In the middle of the right-hand side of the room, is the Meeting of Jacob and Laban, by Murillo. It is a lively, out-of-door scene, full of bustle and expression; but it rather brings us to the tents and faces of two bands of gypsies meeting on a common heath, than carries us back to the remote times, places, and events, treated of. Murillo was the painter of nature, not of the imagination. There is a Sleeping Child by him, over the door of the saloon (an admirable cabinet-picture), and another of a boy, a little spirited rustic, brown, glowing, ‘of the earth, earthy,’ the flesh thoroughly baked, as if he had come out of an oven; and who regards you with a look as if he was afraid you might bind him apprentice to some trade or handicraft, or send him to a Sunday-school; and so put an end to his short, happy, careless life—to his lessons from that great teacher, the Sun—to his physic, the air—to his bed, the earth—and to the soul of his very being, Liberty!

The first room you enter is filled with some very good and some very bad English pictures. There is Hogarth’s Distressed Poet—the Death of Wolfe, by West, which is not so good as the print would lead us to expect—an excellent whole-length portrait of a youth, by Gainsborough—A Man with a Hawk, by Northcote, and Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, by Sir Joshua. This portrait Lord Grosvenor bought the other day for £1760. It has risen in price every time it has been sold. Sir Joshua sold it for two or three hundred pounds to a Mr. Calonne. It was then purchased by Mr. Desenfans who parted with it to Mr. William Smith for a larger sum (we believe £500); and at the sale of that gentleman’s pictures, it was bought by Mr. Watson Taylor, the last proprietor, for a thousand guineas. While it was in the possession of Mr. Desenfans, a copy of it was taken by a pupil of Sir Joshua’s, of the name of Score, which is now in the Dulwich Gallery, and which we always took for an original. The size of the original is larger than the copy. There was a dead child painted at the bottom of it, which Sir Joshua Reynolds afterwards disliked, and he had the canvas doubled upon the frame to hide it. It has been let out again, but we did not observe whether the child was there. We think it had better not be seen.

We do not wish to draw invidious comparisons; yet we may say, in reference to the pictures in Lord Grosvenor’s Collection, and those at Cleveland-house, that the former are distinguished most by elegance, brilliancy, and high preservation; while those belonging to the Marquis of Stafford look more like old pictures, and have a corresponding tone of richness and magnificence. We have endeavoured to do justice to both, but we confess we have fallen very short even of our own hopes and expectations.

PICTURES AT WILTON, STOURHEAD, &c.

Salisbury Plain, barren as it is, is rich in collections and monuments of art. There are, within the distance of a few miles, Wilton, Longford-Castle, Fonthill-Abbey, Stourhead, and last though not least worthy to be mentioned, Stonehenge, that ‘huge, dumb heap,’ that stands on the blasted heath, and looks like a group of giants, bewildered, not knowing what to do, encumbering the earth, and turned to stone, while in the act of warring on Heaven. An attempt has lately been made to give to it an antediluvian origin. Its mystic round is in all probability fated to remain inscrutable, a mighty maze without a plan: but still the imagination, when once curiosity and wonder have taken possession of it, heaves with its restless load, launches conjecture farther and farther back beyond the landmarks of time, and strives to bear down all impediments in its course, as the ocean strives to overleap some vast promontory!

Fonthill-Abbey, which was formerly hermetically sealed against all intrusion,[^[9]] is at present open to the whole world; and Wilton-House, and Longford-Castle, which were formerly open to every one, are at present shut, except to petitioners, and a favoured few. Why is this greater degree of strictness in the latter instances resorted to? In proportion as the taste for works of art becomes more general, do these Noble Persons wish to set bounds to and disappoint public curiosity? Do they think that the admiration bestowed on fine pictures or rare sculpture lessens their value, or divides the property, as well as the pleasure with the possessor? Or do they think that setting aside the formality of these new regulations, three persons in the course of a whole year would intrude out of an impertinent curiosity to see their houses and furniture, without having a just value for them as objects of art? Or is the expence of keeping servants to shew the apartments made the plea of this churlish, narrow system? The public are ready enough to pay servants for their attendance, and those persons are quite as forward to do this who make a pilgrimage to such places on foot as those who approach them in a post-chaise or on horseback with a livery servant, which, it seems, is the prescribed and fashionable etiquette! Whatever is the cause, we are sorry for it; more particularly as it compels us to speak of these two admired Collections from memory only. It is several years since we saw them; but there are some impressions of this sort that are proof against time.

Lord Radnor has the two famous Claudes, the Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire. Though as landscapes they are neither so brilliant, nor finished, nor varied, as some of this Artist’s, there is a weight and concentration of historic feeling about them which many of his allegorical productions want. In the first, half-finished buildings and massy columns rise amidst the dawning effulgence that is streaked with rims of inextinguishable light; and a noble tree in the foreground, ample, luxuriant, hangs and broods over the growing design. There is a dim mistiness spread over the scene, as in the beginning of things. The Evening, the companion to it, is even finer. It has all the gorgeous pomp that attends the meeting of Night and Day, and a flood of glory still prevails over the coming shadows. In the cool of the evening, some cattle are feeding on the brink of a glassy stream, that reflects a mouldering ruin on one side of the picture; and so precise is the touch, so true, so firm is the pencilling, so classical the outline, that they give one the idea of sculptured cattle, biting the short, green turf, and seem an enchanted herd! They appear stamped on the canvas to remain there for ever, or as if nothing could root them from the spot. Truth with beauty suggests the feeling of immortality. No Dutch picture ever suggested this feeling. The objects are real, it is true; but not being beautiful or impressive, the mind feels no wish to mould them into a permanent reality, to bind them fondly on the heart, or lock them in the imagination as in a sacred recess, safe from the envious canker of time. No one ever felt a longing, a sickness of the heart, to see a Dutch landscape twice; but those of Claude, after an absence of years, have this effect, and produce a kind of calenture. The reason of the difference is, that in mere literal copies from nature, where the objects are not interesting in themselves, the only attraction is to see the felicity of the execution; and having once witnessed this, we are satisfied. But there is nothing to stir the fancy, to keep alive the yearnings of passion. We remember one other picture (and but one) in Lord Radnor’s Collection, that was of this ideal character. It was a Magdalen by Guido, with streaming hair, and streaming eyes looking upwards-full of sentiment and beauty.

There is but one fine picture at Wilton-house, the Family Vandyke; with a noble Gallery of antique marbles, which we may pronounce to be invaluable to the lover of art or to the student of history or human nature. Roman Emperors or Proconsuls, the poets, orators, and almost all the great men of antiquity, are here ‘ranged in a row,’ and palpably embodied either in genuine or traditional busts. Some of these indicate an almost preternatural capacity and inspired awfulness of look, particularly some of the earlier sages and fabulists of Greece, which we apprehend to be ideal representations; while other more modern and better authenticated ones of celebrated Romans are distinguished by the strength and simplicity of common English heads of the best class.—The large picture of the Pembroke Family, by Vandyke, is unrivalled in its kind. It is a history of the time. It throws us nearly two centuries back to men and manners that no longer exist. The members of a Noble House (‘tis a hundred and sixty years since) are brought together in propriâ persona, and appear in all the varieties of age, character, and costume. There are the old Lord and Lady Pembroke, who ‘keep their state’ raised somewhat above the other groups;—the one a lively old gentleman, who seems as if he could once have whispered a flattering tale in a fair lady’s ear; his help-mate looking a little fat and sulky by his side, probably calculating the expence of the picture, and not well understanding the event of it—there are the daughters, pretty, well-dressed, elegant girls, but somewhat insipid, sentimental, and vacant—then there are the two eldest sons, that might be said to have walked out of Mr. Burke’s description of the age of chivalry; the one a perfect courtier, a carpet-knight, smooth-faced, handsome, almost effeminate, that seems to have moved all his life to ‘the mood of lutes and soft recorders,’ decked in silks and embroidery like the tender flower issuing from its glossy folds; the other the gallant soldier, shrewd, bold, hardy, with spurred heel and tawny buskins, ready to ‘mount on barbed steeds, and witch the world with noble horsemanship’—down to the untutored, carroty-headed boy, the Goose-Gibbie of the piece, who appears to have been just dragged from the farm-yard to sit for his picture, and stares about him in as great a heat and fright as if he had dropped from the clouds:—all in this admirable, living composition is in its place, in keeping, and bears the stamp of the age and of the master’s hand. Even the oak-pannels have an elaborate, antiquated look, and the furniture has an aspect of cumbrous, conscious dignity. It should not be omitted that it was here (in the house or the adjoining magnificent grounds) that Sir Philip Sidney wrote his Arcadia; and the story of Musidorus and Philoclea, of Mopsa and Dorcas, is quaintly traced on oval pannels in the principal drawing-room.

It is on this account that we are compelled to find fault with the Collection at Fonthill Abbey, because it exhibits no picture of remarkable eminence that can be ranked as an heir-loom of the imagination—which cannot be spoken of but our thoughts take wing and stretch themselves towards it—the very name of which is music to the instructed ear. We would not give a rush to see any Collection that does not contain some single picture at least, that haunts us with an uneasy sense of joy for twenty miles of road, that may cheer us at intervals for twenty years of life to come. Without some such thoughts as these riveted in the brain, the lover and disciple of art would truly be ‘of all men the most miserable:’ but with them hovering round him, and ever and anon shining with their glad lustre into his sleepless soul, he has nothing to fear from fate, or fortune. We look, and lo! here is one at our side, facing us, though far-distant. It is the Young Man’s Head, in the Louvre, by Titian, that is not unlike Jeronymo della Porretta in Sir Charles Grandison. What a look is there of calm, unalterable self-possession—

‘Above all pain, all passion, and all pride;’

that draws the evil out of human life, that while we look at it transfers the same sentiment to our own breasts, and makes us feel as if nothing mean or little could ever disturb us again! This is high art; the rest is mechanical. But there is nothing like this at Fonthill (oh! no), but every thing which is the very reverse. As this, however, is an extreme opinion of ours, and may be a prejudice, we shall endeavour to support it by facts. There is not then a single Titian in all this boasted and expensive Collection—there is not a Raphael—there is not a Rubens (except one small sketch)—there is not a Guido, nor a Vandyke—there is not a Rembrandt, there is not a Nicolo Poussin, nor a fine Claude. The two Altieri Claudes, which might have redeemed Fonthill, Mr. Beckford sold. What shall we say to a Collection, which uniformly and deliberately rejects every great work, and every great name in art, to make room for idle rarities and curiosities of mechanical skill? It was hardly necessary to build a cathedral to set up a toy-shop! Who would paint a miniature-picture to hang it at the top of the Monument? This huge pile (capable of better things) is cut up into a parcel of little rooms, and those little rooms are stuck full of little pictures, and bijouterie. Mr. Beckford may talk of his Diamond Berchem, and so on: this is but the language of a petit-maitre in art; but the author of Vathek (with his leave) is not a petit-maitre. His genius, as a writer, ‘hath a devil:’ his taste in pictures is the quintessence and rectified spirit of still-life. He seems not to be susceptible of the poetry of painting, or else to set his face against it. It is obviously a first principle with him to exclude whatever has feeling or imagination—to polish the surface, and suppress the soul of art—to proscribe, by a sweeping clause or at one fell swoop, every thing approaching to grace, or beauty, or grandeur—to crush the sense of pleasure or of power in embryo—and to reduce all nature and art, as far as possible, to the texture and level of a China dish—smooth, glittering, cold, and unfeeling! We do not object so much to the predilection for Teniers, Wouvermans, or Ostade—we like to see natural objects naturally painted—but we unequivocally hate the affectedly mean, the elaborately little, the ostentatiously perverse and distorted, Polemberg’s walls of amber, Mieris’s groups of steel, Vanderwerf’s ivory flesh;—yet these are the chief delights of the late proprietor of Fonthill-abbey! Is it that his mind is ‘a volcano burnt out,’ and that he likes his senses to repose and be gratified with Persian carpets and enamelled pictures? Or are there not traces of the same infirmity of feeling even in the high-souled Vathek, who compliments the complexion of the two pages of Fakreddin as being equal to ‘the porcelain of Franguestan?’ Alas! Who would have thought that the Caliph Vathek would have dwindled down into an Emperor of China and King of Japan? But so it is.—

Stourhead, the seat of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, did not answer our expectations. But Stourton, the village where it stands, made up for our disappointment. After passing the park-gate, which is a beautiful and venerable relic, you descend into Stourton by a sharp-winding declivity, almost like going underground, between high hedges of laurel trees, and with an expanse of woods and water spread beneath. It is a sort of rural Herculaneum, a subterranean retreat. The inn is like a modernized guard-house; the village-church stands on a lawn without any inclosure; a row of cottages facing it, with their white-washed walls and flaunting honey-suckles, are neatness itself. Every thing has an air of elegance, and yet tells a tale of other times. It is a place that might be held sacred to stillness and solitary musing!—The adjoining mansion of Stourhead commands an extensive view of Salisbury Plain, whose undulating swells shew the earth in its primeval simplicity, bare, with naked breasts, and varied in its appearance only by the shadows of the clouds that pass across it. The view without is pleasing and singular: there is little within-doors to beguile attention. There is one master-piece of colouring by Paul Veronese, a naked child with a dog. The tone of the flesh is perfection itself. On praising this picture (which we always do when we like a thing) we were told it had been criticized by a great judge, Mr. Beckford of Fonthill, who had found fault with the execution as too coarse and muscular. We do not wonder—it is not like his own turnery-ware! We should also mention an exquisite Holbein, the Head of a Child, and a very pleasing little landscape by Wilson. Besides these, there are some capital pen-and-ink drawings (views in Venice), by Canaletti, and three large copies after Guido of the Venus attired by the Graces, the Andromeda, and Herodias’s Daughter. They breathe the soul of softness and grace, and remind one of those fair, sylph-like forms that sometimes descend upon the earth with fatal, fascinating looks, and that ‘tempt but to betray.’ After the cabinet-pictures at Fonthill, even a good copy of a Guido is a luxury and a relief to the mind: it is something to inhale the divine airs that play around his figures, and we are satisfied if we can but ‘trace his footsteps, and his skirts far-off behold.’ The rest of this Collection is, for the most part, trash: either Italian pictures painted in the beginning of the last century, or English ones in the beginning of this. It gave us pain to see some of the latter; and we willingly draw a veil over the humiliation of the art, in the age and country that we live in. We ought, however, to mention a portrait of a youth (the present proprietor of Stourhead) by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which is elegant, brilliant, ‘though in ruins;’ and a spirited portrait by Northcote, of a lady talking on her fingers, may, perhaps, challenge an exception for itself to the above general censure.

We wish our readers to go to Petworth, the seat of Lord Egremont, where they will find the coolest grottos and the finest Vandykes in the world. There are eight or ten of the latter that are not to be surpassed by the art of man, and that we have no power either to admire or praise as they deserve. For simplicity, for richness, for truth of nature, for airiness of execution, nothing ever was or can be finer. We will only mention those of the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, Lord Newport, and Lord Goring, Lord Strafford, and Lady Carr, and the Duchess of Devonshire. He who possesses these portraits is rich indeed, if he has an eye to see, and a heart to feel them. The one of Lord Northumberland in the Tower is not so good, though it is thought better by the multitude. That is, there is a subject—something to talk about; but in fact, the expression is not that of grief, or thought, or of dignified resignation, but of a man in ill health. Vandyke was a mere portrait-painter, but he was a perfect one. His forte was not the romantic or pathetic; he was ‘of the court, courtly.’ He had a patent from the hand of nature to paint lords and ladies in prosperity and quite at their ease. There are some portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds in this Collection; and there are people who persist in naming him and Vandyke in the same day. The rest of the Collection consists (for the most part) of staircase and family pictures. But there are some admirable statues to be seen here, that it would ask a morning’s leisure to study properly.

PICTURES AT BURLEIGH HOUSE[^[10]]

Burleigh! thy groves are leafless, thy walls are naked—

‘And dull, cold winter does inhabit here.’

The yellow evening rays gleam through thy fretted Gothic windows; but I only feel the rustling of withered branches strike chill to my breast; it was not so twenty years ago. Thy groves were leafless then as now: it was the middle of winter twice that I visited thee before; but the lark mounted in the sky, and the sun smote my youthful blood with its slant ray, and the ploughman whistled as he drove his team afield; Hope spread out its glad vistas through thy fair domains, oh, Burleigh! Fancy decked thy walls with works of sovereign art, and it was spring, not winter, in my breast. All is still the same, like a petrification of the mind—the same things in the same places; but their effect is not the same upon me. I am twenty years the worse for wear and tear. What is become of the never-ending studious thoughts that brought their own reward or promised good to mankind? of the tears that started welcome and unbidden? of the sighs that whispered future peace? of the smiles that shone, not in my face indeed, but that cheered my heart, and made a sunshine there when all was gloom around? That fairy vision—that invisible glory, by which I was once attended—ushered into life, has left my side, and ‘faded to the light of common day,’ and I now see what is, or has been—not what may lie hid in Time’s bright circle and golden chaplet! Perhaps this is the characteristic difference between youth and a later period of life—that we, by degrees, learn to take things more as we find them, call them more by their right names; that we feel the warmth of summer, but the winter’s cold as well; that we see beauties, but can spy defects in the fairest face; and no longer look at every thing through the genial atmosphere of our own existence. We grow more literal and less credulous every day, lose much enjoyment, and gain some useful, and more useless knowledge. The second time I passed along the road that skirts Burleigh Park, the morning was dank and ‘ways were mire.’ I saw and felt it not: my mind was otherwise engaged. Ah! thought I, there is that fine old head by Rembrandt; there within those cold grey walls, the painter of old age is enshrined, immortalized in some of his inimitable works! The name of Rembrandt lives in the fame of him who stamped it with renown, while the name of Burleigh is kept up by the present owner. An artist survives in the issue of his brain to all posterity—a lord is nothing without the issue of his body lawfully begotten, and is lost in a long line of illustrious ancestors. So much higher is genius than rank—such is the difference between fame and title! A great name in art lasts for centuries—it requires twenty generations of a noble house to keep alive the memory of the first founder for the same length of time. So I reasoned, and was not a little proud of my discovery.

In this dreaming mood, dreaming of deathless works and deathless names, I went on to Peterborough, passing, as it were, under an arch-way of Fame,

——‘and still walking under,

Found some new matter to look up and wonder.’

I had business there: I will not say what. I could at this time do nothing. I could not write a line—I could not draw a stroke. ‘I was brutish;’ though not ‘like warlike as the wolf, nor subtle as the fox for prey.’ In words, in looks, in deeds, I was no better than a changeling. Why then do I set so much value on my existence formerly? Oh God! that I could but be for one day, one hour, nay but for an instant, (to feel it in all the plentitude of unconscious bliss, and take one long, last, lingering draught of that full brimming cup of thoughtless freedom,) what then I was—that I might, as in a trance, a waking dream, hear the hoarse murmur of the bargemen, as the Minster tower appeared in the dim twilight, come up from the willowy stream, sounding low and underground like the voice of the bittern—that I might paint that field opposite the window where I lived, and feel that there was a green, dewy moisture in the tone, beyond my pencil’s reach, but thus gaining almost a new sense, and watching the birth of new objects without me—that I might stroll down Peterborough bank, (a winter’s day,) and see the fresh marshes stretching out in endless level perspective, (as if Paul Potter had painted them,) with the cattle, the windmills, and the red-tiled cottages, gleaming in the sun to the very verge of the horizon, and watch the fieldfares in innumerable flocks, gamboling in the air, and sporting in the sun, and racing before the clouds, making summersaults, and dazzling the eye by throwing themselves into a thousand figures and movements—that I might go, as then, a pilgrimage to the town where my mother was born, and visit the poor farm-house where she was brought up, and lean upon the gate where she told me she used to stand when a child of ten years old and look at the setting sun!—I could do all this still; but with different feelings. As our hopes leave us, we lose even our interest and regrets for the past. I had at this time, simple as I seemed, many resources. I could in some sort ‘play at bowls with the sun and moon;’ or, at any rate, there was no question in metaphysics that I could not bandy to and fro, as one might play at cup-and-ball, for twenty, thirty, forty miles of the great North Road, and at it again, the next day, as fresh as ever. I soon get tired of this now, and wonder how I managed formerly. I knew Tom Jones by heart, and was deep in Peregrine Pickle. I was intimately acquainted with all the heroes and heroines of Richardson’s romances, and could turn from one to the other as I pleased. I could con over that single passage in Pamela about ‘her lumpish heart,’ and never have done admiring the skill of the author and the truth of nature. I had my sports and recreations too, some such as these following:—

‘To see the sun to bed, and to arise,

Like some hot amourist, with glowing eyes

Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him,

With all his fires and travelling glories round him.

Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest,

Like beauty nestling in a young man’s breast,

And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep

Admiring silence while those lovers sleep.

Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness,

Nought doing, saying little, thinking less,

To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air,

Go eddying round and small birds how they fare,

When Mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn,

Filch’d from the careless Amalthea’s horn:

And how the woods berries and worms provide

Without their pains, when earth has nought beside

To answer their small wants.

To view the graceful deer come tripping by,

Then stop and gaze, then turn, they know not why,

Like bashful younkers in society.

To mark the structure of a plant or tree,

And all fair things of earth, how fair they be.’

I have wandered far enough from Burleigh House; but I had some associations about it which I could not well get rid of, without troubling the reader with them.

The Rembrandts disappointed me quite. I could hardly find a trace of the impression which had been inlaid in my imagination. I might as well

‘Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.’

Instead of broken wrinkles and indented flesh, I saw hard lines and stained canvas. I had seen better Rembrandts since, and had learned to see nature better. Was it a disadvantage, then, that for twenty years I had carried this fine idea in my brain, enriching it from time to time from my observations of nature or art, and raising it as they were raised; or did it much signify that it was disturbed at last? Neither. The picture was nothing to me: it was the idea it had suggested. The one hung on the wall at Burleigh; the other was an heir-loom in my mind. Was it destroyed, because the picture, after long absence, did not answer to it? No. There were other pictures in the world that did, and objects in nature still more perfect. This is the melancholy privilege of art; it exists chiefly in idea, and is not liable to serious reverses. If we are disappointed in the character of one we love, it breaks the illusion altogether; for we drew certain consequences from a face. If an old friendship is broken up, we cannot tell how to replace it, without the aid of habit and a length of time. But a picture is nothing but a face; it interests us only in idea. Hence we need never be afraid of raising our standard of taste too high; for the mind rises with it, exalted and refined, and can never be much injured by finding out its casual mistakes. Like the possessor of a splendid collection, who is indifferent to or turns away from common pictures, we have a selector gallery in our own minds. In this sense, the knowledge of art is its own exceeding great reward. But is there not danger that we may become too fastidious, and have nothing left to admire? None: for the conceptions of the human soul cannot rise superior to the power of art; or if they do, then we have surely every reason to be satisfied with them. The mind, in what depends upon itself alone, ‘soon rises from defeat unhurt,’ though its pride may be for a moment ‘humbled by such rebuke,’

‘And in its liquid texture mortal wound

Receives no more than can the fluid air.’

As an illustration of the same thing, there are two Claudes at Burleigh, which certainly do not come up to the celebrity of the artist’s name. They did not please me formerly: the sky, the water, the trees seemed all too blue, too much of the colour of indigo. But I believed, and wondered. I could no longer admire these specimens of the artist at present, but assuredly my admiration of the artist himself was not less than before; for since then, I had seen other works by the same hand,

——‘inimitable on earth

By model or by shading pencil drawn,’—

surpassing every idea that the mind could form of art, except by having seen them. I remember one in particular that Walsh Porter had (a bow-shot beyond all others)—a vernal landscape, an ‘Hesperian fable true,’ with a blue unclouded sky, and green trees and grey turrets and an unruffled sea beyond. But never was there sky so soft or trees so clad with spring, such air-drawn towers or such halcyon seas: Zephyr seemed to fan the air, and Nature looked on and smiled. The name of Claude has alone something in it that softens and harmonises the mind. It touches a magic chord. Oh! matchless scenes, oh! orient skies, bright with purple and gold; ye opening glades and distant sunny vales, glittering with fleecy flocks, pour all your enchantment into my soul, let it reflect your chastened image, and forget all meaner things! Perhaps the most affecting tribute to the memory of this great artist is the character drawn of him by an eminent master, in his Dream of a Painter.

‘On a sudden I was surrounded by a thick cloud or mist, and my guide wafted me through the air, till we alighted on a most delicious rural spot. I perceived it was the early hour of the morn, when the sun had not risen above the horizon. We were alone, except that at a little distance a young shepherd played on his flageolet as he walked before his herd, conducting them from the fold to the pasture. The elevated pastoral air he played charmed me by its simplicity, and seemed to animate his obedient flock. The atmosphere was clear and perfectly calm: and now the rising sun gradually illumined the fine landscape, and began to discover to our view the distant country of immense extent. I stood awhile in expectation of what might next present itself of dazzling splendour, when the only object which appeared to fill this natural, grand, and simple scene, was a rustic who entered, not far from the place where we stood, who by his habiliments seemed nothing better than a peasant; he led a poor little ass, which was loaded with all the implements required by a painter in his work. After advancing a few paces he stood still, and with an air of rapture seemed to contemplate the rising sun: he next fell on his knees, directed his eyes towards heaven, crossed himself, and then went on with eager looks, as if to make choice of the most advantageous spot from which to make his studies as a painter. “This,” said my conductor, “is that Claude Gelée of Lorraine, who, nobly disdaining the low employment to which he was originally bred, left it with all its advantages of competence and ease to embrace his present state of poverty, in order to adorn the world with works of most accomplished excellence.”’

There is a little Paul Brill at Burleigh, in the same room with the Rembrandts, that dazzled me many years ago, and delighted me the other day. It looked as sparkling as if the sky came through the frame. I found, or fancied I found, those pictures the best that I remembered before, though they might in the interval have faded a little to my eyes, or lost some of their original brightness. I did not see the small head of Queen Mary by Holbein, which formerly struck me so forcibly; but I have little doubt respecting it, for Holbein was a sure hand; he only wanted effect, and this picture looked through you. One of my old favourites was the Head of an Angel, by Guido, nearly a profile, looking up, and with wings behind the back. It was hung lower than it used to be, and had, I thought, a look less aërial, less heavenly; but there was still a pulpy softness in it, a tender grace, an expression unutterable—which only the pencil, his pencil, could convey! And are we not then beholden to the art for these glimpses of Paradise? Surely, there is a sweetness in Guido’s heads, as there is also a music in his name. If Raphael did more, it was not with the same ease. His heads have more meaning; but Guido’s have a look of youthful innocence, which his are without. As to the boasted picture of Christ by Carlo Dolce, if a well-painted table-cloth and silver-cup are worth three thousand guineas, the picture is so, but not else. Yet one touch of Paul Veronese is worth all this enamelling twice over. The head has a wretched mawkish expression, utterly unbecoming the character it professes to represent. But I will say no more about it. The Bath of Seneca is one of Luca Jordano’s best performances, and has considerable interest and effect. Among other historical designs, there is one of Jacob’s Dream, with the angels ascending and descending on a kind of stairs. The conception is very answerable to the subject; but the execution is not in any high degree spirited or graceful. The mind goes away no gainer from the picture. Rembrandt alone perhaps could add any thing to this subject. Of him it might be said, that ‘his light shone in darkness!’—The wreaths of flowers and foliage carved in wood on the wainscots and ceiling of many of the rooms, by the celebrated Grinling Gibbons in Charles the Second’s time, shew a wonderful lightness and facility of hand, and give pleasure to the eye. The other ornaments and curiosities I need not mention, as they are carefully pointed out by the housekeeper to the admiring visitor. There are two heads, however, (one of them happens to have a screen placed before it) which I would by no means wish any one to pass over, who is an artist, or feels the slightest interest in the art. They are, I should suppose unquestionably, the original studies by Raphael of the heads of the Virgin and Joseph in his famous picture of the Madonna of the Crown. The Virgin is particularly beautiful, and in the finest preservation, as indeed are all his genuine pictures. The canvas is not quite covered in some places; the colours are as fresh as if newly laid on, and the execution is as firm and vigorous as if his hand had just left it. It shews us how this artist wrought. The head is, no doubt, a highly-finished study from nature, done for a particular purpose, and worked up according to the painter’s conception, but still retaining all the force and truth of individuality. He got all he could from Nature, and gave all he could to her in return. If Raphael had merely sketched this divine face on the canvas from the idea in his own mind, why not stamp it on the larger composition at once? He could work it up and refine upon it there just as well, and it would almost necessarily undergo some alteration in being transferred thither afterwards. But if it was done as a careful copy from Nature in the first instance, the present was the only way in which he could proceed, or indeed by which he could arrive at such consummate excellence. The head of the Joseph (leaning on the hand and looking down) is fine, but neither so fine as the companion to it, nor is it by any means so elaborately worked up in the sketch before us.

I am no teller of stories; but there is one belonging to Burleigh-House, of which I happen to know some of the particulars. The late Earl of Exeter had been divorced from his first wife, a woman of fashion, and of somewhat more gaiety of manners than ‘lords who love their ladies like.’ He determined to seek out a second wife in an humbler sphere of life, and that it should be one who, having no knowledge of his rank, should love him for himself alone. For this purpose, he went and settled incognito (under the name of Mr. Jones) at Hodnet, an obscure village in Shropshire. He made overtures to one or two damsels in the neighbourhood, but they were too knowing to be taken in by him. His manners were not boorish, his mode of life was retired, it was odd how he got his livelihood, and at last, he began to be taken for a highwayman. In this dilemma he turned to Miss Hoggins, the eldest daughter of a small farmer, at whose house he lodged. Miss Hoggins, it might seem, had not been used to romp with the clowns: there was something in the manners of their quiet, but eccentric guest that she liked. As he found that he had inspired her with that kind of regard which he wished for, he made honourable proposals to her, and at the end of some months, they were married, without his letting her know who he was. They set off in a post-chaise from her father’s house, and travelled homewards across the country. In this manner they arrived at Stamford, and passed through the town without stopping, till they came to the entrance of Burleigh-Park, which is on the outside of it. The gates flew open, the chaise entered, and drove down the long avenue of trees that leads up to the front of this fine old mansion. As they drew nearer to it, and she seemed a little surprised where they were going, he said, ‘Well, my dear, this is Burleigh-House; it is the home I have promised to bring you to, and you are the Countess of Exeter!’ It is said, the shock of this discovery was too much for this young creature, and that she never recovered it. It was a sensation worth dying for. The world we live in was worth making, had it been only for this. Ye Thousand and One Tales of the Arabian Night’s Entertainment! hide your diminished heads! I never wish to have been a lord, but when I think of this story.

PICTURES AT OXFORD AND BLENHEIM

Rome has been called the ‘Sacred City:’—might not our Oxford be called so too? There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination: it stands in lowly sublimity, on the ‘hill of ages;’ and points with prophetic fingers to the sky: it greets the eager gaze from afar, ‘with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,’ that shine with an internal light as with the lustre of setting suns; and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes, are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory: its streets are paved with the names of learning that can never wear out: its green quadrangles breathe the silence of thought, conscious of the weight of yearnings innumerable after the past, of loftiest aspirations for the future: Isis babbles of the Muse, its waters are from the springs of Helicon, its Christ-Church meadows, classic, Elysian fields!—We could pass our lives in Oxford without having or wanting any other idea—that of the place is enough. We imbibe the air of thought; we stand in the presence of learning. We are admitted into the Temple of Fame, we feel that we are in the sanctuary, on holy ground, and ‘hold high converse with the mighty dead.’ The enlightened and the ignorant are on a level, if they have but faith in the tutelary genius of the place. We may be wise by proxy, and studious by prescription. Time has taken upon himself the labour of thinking; and accumulated libraries leave us leisure to be dull. There is no occasion to examine the buildings, the churches, the colleges, by the rules of architecture, to reckon up the streets, to compare it with Cambridge (Cambridge lies out of the way, on one side of the world)—but woe to him who does not feel in passing through Oxford that he is in ‘no mean city,’ that he is surrounded with the monuments and lordly mansions of the mind of man, outvying in pomp and splendour the courts and palaces of princes, rising like an exhalation in the night of ignorance, and triumphing over barbaric foes, saying, ‘All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me!’—as the shrine where successive ages came to pay their pious vows, and slake the sacred thirst of knowledge, where youthful hopes (an endless flight) soared to truth and good, and where the retired and lonely student brooded over the historic or over fancy’s page, imposing high tasks for himself, framing high destinies for the race of man—the lamp, the mine, the well-head from whence the spark of learning was kindled, its stream flowed, its treasures were spread out through the remotest corners of the land and to distant nations. Let him then who is fond of indulging in a dream-like existence go to Oxford and stay there; let him study this magnificent spectacle, the same under all aspects, with its mental twilight tempering the glare of noon, or mellowing the silver moonlight; let him wander in her sylvan suburbs, or linger in her cloistered halls; but let him not catch the din of scholars or teachers, or dine or sup with them, or speak a word to any of the privileged inhabitants; for if he does, the spell will be broken, the poetry and the religion gone, and the palace of enchantment will melt from his embrace into thin air!

The only Collection of Pictures at Oxford is that at the Radcliffe Library; bequeathed by Sir William Guise. It is so far appropriate that it is dingy, solemn, old; and we would gladly leave it to its repose; but where criticism comes, affection ‘clappeth his wings, and straightway he is gone.’ Most of the pictures are either copies, or spoiled, or never were good for any thing. There is, however, a Music Piece by Titian, which bears the stamp of his hand, and is ‘majestic, though in ruins.’ It represents three young ladies practising at a harpsichord, with their music-master looking on. One of the girls is tall, with prominent features seen in profile, but exquisitely fair, and with a grave expression; the other is a lively, good-humoured girl, in a front view; and the third leans forward from behind, looking down with a demure, reserved, sentimental cast of countenance, but very pretty, and much like an English face. The teacher has a manly, intelligent countenance, with a certain blended air of courtesy and authority. It is a fascinating picture, to our thinking; and has that marked characteristic look, belonging to each individual and to the subject, which is always to be found in Titian’s groups. We also noticed a dingy, melancholy-looking Head over the window of the farthest room, said to be a Portrait of Vandyke, with something striking in the tone and expression; and a small Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, attributed to Giuseppe Ribera, which has considerable merit. The amateur will here find continual copies (of an indifferent class) of many of his old favourite pictures of the Italian school, Titian, Domenichino, Correggio, and others. But the most valuable part of the Collection consists of four undoubted Heads cut out of one of the Cartoons, which was destroyed by fire about a hundred years ago: they are here preserved in their pristine integrity. They shew us what the Cartoons were. They have all the spirit and freedom of Raphael’s hand, but without any of the blotches and smearing of those at Hampton Court; with which the damp of outhouses and the dews of heaven have evidently had nearly as much to do as the painter. Two are Heads of men, and two of women; one of the last, Rachel weeping for her Children, and another still finer (both are profiles) in which all the force and boldness of masculine understanding is combined with feminine softness of expression. The large, ox-like eye, a ‘lucid mirror,’ with the eye-lids drooping, and the long eye-lashes distinctly marked, the straight scrutinizing nose, the full, but closed lips, the matronly chin and high forehead, altogether convey a character of matured thought and expansive feeling, such as is seldom to be met with. Rachel weeping for her Children has a sterner and more painful, but a very powerful expression. It is heroic, rather than pathetic. The Heads of the men are spirited and forcible, but they are distinguished chiefly by the firmness of the outline, and the sharpness and mastery of the execution.

Blenheim is a morning’s walk from Oxford, and is not an unworthy appendage to it—

‘And fast by hanging in a golden chain

This pendent world, in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon!’

Blenheim is not inferior in waving woods and sloping lawns and smooth waters to Pembroke’s princely domain, or to the grounds of any other park we know of. The building itself is Gothic, capricious, and not imposing—a conglomeration of pigeon-houses—

‘In form resembling a goose pie.’

But as a receptacle for works of art, (with the exception of Cleveland House,) it is unrivalled in this country. There is not a bad picture in it: the interest is sustained by rich and noble performances from first to last. It abounds in Rubens’ works. The old Duchess of Marlborough was fond of the historical pieces of this great painter; she had, during her husband’s wars and negociations in Flanders, a fine opportunity of culling them, ‘as one picks pears, saying, this I like, that I like still better:’ and from the selection she has made, it appears as if she understood the master’s genius well. She has chosen those of his works which were most mellow, and at the same time gorgeous in colouring, most luxuriant in composition, most unctuous in expression. Rubens was the only artist that could have embodied some of our countryman Spenser’s splendid and voluptuous allegories. If a painter among ourselves were to attempt a Spenser Gallery, (perhaps the finest subject for the pencil in the world after Heathen mythology and Scripture History,) he ought to go and study the principles of his design at Blenheim!—The Silenus and the Rape of Proserpine contain more of the Bacchanalian and lawless spirit of ancient fable than perhaps any two pictures extant. We shall not dispute that Nicolas Poussin could probably give more of the abstract, metaphysical character of his traditional personages, or that Titian could set them off better, so as to ‘leave stings’ in the eye of the spectator, by a prodigious gusto of colouring, as in his Bacchus and Ariadne: but neither of them gave the same undulating outline, the same humid, pulpy tone to the flesh, the same graceful involution to the grouping and the forms, the same animal spirits, the same breathing motion. Let any one look at the figure of the Silenus in the first-mentioned of these compositions, its unwieldy size, its reeling, drunken attitude, its capacity for revelling in gross, sensual enjoyment, and contrast it with the figure of the nymph, so light, so wanton, so fair, that her clear crystal skin and laughing grace spread a ruddy glow, and account for the giddy tumult all around her; and say if any thing finer in this kind was ever executed or imagined. In that sort of licentious fancy, in which a certain grossness of expression bordered on caricature, and where grotesque or enticing form was to be combined with free and rapid movements, or different tones and colours were to be flung over the picture as in sport or in a dance, no one ever surpassed the Flemish painter; and some of the greatest triumphs of his pencil are to be found in the Blenheim Gallery. There are several others of his best pictures on sacred subjects, such as the Flight into Egypt, and the illustration of the text, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ The head and figure and deportment of the Christ, in this last admirable production, are nobly characteristic (beyond what the painter usually accomplished in this department)—the face of a woman holding a young child, pale, pensive, with scarce any shadow, and the head of the child itself (looking as vacant and satisfied as if the nipple had just dropped from its mouth) are actually alive. Those who can look at this picture with indifference, or without astonishment at the truth of nature, and the felicity of execution, may rest assured that they know as little of Rubens as of the Art itself. Vandyke, the scholar and rival of Rubens, holds the next place in this Collection. There is here, as in so many other places, a picture of the famous Lord Strafford, with his Secretary—both speaking heads, and with the characters finely diversified. We were struck also by the delightful family picture of the Duchess of Buckingham and her Children, but not so much (we confess it) as we expected from our recollection of this picture a few years ago. It had less the effect of a perfect mirror of fashion in ‘the olden time,’ than we fancied to ourselves—the little girl had less exquisite primness and studied gentility, the little boy had not the same chubby, good-humoured look, and the colours in his cheek had faded—nor had the mother the same graceful, matron-like air. Is it we or the picture that has changed? In general our expectations tally pretty well with our after-observations, but there was a falling-off in the present instance. There is a fine whole-length of a lady of quality of that day (we think Lady Cleveland); but the master-piece of Vandyke’s pencil here is his Charles I. on Horseback. It is the famous cream or fawn-coloured horse, which, of all the creatures that ever were painted, is surely one of the most beautiful.

‘Sure never were seen

Two such beautiful ponies;

All others are brutes,

But these macaronies.’

Its steps are delicate, as if it moved to some soft measure or courtly strain, or disdained the very ground it trod upon; its form all lightness and elegance: the expression quick and fiery; the colour inimitable; the texture of the skin sensitive and tremblingly alive all over, as if it would shrink from the smallest touch. The portrait of Charles is not equal; but there is a landscape-background, which in breezy freshness seems almost to rival the airy spirit and delicacy of the noble animal. There are also one or two fine Rembrandts (particularly a Jacob and Esau)—an early Raphael, the Adoration of some saint, hard and stiff, but carefully designed; and a fine, sensible, graceful head of the Fornarina, of which we have a common and well-executed engraving.

‘But did you see the Titian room?’—Yes, we did, and a glorious treat it was; nor do we know why it should not be shewn to every one. There is nothing alarming but the title of the subjects—The Loves of the Gods—just as was the case with Mr. T. Moore’s Loves of the Angels—but oh! how differently treated! What a gusto in the first, compared with the insipidity of the last! What streaks of living blood-colour, so unlike gauze spangles or pink silk-stockings! What union, what symmetry of form, instead of sprawling, flimsy descriptions—what an expression of amorous enjoyment about the mouth, the eyes, and even to the finger-ends, instead of cold conceits, and moonlight similes! This is en passant; so to our task.—It is said these pictures were discovered in an old lumber-room by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who set a high value on them, and that they are undoubtedly by Titian, having been originally sent over as a present by the King of Sardinia (for whose ancestor they were painted) to the first Duke of Marlborough. We should (without, however, pretending to set up an opinion) incline, from the internal evidence, to think them from the pencil of the great Venetian, but for two circumstances: the first is the texture of the skin; and secondly, they do not compose well as pictures. They have no back-ground to set them off, but a most ridiculous trellis-work, representing nothing, hung round them; and the flesh looks monotonous and hard, like the rind of fruit. On the other hand, this last objection seems to be answered satisfactorily enough, and without impugning the skill of the artist; for the pictures are actually painted on skins of leather. In all other respects, they might assuredly be by Titian, and we know of no other painter who was capable of achieving their various excellences. The drawing of the female figures is correct and elegant in a high degree, and might be supposed to be borrowed from classic sculpture, but that it is more soft, more feminine, more lovely. The colouring, with the exception already stated, is true, spirited, golden, harmonious. The grouping and attitudes are heroic, the expression in some of the faces divine. We do not mean, of course, that it possesses the elevation or purity that Raphael or Correggio could give, but it is warmer, more thrilling and ecstatic. There is the glow and ripeness of a more genial clime, the purple light of love, crimsoned blushes, looks bathed in rapture, kisses with immortal sweetness in their taste—Nay, then, let the reader go and see the pictures, and no longer lay the blame of this extravagance on us. We may at any rate repeat the subjects. They are eight in number. 1. Mars and Venus. The Venus is well worthy to be called the Queen of Love, for shape, for air, for every thing. Her redoubted lover is a middle-aged, ill-looking gentleman, clad in a buff-jerkin, and somewhat of a formalist in his approaches and mode of address; but there is a Cupid playing on the floor, who might well turn the world upside down. 2. Cupid and Psyche. The Cupid is perhaps rather a gawky, awkward stripling, with eager, open-mouthed wonder: but did ever creature of mortal mould see any thing comparable to the back and limbs of the Psyche, or conceive or read any thing equal to it, but that unique description in the Troilus and Cressida of Chaucer? 3. Apollo and Daphne. Not equal to the rest. 4. Hercules and Dejanira. The female figure in this picture is full of grace and animation, and the arms that are twined round the great son of Jove are elastic as a bended bow. 5. Vulcan and Ceres. 6. Pluto and Proserpine. 7. Jupiter and Io. Very fine. And finest of all, and last, Neptune and Amphitrite. In this last work it seems ‘as if increase of appetite did grow with what it fed on.’ What a face is that of Amphitrite for beauty and for sweetness of expression! One thing is remarkable in these groups (with the exception of two) which is that the lovers are all of them old men; but then they retain their beards (according to the custom of the good old times!) and this makes not only a picturesque contrast, but gives a beautiful softness and youthful delicacy to the female faces opposed to them. Upon the whole, this series of historic compositions well deserves the attention of the artist and the connoisseur, and perhaps some light might be thrown upon the subject of their authenticity by turning over some old portfolios. We have heard a hint thrown out that the designs are of a date prior to Titian. But ‘we are ignorance itself in this!’

APPENDIX

CRITICISM ON HOGARTH’S MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE

The Criticism on Hogarth’s ‘Marriage a-la-Mode,’ referred to in the account of Mr. Angerstein’s pictures (page [15]), is as follows:—

The superiority of the pictures of Hogarth, which we have seen in the late collection at the British Institution, to the common prints, is confined chiefly to the Marriage a-la-Mode. We shall attempt to illustrate a few of their most striking excellences, more particularly with reference to the expression of character. Their merits are indeed so prominent, and have been so often discussed, that it may be thought difficult to point out any new beauties; but they contain so much truth of nature, they present the objects to the eye under so many aspects and bearings, admit of so many constructions, and are so pregnant with meaning, that the subject is in a manner inexhaustible.

Boccaccio, the most refined and sentimental of all the novel-writers, has been stigmatized as a mere inventor of licentious tales, because readers in general have only seized on those things in his works which were suited to their own taste, and have reflected their own grossness back upon the writer. So it has happened that the majority of critics having been most struck with the strong and decided expression in Hogarth, the extreme delicacy and subtle gradations of character in his pictures have almost entirely escaped them. In the first picture of the Marriage a-la-Mode, the three figures of the young Nobleman, his intended Bride, and her innamorato the Lawyer, shew how much Hogarth excelled in the power of giving soft and effeminate expression. They have, however, been less noticed than the other figures, which tell a plainer story, and convey a more palpable moral. Nothing can be more finely managed than the differences of character in these delicate personages. The Beau sits smiling at the looking-glass, with a reflected simper of self-admiration, and a languishing inclination of the head, while the rest of his body is perked up on his high heels, with a certain air of tiptoe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of George II., whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold lace, and patches, divide his self-love equally with his own person, the true Sir Plume of his day,—

——‘Of amber snuff-box justly vain,

And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.’

There is the same felicity in the figure and attitude of the Bride, courted by the Lawyer. There is the utmost flexibility, and yielding softness in her whole person, a listless languor and tremulous suspense in the expression of her face. It is the precise look and air which Pope has given to his favourite Belinda, just at the moment of the Rape of the Lock. The heightened glow, the forward intelligence, and loosened soul of love in the same face, in the Assignation-scene before the masquerade, form a fine and instructive contrast to the delicacy, timidity, and coy reluctance expressed in the first. The Lawyer, in both pictures, is much the same—perhaps too much so—though even this unmoved, unaltered appearance may be designed as characteristic. In both cases, he has ‘a person and a smooth dispose, framed to make women false.’ He is full of that easy good-humour, and easy good opinion of himself, with which the sex are delighted. There is not a sharp angle in his face to obstruct his success, or give a hint of doubt or difficulty. His whole aspect is round and rosy, lively and unmeaning, happy without the least expense of thought, careless, and inviting; and conveys a perfect idea of the uninterrupted glide and pleasing murmur of the soft periods that flow from his tongue.

The expression of the Bride in the Morning-scene is the most highly seasoned, and at the same time the most vulgar in the series. The figure, face, and attitude of the Husband are inimitable. Hogarth has with great skill contrasted the pale countenance of the Husband with the yellow whitish colour of the marble chimney-piece behind him, in such a manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendour of the view of the inner room in this picture, is probably not exceeded by any of the productions of the Flemish school.

The Young Girl, in the third picture, who is represented as a victim of fashionable profligacy, is unquestionably one of the artist’s chef-d’œuvres. The exquisite delicacy of the painting is only surpassed by the felicity and subtlety of the conception. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character. The vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain,—shew the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that ‘vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.’ The story of this picture is in some parts very obscure and enigmatical. It is certain that the Nobleman is not looking straight forward to the Quack, whom he seems to have been threatening with his cane; but that his eyes are turned up with an ironical leer of triumph to the Procuress. The commanding attitude and size of this woman,—the swelling circumference of her dress, spread out like a turkey-cock’s feathers,—the fierce, ungovernable, inveterate malignity of her countenance, which hardly needs the comment of the clasp-knife to explain her purpose, are all admirable in themselves, and still more so, as they are opposed to the mute insensibility, the elegant negligence of dress, and the childish figure of the girl, who is supposed to be her protegée. As for the Quack, there can be no doubt entertained about him. His face seems as if it were composed of salve, and his features exhibit all the chaos and confusion of the most gross, ignorant, and impudent empiricism.

The gradations of ridiculous affectation in the Music-scene, are finely imagined and preserved. The preposterous, overstrained admiration of the Lady of Quality; the sentimental, insipid, patient, delight of the Man with his hair in papers, and sipping his tea; the pert, smirking, conceited, half-distorted approbation of the figure next to him; the transition to the total insensibility of the round face in profile, and then to the wonder of the Negro-boy at the rapture of his mistress,—form a perfect whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-coloured hair of the female Virtuoso throw an additional light on the character. This is lost in the print. The continuing the red colour of the hair into the back of the chair, has been pointed out as one of those instances of alliteration in colouring, of which these pictures are everywhere full. The gross, bloated appearance of the Italian Singer is well relieved by the hard features of the instrumental Performer behind him, which might be carved of wood. The Negro-boy, holding the chocolate, in expression, colour, and execution, is a master-piece. The gay, lively derision of the other Negro-boy, playing with the Actæon, is an ingenious contrast to the profound amazement of the first. Some account has already been given of the two lovers in this picture. It is curious to observe the infinite activity of mind which the artist displays on every occasion. An instance occurs in the present picture. He has so contrived the papers in the hair of the Bride, as to make them look almost like a wreathe of half-blown flowers; while those which he has placed on the head of the musical Amateur very much resemble a cheveux-de-fris of horns, which adorn and fortify the lacklustre expression and mild resignation of the face beneath.

The Night-scene is inferior to the rest of the series. The attitude of the Husband, who is just killed, is one in which it would be impossible for him to stand, or even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard figures they make for children. The characters in the last picture, in which the Wife dies, are all masterly. We would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the Apothecary, whose face and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine example of passive obedience and non-resistance in the Servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery is as long and melancholy as his face. The disconsolate look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken, gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer—every thing about him denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations of colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest nicety, and are well worthy the attention of the artist.

It has been observed, that Hogarth’s pictures are exceedingly unlike any other representations of the same kind of subjects—that they form a class, and have a character, peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in what this general distinction consists.

In the first place they are, in the strictest sense, historical pictures; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of Tom Jones ought to be regarded as an epic prose-poem, because it contained a regular developement of fable, manners, character, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth will, in like manner be found to have a higher claim to the title of Epic Pictures, than many which have of late arrogated that denomination to themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his subjects historically, we mean that his works represent the manners and humours of mankind in action, and their characters by varying expression. Every thing in his pictures has life and motion in it. Not only does the business of the scene never stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full play; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out, and carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the canvas forever. The expression is always taken en passant, in a state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point. Besides the excellence of each individual face, the reflection of the expression from face to face, the contrast and struggle of particular motives and feelings in the different actors in the scene, as of anger, contempt, laughter, compassion, are conveyed in the happiest and most lively manner. His figures are not like the background on which they are painted: even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their own.—Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, Hogarth’s heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is in fact what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature and from mere still-life. It of course happens in subjects from common life, that the painter can procure real models, and he can get them to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in general, those attitudes and expressions have been chosen which could be assumed the longest; and in imitating which, the artist, by taking pains and time, might produce almost as complete a fac-simile as he could of a flower or a flower-pot, of a damask curtain, or a china vase. The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case as in the other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery and ridicule affording frequent examples of strange deformity and peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by another class of artists, who, without subjecting themselves to the laborious drudgery of the Dutch school and their imitators, have produced our popular caricatures, by rudely copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities of the human countenance. Hogarth has equally avoided the faults of both these styles—the insipid tameness of the one, and the gross vulgarity of the other—so as to give to the productions of his pencil equal solidity and effect: for his faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it; they take the very widest latitude, and yet we always see the links which bind them to nature: they bear all the marks, and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen the actual faces for the first time, from the precision, consistency, and good sense, with which the whole and every part is made out. They exhibit the most uncommon features with the most uncommon expressions, but which are yet as familiar and intelligible as possible; because, with all the boldness, they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left behind him as many of these memorable faces, in their memorable moments, as, perhaps, most of us remember in the course of our lives; and has thus doubled the quantity of our observation.

We have, in the present paper, attempted to point out the fund of observation, physical and moral, contained in one set of these pictures, the Marriage a-la-Mode. The rest would furnish as many topics to descant upon, were the patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the painter’s invention. But as this is not the case, we shall content ourselves with barely referring to some of those figures in the other pictures, which appear the most striking; and which we see, not only while we are looking at them, but which we have before us at all other times.—For instance: who, having seen, can easily forget that exquisite frost-piece of religion and morality, the antiquated prude, in the picture of Morning? or that striking commentary on the good old times, the little wretched appendage of a foot-boy, who crawls, half famished and half frozen, behind her? The French man and woman, in the Noon, are the perfection of flighty affectation and studied grimace; the amiable fraternization of the two old women saluting each other, is not enough to be admired; and in the little master, in the same national group, we see the early promise and personification of that eternal principle of wondrous self-complacency, proof against all circumstances, which makes the French the only people who are vain, even of being cuckolded and being conquered! Or shall we prefer to this, the outrageous distress and unmitigated terrors of the boy who has dropped his dish of meat, and who seems red all over with shame and vexation, and bursting with the noise he makes? Or what can be better than the good housewifery of the girl underneath, who is devouring the lucky fragments? Or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the servant-wench, embraced by a greasy rascal of an Othello, with her pye-dish tottering like her virtue, and with the most precious part of its contents running over? Just—no, not quite—as good, is the joke of the woman over head, who, having quarrelled with her husband, is throwing their Sunday’s dinner out of the window, to complete this chapter of accidents of baked dishes. The husband, in the Evening scene, is certainly as meek as any recorded in history; but we cannot say that we admire this picture, or the Night scene after it. But then in the Taste in High Life, there is that inimitable pair, differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting one another by ‘all the mutually reflected charities’ of folly and affectation; with the young lady, coloured like a rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced, white-teethed, chuckling favourite; and with the portrait of Mons. Des Noyers, in the background, dancing in a grand ballet, surrounded by butterflies. And again, in The Election Dinner, is the immortal cobbler, surrounded by his peers, who ‘frequent and full,’—

‘In loud recess and brawling conclave sit:’—

the Jew, in the second picture, a very Jew in grain—innumerable fine sketches of heads in the Polling for Votes, of which the nobleman, overlooking the caricaturist, is the best;—and then the irresistible, tumultuous display of broad humour in the Chairing the Member, which is, perhaps, of all Hogarth’s pictures, the most full of laughable incidents and situations. The yellow, rusty-faced thresher, with his swinging flail, breaking the head of one of the chairmen; and his redoubted antagonist, the sailor, with his oak stick, and stumping wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel—the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling blind fiddler, who, in the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the artificial excrescence of the honest tar—Monsieur, the Monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster of the triumphant candidate; and his brother Bruin, appropriating the paunch—the precipitous flight of the pigs, souse over head into the water—the fine lady fainting, with vermilion lips—and the two chimney sweepers, satirical young rogues! We had almost forgot the politician, who is burning a hole through his hat with a candle, in reading a newspaper; and the chickens, in The March to Finchley, wandering in search of their lost dam, who is found in the pocket of the serjeant. Of the pictures in The Rake’s Progress we shall not here say any thing, because we think them, on the whole, inferior to the prints; and because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius.[^[11]]

NOTES OF A JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, By W. Hazlitt, was published in 1826, in an 8vo. volume (9 × 5¼ inches). Printed for Hunt and Clarke, Tavistock-Street, Covent-Garden. The printer’s name is given behind the title-page as ‘William Clowes, Northumberland-court,’ and the following lines from Cymbeline (Act III. 4.) appear underneath the author’s name on the title-page:—

‘I’ the world’s volume

Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;

In a great pool, a swan’s nest. Prithee think

There’s livers out of Britain.’

As stated in the Advertisement, the Notes were reprinted from the Morning Chronicle, to which they had been contributed in 1824 and 1825. They are now reprinted for the first time since the publication of the volume of 1826, and as they appeared in that volume. A few passages which appeared in the papers as they came out in the Morning Chronicle, and were omitted when Hazlitt collected the letters in book-form, will be found among the notes at the end of the volume.

ADVERTISEMENT

The following Notes of a Journey through France and Italy are reprinted from the columns of the Morning Chronicle. The favourable reception they met with there suggested the idea of the present work. My object has been to describe what I saw or remarked myself; or to give the reader some notion of what he might expect to find in travelling the same road. There is little of history or antiquities or statistics; nor do I regret the want of them, as it may be abundantly supplied from other sources. The only thing I could have wished to expatiate upon more at large is the manners of the country: but to do justice to this, a greater length of time and a more intimate acquaintance with society and the language would be necessary. Perhaps, at some future opportunity, this defect may be remedied.

CONTENTS

NOTES OF A JOURNEY

THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY

CHAPTER I

The rule for travelling abroad is to take our common sense with us, and leave our prejudices behind us. The object of travelling is to see and learn; but such is our impatience of ignorance, or the jealousy of our self-love, that we generally set up a certain preconception beforehand (in self-defence, or as a barrier against the lessons of experience,) and are surprised at or quarrel with all that does not conform to it. Let us think what we please of what we really find, but prejudge nothing. The English, in particular, carry out their own defects as a standard for general imitation; and think the virtues of others (that are not their vices) good for nothing. Thus they find fault with the gaiety of the French as impertinence, with their politeness as grimace. This repulsive system of carping and contradiction can extract neither use nor meaning from any thing, and only tends to make those who give way to it uncomfortable and ridiculous. On the contrary, we should be as seldom shocked or annoyed as possible, (it is our vanity or ignorance that is mortified much oftener than our reason!) and contrive to see the favourable side of things. This will turn both to profit and pleasure. The intellectual, like the physical, is best kept up by an exchange of commodities, instead of an ill-natured and idle search after grievances. The first thing an Englishman does on going abroad is to find fault with what is French, because it is not English. If he is determined to confine all excellence to his own country, he had better stay at home.

On arriving at Brighton (in the full season,) a lad offered to conduct us to an inn. ‘Did he think there was room?’ He was sure of it. ‘Did he belong to the inn?’ No, he was from London. In fact, he was a young gentleman from town, who had been stopping some time at the White-Horse Hotel, and who wished to employ his spare time (when he was not riding out on a blood-horse) in serving the house, and relieving the perplexities of his fellow-travellers. No one but a Londoner would volunteer his assistance in this way. Amiable land of Cockayne, happy in itself, and in making others happy! Blest exuberance of self-satisfaction, that overflows upon others! Delightful impertinence, that is forward to oblige them!

There is something in being near the sea, like the confines of eternity. It is a new element, a pure abstraction. The mind loves to hover on that which is endless, and forever the same. People wonder at a steam-boat, the invention of man, managed by man, that makes its liquid path like an iron railway through the sea—I wonder at the sea itself, that vast Leviathan, rolled round the earth, smiling in its sleep, waked into fury, fathomless, boundless, a huge world of water-drops—Whence is it, whither goes it, is it of eternity or of nothing? Strange, ponderous riddle, that we can neither penetrate nor grasp in our comprehension, ebbing and flowing like human life, and swallowing it up in thy remorseless womb,—what art thou? What is there in common between thy life and ours, who gaze at thee? Blind, deaf and old, thou seest not, hearest not, understandest not; neither do we understand, who behold and listen to thee! Great as thou art, unconscious of thy greatness, unwieldy, enormous, preposterous twin-birth of matter, rest in thy dark, unfathomed cave of mystery, mocking human pride and weakness. Still is it given to the mind of man to wonder at thee, to confess its ignorance, and to stand in awe of thy stupendous might and majesty, and of its own being, that can question thine! But a truce with reflections.

The Pavilion at Brighton is like a collection of stone pumpkins and pepper-boxes. It seems as if the genius of architecture had at once the dropsy and the megrims. Any thing more fantastical, with a greater dearth of invention, was never seen. The King’s stud (if they were horses of taste) would petition against so irrational a lodging.

Brighton stands facing the sea, on the bare cliffs, with glazed windows to reflect the glaring sun, and black pitchy bricks shining like the scales of fishes. The town is however gay with the influx of London visitors—happy as the conscious abode of its sovereign! Every thing here appears in motion—coming or going. People at a watering-place may be compared to the flies of a summer; or to fashionable dresses, or suits of clothes walking about the streets. The only idea you gain is, of finery and motion. The road between London and Brighton presents some very charming scenery; Reigate is a prettier English country-town than is to be found anywhere—out of England! As we entered Brighton in the evening, a Frenchman was playing and singing to a guitar. It was a relief to the conversation in the coach, which had been chiefly supported in a nasal tone by a disciple of Mrs. Fry and amanuensis of philanthropy in general. As we heard the lively musician warble, we forgot the land of Sunday-schools and spinning-jennies. The genius of the South had come out to meet us.

We left Brighton in the steam-packet, and soon saw the shores of Albion recede from us. Out of sight, out of mind. How poor a geographer is the human mind! How small a space does the imagination take in at once! In travelling, our ideas change like the scenes of a pantomime, displacing each other as completely and rapidly. Long before we touched on French ground, the English coast was lost in distance, and nothing remained of it but a dim mist; it hardly seemed ‘in a great pool a swan’s nest.’ So shall its glory vanish like a vapour, its liberty like a dream!

We had a fine passage in the steam-boat (Sept. 1, 1824). Not a cloud, scarce a breath of air; a moon, and then star-light, till the dawn, with rosy fingers, ushered us into Dieppe. Our fellow-passengers were pleasant and unobtrusive, an English party of the better sort: a Member of Parliament, delighted to escape from ‘late hours and bad company;’ an English General, proud of his bad French; a Captain in the Navy, glad to enter a French harbour peaceably; a Country Squire, extending his inquiries beyond his paternal acres; the younger sons of wealthy citizens, refined through the strainers of a University-education and finishing off with foreign travel; a young Lawyer, quoting Peregrine Pickle, and divided between his last circuit and projected tour. There was also a young Dutchman, looking mild through his mustachios, and a new-married couple (a French Jew and Jewess) who grew uxorious from the effects of sea-sickness, and took refuge from the qualms of the disorder in paroxysms of tenderness. We had some difficulty in getting into the harbour, and had to wait till morning for the tide. I grew very tired, and laid the blame on the time lost in getting some restive horses on board, but found that if we had set out two hours sooner, we should only have had to wait two hours longer. The doctrine of Optimism is a very good and often a very true one in travelling. In advancing up the steps to give the officers our passport, I was prevented by a young man and woman, who said they were before me, and on making a second attempt, an elderly gentleman and lady set up the same claim, because they stood behind me. It seemed that a servant was waiting with passports for four. Persons in a certain class of life are so full of their own business and importance, that they imagine every one else must be aware of it—I hope this is the last specimen I shall for some time meet with of city-manners. After a formal custom-house search, we procured admittance at Pratt’s Hotel, where they said they had reserved a bed for a Lady. France is a country where they give honneur aux Dames. The window looked out on the bridge and on the river, which reflected the shipping and the houses; and we should have thought ourselves luckily off, but that the bed, which occupied a niche in the sitting-room, had that kind of odour which could not be mistaken for otto of roses.

Dieppe.—This town presents a very agreeable and romantic appearance to strangers. It is cut up into a number of distinct divisions by canals, drawbridges, and bastions, as if to intercept the progress of an enemy. The best houses, too, are shut up in close courts and high walls on the same principle, that is, to stand a further siege in the good old times. There are rows of lime-trees on the quay, and some of the narrow streets running from it look like wells. This town is a picture to look at; it is a pity that it is not a nosegay, and that the passenger who ventures to explore its nooks and alleys is driven back again by ‘a compound of villainous smells,’ which seem to grow out of the ground. In walking the streets, one must take one’s nose with one, and that sense is apt to be offended in France as well as in Scotland. Is it hence called in French the organ of sense? The houses and the dresses are equally old-fashioned. In France one lives in the imagination of the past; in England every thing is new and on an improved plan. Such is the progress of mechanical invention! In Dieppe there is one huge, misshapen, but venerable-looking Gothic Church (a theological fixture,) instead of twenty new-fangled erections, Egyptian, Greek or Coptic. The head-dresses of the women are much the same as those which the Spectator laughed out of countenance a hundred years ago in England, with high plaited crowns, and lappets hanging down over the shoulders. The shape and colours of the bodice and petticoat are what we see in Dutch pictures; the faces of the common people we are familiarized with in Mieris and Jan Steen. They are full and fair like the Germans, and have not the minced and peaked character we attribute to the French. They are not handsome, but good-natured, expressive, placid. They retain the look of peasants more than the town’s-people with us, whether from living more in the open air, or from greater health and temperance, I cannot say. What I like in their expression (so far) is not the vivacity, but the goodness, the simplicity, the thoughtful resignation. The French are full of gesticulation when they speak; they have at other times an equal appearance of repose and content. You see the figure of a girl sitting in the sun, so still that her dress seems like streaks of red and black chalk against the wall; a soldier reading; a group of old women (with skins as tough, yellow, and wrinkled as those of a tortoise) chatting in a corner and laughing till their sides are ready to split; or a string of children tugging a fishing-boat out of the harbour as evening goes down, and making the air ring with their songs and shouts of merriment (a sight to make Mr. Malthus shudder!). Life here glows, or spins carelessly round on its soft axle. The same animal spirits that supply a fund of cheerful thoughts, break out into all the extravagance of mirth and social glee. The air is a cordial to them, and they drink drams of sunshine. My particular liking to the French is, however, confined to their natural and unsophisticated character. The good spirits ‘with which they are clothed and fed,’ and which eke out the deficiencies of fortune or good government, are perhaps too much for them, when joined with external advantages, or artificial pretensions. Their vivacity becomes insolence in office; their success, presumption; their gentility, affectation and grimace. But the national physiognomy (taken at large) is the reflection of good temper and humanity. One thing is evident, and decisive in their favour—they do not insult or point at strangers, but smile on them good-humouredly, and answer them civilly.

‘Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease,

Pleas’d with thyself, whom all the world can please!’

Nothing shews the contented soul within, so much as our not seeking for amusement in the mortifications of others: we only envy their advantages, or sneer at their defects, when we are conscious of wanting something ourselves. The customs and employments of the people here have a more primitive and picturesque appearance than in England. Is it that with us every thing is made domestic and commodious, instead of being practised in the open air, and subject to the casualties of the elements? For instance, you see the women washing clothes in the river, with their red petticoats and bare feet, instead of standing over a washing-tub. Human life with us is framed and set in comforts: but it wants the vivid colouring, the glowing expression that we meet elsewhere. After all, is not the romantic effect produced partly owing to the novelty of the scene; or do we not attribute to a superiority in others what is merely a greater liveliness of impression in ourselves, arising from curiosity and contrast? If this were all, foreigners ought to be as much delighted with us, but they are not. A man and woman came and sung ‘God save the King,’ before the windows of the Hotel, as if the French had so much loyalty at present that they can spare us some of it. What an opinion must they have formed of the absurd nationality of the English, to suppose that we can expect them to feel this sort of mock-sentiment towards our King! What English ballad-singer would dream of flattering the French visitors by a song in praise of Louis le Desiré before a Brighton or a Dover Hotel?

As the door opened just now, I saw the lad or garçon, who waits on us, going up stairs with a looking-glass, and admiring himself in it. If he is pleased with himself, he is no less satisfied with us, and with every thing else.

CHAPTER II

The road from Dieppe to Rouen is highly interesting. You at first ascend a straight steep hill, which commands a view of the town and harbour behind you, with villas on each side, something between modern cottages and antique castles; and afterwards, from the top of the hill, the prospect spreads out over endless plains, richly cultivated. It has been conjectured that the English borrowed their implements and modes of husbandry from their Norman Conquerors; the resemblance is, indeed, complete to a deception. You might suppose one side of the channel was transported to the other, from the general aspect of the country, from the neatness of the orchard-plots, the gardens, and farm-yards. Every thing has a look of the greatest industry and plenty. There is a scanty proportion of common pasturage; but rich fields of clover, oats, barley, and vetches, with luxuriant crops ready to cut, are presented to the eye in uninterrupted succession; there are no wastes, no barren, thankless enclosures; every foot of ground seems to be cultivated with the utmost success. It is in vain after this to talk of English agriculture, as if no such thing existed anywhere else. Agriculture can do no more than make provision that every part of the soil is carefully tilled, and raise the finest crops from it. The only distinctive feature is, that there are here no hedges along the road-side, their place being supplied by rows of apple-trees or groves of elm and poplar, which stretch out before you in lengthened vistas, as far as the eye can reach. We like this, whatever Mr. Mac-Adam may object; and moreover, the roads here are as good as his. To be sure, they are much broader, and admit of this collateral improvement. Shady plantations open their arms to meet you, closing in a point, or terminated by a turn in the road; and then you enter upon another long hospitable avenue,

‘Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail;’

the smiling landscape waves on either side to a considerable extent; you pass a shepherd tending his flock, or a number of peasants returning from market in a light long waggon, like a hen-coop; the bells of the horses jingle, the postilion cracks his whip, or speaks to them with a friendly voice, and the Diligence rolls on, at the rate of six miles an hour towards Paris!—Travelling is much cheaper in France than in England. The distance from Dieppe to Rouen is thirty-six miles, and we only paid eight francs, that is, six shillings and eight pence a-piece, with two francs more to the guide and postilion, which is not fourpence a mile, including all expenses. On the other hand, you have not the advantage of taking an outside place at half-price, as a very trifling difference is made in this respect.

The Diligence itself cuts a very awkward figure, compared with our stage-coaches. There is much the same difference as between a barge and a pleasure-boat; but then it is roomy and airy, and remarkably easy in its motion. In the common mechanic arts the French attend to the essential only; we are so fond of elegance and compactness, that we sacrifice ease to show and finish. The harness of the horses is made of ropes or rusty leather, and it is wonderful how they get along so well as they do, three, or sometimes four a-breast. The apples of the orchards hang over the road-side, which speaks well for the honesty of the inhabitants, or the plenty of the country. The women appear to work a good deal out of doors. Some of the older ones have strangely distorted visages, and those horrid Albert-Durer chins and noses, that have been coming together for half a century. The younger ones are handsome, healthy-looking, animated; a better sort of English country girls. The character of French coquetry prevails even here, and you see a young peasant-girl, broiling in the sun, with a blue paper cap on her head, that glitters like the smoothest satin, and that answers the purpose of finery just as well. I observed that one man frequently holds the plough and guides the horses without any one else to assist him, as they do in Scotland, and which in England they hold to be an agricultural heresy. In Surrey, where an English gentleman had hired a Scotch servant to try this method, the boors actually collected round the man in the church-yard on Sunday, and pointed at him, crying, ‘That’s he who ploughs and drives the horses himself!’ Our prejudices are no less on the alert, and quite as obstinate against what is right as what is wrong. I cannot say I was quite pleased with my barber at Dieppe, who inserted a drop of citron juice in the lather I was to shave with, and converted it into a most agreeable perfume. It was an association of ideas, a false refinement, to which I had not been accustomed, and to which I was averse. The best excuse I could find for my reluctance to be pleased, was that at the next place where the same thing was attempted, the operator, by some villainous mixture, almost stunk me to death!

The entrance into Rouen, through extensive archways of tall trees, planted along the margin of the Seine, is certainly delectable. Here the genius of civilized France first began to display itself. Companies of men and women were sitting in the open air, enjoying the cool of the evening, and the serene moonlight, under Chinese lamps, with fruit and confectionery. We arrived rather late, but were well received and accommodated at the Hotel Vatel. My bad French by no means, however, conciliates the regard or increases the civility of the people on the road. They pay particular attention, and are particularly delighted with the English, who speak French well, or with tolerable fluency and correctness, for they think it a compliment to themselves and to the language; whereas, besides their dislike to all difficulty and uncertainty of communication, they resent an obvious neglect on this point as an affront, and an unwarrantable assumption of superiority, as if it were enough for an Englishman to shew himself among them to be well received, without so much as deigning to make himself intelligible. A person, who passes through a country in sullen silence, must appear very much in the character of a spy. Many things (a native is conscious) will seem strange to a foreigner, who can neither ask the meaning, nor understand the explanation of them; and on the other hand, if in these circumstances you are loquacious and inquisitive, you become proportionably troublesome. It would have been better (such is the natural feeling, the dictate at once of self-love and common sense) to have learned the language before you visited the country. An accent, an occasional blunder, a certain degree of hesitation are amusing, and indirectly flatter the pride of foreigners; but a total ignorance or wilful reluctance in speaking shews both a contempt for the people, and an inattention to good manners. To neglect to make one’s self master of a language tacitly implies, that in travelling through a country we have neither wants nor wishes to gratify; that we are quite independent, and have no ambition to give pleasure, or to receive instruction.

At Rouen the walls of our apartment were bare, being mere lath and plaster, a huge cobweb hung in the window, the curtains were shabby and dirty, and the floor without carpeting or matting; but our table was well-furnished, and in the English taste. French cooking comprehends English, and easily condescends to it; so that an Englishman finds himself better off in France than a Frenchman does in England. They complain that our cookery is dry, and our solid, unsavoury morsels, beef-steaks, and mutton chops, must stick in their throats as well as be repulsive to their imaginations; nor can we supply the additional sauces or disguises which are necessary to set them off. On the other hand, we had a dinner at the Hotel Vatel, a roast fowl, greens, and bacon, as plain, as sweet, and wholesome, as we could get at an English farm-house. We had also pigeons, partridges, and other game, in excellent preservation, and kept quite clear of French receipts and odious ragouts. Game or poultry is the half-way house, a sort of middle point, between French and English cookery. The bread here is excellent, the butter admirable, the milk and coffee superior to what we meet with at home. The wine and fruit, too, are delightful, but real French dishes are an abomination to an English palate. Unless a man means to stay all his life abroad, let him beware of making the experiment, or get near enough to the door to make his exit suddenly. The common charges at the inns are much the same as in England; we paid twenty-pence for breakfast, and half a crown, or three shillings, for dinner. The best Burgundy is only three shillings and fourpence a bottle. A green parrot hung in a cage, in a small court under our window, and received the compliments and caresses of every one who passed. It is wonderful how fond the French are of holding conversation with animals of all descriptions, parrots, dogs, monkeys. Is it that they choose to have all the talk to themselves, to make propositions, and fancy the answers; that they like this discourse by signs, by jabbering, and gesticulation, or that the manifestation of the principle of life without thought delights them above all things? The sociableness of the French seems to expand itself beyond the level of humanity, and to be unconscious of any descent. Two boys in the kitchen appeared to have nothing to do but to beat up the white of eggs into froth for salads. The labour of the French costs them nothing, so that they readily throw it away in doing nothing or the merest trifles. A nice-looking girl who officiated as chamber-maid, brought in a ripe melon after dinner, and offering it with much grace and good humour as ‘un petit cadeau’ (a trifling present) was rather hurt we did not accept of it. Indeed it was wrong. A Mr. James Williams acted as our English interpreter while we staid, and procured us places in the Paris Diligence, though it was said to be quite full. We here also heard that the packet we came over in, blew up two days after, and that the passengers escaped in fishing-boats. This has completed my distaste to steam-boats.

The city of Rouen is one of the oldest and finest in France. It contains about a hundred thousand inhabitants, two noble churches; a handsome quay is embosomed in a range of lofty hills, and watered by the Seine, which, proud of its willowy banks and tufted islands, winds along by it. The ascent up the rising grounds behind it, is magnificent beyond description. The town is spread out at your feet (an immense, stately mass of dark grey stone), the double towers of the old Gothic Cathedral, and of the beautiful Church of St. Antoine, rise above it in their majestic proportions, overlooking the rich sunny valleys which stretch away in the distance; you gradually climb an amphitheatre of hills, sprinkled with gardens and villas to the very top, and the walk on Sunday afternoon is crowded with people enjoying the scene, adding to its animation by their intelligent, varying looks, and adorning it by their picturesque and richly-coloured dresses. There is no town in England at the same time so fine, and so finely situated. Oxford is as fine in its buildings and associations, but it has not the same advantages of situation: Bristol is as fine a mass of buildings, but without the same striking accompaniments—

‘The pomp of groves and garniture of fields.’

Edinburgh alone is as splendid in its situation and buildings, and would have even a more imposing and delightful effect if Arthur’s Seat were crowned with thick woods, if the Pentland-hills could be converted into green pastures, if the Scotch people were French, and Leith-walk planted with vineyards! The only blot in this fair scene was the meeting with a number of cripples, whose hideous cries attracted and alarmed attention before their formidable mutilations became visible, and who extorted charity rather from terror than pity. Such objects abound in France and on the Continent. Is it from the want of hospitals, or from the bad care taken of the young and necessitous, to whom some dreadful accident has happened?—The hill that commands this beautiful prospect, and seems the resort of health, of life, of pleasure, is called (as I found on inquiry) Mont des Malades! Would any people but the French think of giving it so inauspicious a title? To the English such a name would spoil the view, and infect the imagination with the recollections of pain and sickness. But a Frenchman’s imagination is proof against such weaknesses; he has no sympathy except with the pleasurable; and provided a hill presents an agreeable prospect, never troubles his head whether the inhabitants are sick or well. The streets of Rouen, like those of other towns in France, are dirty for the same reason. A Frenchman’s senses and understanding are alike inaccessible to pain—he recognises (happily for himself) the existence only of that which adds to his importance or his satisfaction. He is delighted with perfumes, but passes over the most offensive smells,[^[12]] and will not lift up his little finger to remove a general nuisance, for it is none to him. He leaves the walls of his houses unfinished, dilapidated, almost uninhabitable, because his thoughts are bent on adorning his own person—on jewels, trinkets, pomade divine! He is elaborate in his cookery and his dress, because the one flatters his vanity, the other his appetite; and he is licentious in his pleasures, nay gross in his manners, because in the first he consults only his immediate gratification, and in the last annoys others continually, from having no conception that any thing he (a Frenchman) can do can possibly annoy them. He is sure to offend, because he takes it for granted he must please. A great deal of ordinary French conversation might be spared before foreigners, if they knew the pain it gives. Virtue is not only put out of countenance by it, but vice becomes an indifferent common-place in their mouths. The last stage of human depravity is, when vice ceases to shock—or to please. A Frenchman’s candour and indifference to what must be thought of him (combined with his inordinate desire to shine) are curious. The hero of his own little tale carries a load of crimes and misfortunes at his back like a lead of band-boxes, and (light-hearted wretch) sings and dances as he goes! The inconsequentiality in the French character, from extreme facility and buoyancy of impression, is a matter of astonishment to the English. A young man at Rouen was walking briskly along the street to church, all the way tossing his prayer-book into the air, when suddenly on reaching the entrance a priest appeared coming from church, and he fell on his knees on the steps. No wonder the Popish clergy stand up for their religion, when it makes others fall on their knees before them, and worship their appearance as the shadow of the Almighty! The clergy in France present an agreeable and almost necessary foil to the foibles of the national character, with their sombre dress, their gravity, their simplicity, their sanctity. It is not strange they exert such an influence there: their professional pretensions to learning and piety must have a double weight, from having nothing to oppose to them but frivolity and the impulse of the moment. The entering the Cathedral here after the bustle and confusion of the streets, is like entering a vault—a tomb of worldly thoughts and pleasures, pointing to the skies. The slow and solemn movements of the Priests, as grave as they are unmeaning, resemble the spells of necromancers; the pictures and statues of the dead contrast strangely with the faces of the living; the chaunt of the Priests sounds differently from the jargon of the common people; the little oratories and cells, with some lone mourner kneeling before a crucifix, every thing leads the thoughts to another world, to death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come. The walls and ornaments of this noble pile are left in a state of the most lamentable neglect, and the infinite number of paltry, rush-bottomed chairs, huddled together in the aisle, are just like the rubbish of a broker’s shop. The great bell of the Cathedral is the most deep-mouthed I ever heard, ‘swinging slow with sullen roar,’ rich and sonorous, and hoarse with counting the flight of a thousand years. It is worth while to visit France, were it only to see Rouen.

CHAPTER III

The Road to Paris.—They vaunt much of the Lower Road from Rouen to Paris; but it is not so fine as that from Dieppe to Rouen. You have comparatively few trees, the soil is less fertile, and you are (nearly the whole way) tantalized with the vast, marshy-looking plains of Normandy, with the Seine glittering through them like a snake, and a chain of abrupt chalky hills, like a wall or barrier bounding them. There is nothing I hate like a distant prospect without any thing interesting in it—it is continually dragging the eye a wearisome journey, and repaying it with barrenness and deformity. Yet a Frenchman contrived to make a panegyric on this scene, after the fashion of his countrymen, and with that sort of tripping jerk which is peculiar to their minds and bodies—‘Il y a de l’eau, il y a des bois, il y a des montagnes, il y a de la verdure,’ &c. It is true, there were all these things in the abstract, or as so many detached particulars to make a speech about, which was all that he wanted. A Frenchman’s eye for nature is merely nominal. I find that with the novelty, or on farther experience my enthusiasm for the country and the people, palls a little. During a long day’s march (for I was too late, or rather too ill to go by the six o’clock morning Diligence,) I got as tired of toiling on under a scorching sun and over a dusty road, as if I had been in England. Indeed, I could almost have fancied myself there, for I scarcely met with a human being to remind me of the difference. I at one time encountered a horseman mounted on a demipique saddle, in a half military uniform, who seemed determined to make me turn out of the foot-path,[^[13]] or to ride over me. This looked a little English, though the man did not. I should take him for an Exciseman. I suppose in all countries people on horseback give themselves airs of superiority over those who are on foot. The French character is not altogether compounded of the amiable, any more than the English is of the respectable. In judging of nations, it will not do to deal in mere abstractions. In countries, as well as individuals, there is a mixture of good and bad qualities; yet we may attempt to strike a general balance, and compare the rules with the exceptions. Soon after my equestrian adventure (or escape,) I met with another pleasanter one; a little girl, with regular features and dark eyes, dressed in white, and with a large straw bonnet flapping over her face, was mounted behind a youth who seemed to be a relation, on an ass—a common mode of conveyance in this country. The young lad was trying to frighten her, by forcing the animal out of its usual easy pace into a canter, while she, holding fast, and between laughing and crying, called out in a voice of great sweetness and naïveté—‘Il n’est pas bon trotter, il n’est pas bon trotter.’ There was a playfulness in the expression of her terrors quite charming, and quite French. They turned down an avenue to a villa a little way out of the road. I could not help looking after them, and thinking what a delightful welcome must await such innocence, such cheerfulness, and such dark sparkling eyes! Mais allons. These reflections are perhaps misplaced: France is not at present altogether the land of gallantry or sentiment, were one ever so much disposed to them.

Within half a mile of Louviers (which is seven leagues from Rouen) a Diligence passed me on the road at the full speed of a French Diligence, rolling and rumbling on its way over a paved road, with five clumsy-looking horses, and loaded to the top like a Plymouth van. I was to stop at Louviers, at the Hotel de Mouton, and to proceed to Paris by the coach the next day; for I was told there was no conveyance onwards that day, and I own that this apparition of a Diligence in full sail, and in broad day (when I had understood there were none but night coaches) surprised me. I was going to set it down in ‘my tables,’ that there is no faith to be placed in what they say at French inns. I quickened my pace in hopes of overtaking it while it changed horses. The main street of Louviers appeared to me very long and uneven. On turning a corner, the Hotel de Mouton opened its gates to receive me, the Diligence was a little farther on, with fresh horses just put to and ready to start (a critical and provoking dilemma;) I hesitated a moment, and at last resolved to take my chance in the Diligence, and seeing Paris written on the outside, and being informed by Monsieur le Conducteur, that I could stop at Evreux for the night, I took the rest for granted, and mounted in the cabriolet, where sat an English gentleman (one of those with whom I had come over in the steam-boat,) solitary and silent. My seating myself in the opposite corner of the cabriolet (which is that part of a French Diligence which is placed in front, and resembles a post-chaise in form and ease,) did not break the solitude or the silence. In company, two negatives do not make an affirmative. I know few things more delightful than for two Englishmen to loll in a post-chaise in this manner, taking no notice of each other, preserving an obstinate silence, and determined to send their country to Coventry.[^[14]] We pretended not to recognise each other, and yet our saying nothing proved every instant that we were not French. At length, about half way, my companion opened his lips, and asked in thick, broken French, ‘How far it was to Evreux?’ I looked at him, and said in English, ‘I did not know.’ Not another word passed, yet, I dare say, both of us had a very agreeable time of it, as the Diligence moved on to Evreux, making reflections on the national character, and each thinking himself an exception to its absurdities, an instance of its virtues; so easy is it always (and more particularly abroad) to fancy ourselves free from the errors we witness in our neighbours. It is this, indeed, which makes us so eager to detect them, as if to see what is wrong was the same thing as being in the right!

At Evreux, I found I had gone quite out of my road, and that there was no conveyance to Paris till the same hour the next night. I was a good deal mortified and perplexed at this intelligence, but found some consolation at the Office where I obtained it, from casually hearing the name of my companion, which is a great point gained in travelling. Of course, the discovery is pleasant, if it is a name you are acquainted with; or if not, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing it is some one you do not know, and so are made easy on that head. I bespoke a bed, and was shown into the common room, where I took coffee, and had what the Scotch call a brandered fowl for supper. The room was papered with marine landscapes, so that you seemed sitting in the open air with boats and trees and the sea-shore all round you, and Telemachus and Calypso, figures landing or embarking on halcyon seas. Even a country-inn in France is classical. It is a pity that the English are so dull and sluggish, ‘like the fat weed that roots itself at ease on Lethe’s wharf,’ that they cannot lend themselves to these airy fictions, always staring them in the face, but rather turn away from them with an impatience and disgust proportioned to the elegance of the design and the tax levied on their taste. A Frenchman’s imagination, on the contrary, is always at the call of his senses. The latter have but to give the hint, and the former is glad to take it! I tired every one out by inquiring my best mode of getting on to Paris next day; and being slow to believe that my only way was to go back to Louviers, like a fool as I had come, a young Frenchman took compassion on my embarrassment, and offered to be my interpreter, ‘as he spoke both languages.’ He said, ‘I must feel great pain in not being able to express myself.’ I said ‘None but in giving others the trouble to understand me.’ He shook his head, I spoke much too fast for him; he apologized for not being able to follow me from want of habit, though he said, ‘he belonged to a society of twelve at Paris, where they spoke English every evening generally.’ I said, ‘we were well matched,’ and when this was explained to him, he repeated the word ‘matched,’ with a ludicrous air of distress, at finding that there was an English phrase which was not familiarised to him in ‘the society of twelve, where they spoke the English language generally every evening.’ We soon came to a dead stand, and he turned to my English companion in the cabriolet, on whom he bestowed, for the rest of the evening, the tediousness of any ‘society of twelve.’ I could not help laughing to see my luckless fellow-countryman, after one or two attempts to rally and exchange remarks, reduced to the incessant repetition of his melancholy ‘oui,’ and my lively Parisian rioting in the advantage he had obtained over a straggling Englishman, gliding from topic to topic without contradiction or control, passing from the population of Paris to the Beaux-Arts, from the Belles-Lettres to politics, running the circle of knowledge, and finding himself still at home, faltering at the mention of the Allies and the Bourbons, and rising with outstretched arm and continuous voice at the name of Buonopar-r (like the eagle soaring on level wing)—getting nearer and nearer the victim of his volubility, seizing my poor friend by the button, and at last retiring abruptly, as if afraid of a re-action, and wishing him ‘good repose’ for the evening. Happy member of a ‘society of twelve!’ Apt representative of thirty millions of people, who build their self-esteem on the basis of vanity, and weave happiness out of breath, which costs them nothing! Why envy, why wish to interrupt them, like a mischievous school-boy, who throws a great stone into a pond full of frogs, who croak their delights ‘generally every evening,’ and who, the instant the chasm is closed, return to the charge with unabated glee and joyous dissonance!

I must not forget to mention a favourable trait in the common French character. I asked to speak to the Conducteur, and something like a charge of deception was brought, from which he defended himself strenuously. The whole kitchen and stable-yard gathered round to hear a dispute, which was by no means waged with equal war of words. They understood that I was disappointed, and had made a ridiculous mistake. Not a word or look of derision was observable in the whole group; but rather a rising smile, suppressed for fear of giving pain, and a wish to suggest some expedient on the occasion. In England, I will venture to say, that a Frenchman, in similar circumstances, stammering out a grave charge of imposition against a coachman, and evidently at a loss how to proceed, would have been hooted out of the place, and it would have been well for him if he had escaped without broken bones. If the French have the vices of artificial refinement and effeminacy, the English still retain too many of those which belong to a barbarous and savage state.

I returned to Louviers the next morning under the safe conduct of my former guide, where I arrived half an hour before the necessary time, found myself regularly booked for Paris, with five francs paid on account; and after a very comfortable breakfast, where I was waited on by a pretty, modest-looking brunette (for the French country-girls are in general modest-looking,) I took my seat in the fourth place of the Diligence. Here I met with every thing to annoy an Englishman. There was a Frenchman in the coach, who had a dog and a little boy with him, the last having a doll in his hands, which he insisted on playing with; or cried and screamed furiously if it was taken from him. It was a true French child; that is, a little old man, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Laughing Boy, with eyes glittering like the glass ones of his favourite doll, with flaxen ringlets like hers, with cheeks as smooth and unhealthy, and a premature expression of cunning and self-complacency. A disagreeable or ill-behaved child in a stage coach is a common accident, and to be endured. But who but a Frenchman would think of carrying his dog? He might as well drag his horse into the coach after him. A Frenchman (with leave be it spoken) has no need to take a dog with him to ventilate the air of a coach, in which there are three other Frenchmen. It was impossible to suffer more from heat, from pressure, or from the periodical ‘exhalation of rich-distilled perfumes.’ If the French have lost the sense of smell, they should reflect (as they are a reflecting people) that others have not. Really, I do not see how they have a right in a public vehicle to assault one in this way by proxy, any more than to take one literally by the nose. One does not expect from the most refined and polished people in Europe grossnesses that an Esquimaux Indian would have too much sense and modesty to be guilty of. If the presence of their dogs is a nuisance, the conversation of their masters is often no less offensive to another sense—both are suffocating to every body but themselves, and worthy of each other. Midas whispered his secret to the reeds, that whispered it again. The French, if they are wise, ought not to commit the national character on certain delicate points in the manner they do. While they were triumphant, less caution might be necessary: but no people can afford at the same time to be odious as well as contemptible in the eyes of their enemies. We dined at Mantes, where the ordinary was plentiful and excellent, and where a gentleman of a very prepossessing appearance took up the conversation (descanting on the adventures of a shooting-party the day before) in that gay, graceful, and animated tone, which I conceive to be characteristic of the best French society. In talking and laughing, he discovered (though a young man) the inroads which hot soups and high-seasoned ragouts had made in his mouth, with the same alacrity and good-humour as if he had to shew a complete set of the whitest teeth. We passed an interesting village, situated on the slope of a hill, with a quaint old tower projecting above it, and over-hanging the Seine. Not far from the high road stands Rosny, once the seat of the celebrated Sully. The approach to the capital on the side of St. Germain’s is one continued succession of imposing beauty and artificial splendour, of groves, of avenues, of bridges, of palaces, and of towns like palaces, all the way to Paris, where the sight of the Thuilleries completes the triumph of external magnificence, and oppresses the soul with recollections not to be borne or to be expressed!—Of them, perhaps, hereafter.

In the coach coming along, a Frenchman was curious to learn of a Scotch gentleman, who spoke very respectable French, whether Lord Byron was much regretted in England? He said there was much beauty in his writings, but too much straining after effect. He added, that there was no attempt at effect in Racine. This with the French is a final appeal in matters of poetry and taste. A translation of Lord Byron’s Works complete is common in all the shops here. I am not sure whether an English Poet ought to be proud of this circumstance or not. I also saw an Elegy on his Death advertised, said to be written by his friend, Sir Thomas More. How oddly the French combine things! There is a Sir Thomas More in English History and Letters; but that Sir Thomas More is not this Mr. Thomas Moore—‘let their discreet hearts believe it!’

CHAPTER IV

The first thing I did when I got to Paris was to go to the Louvre. It was indeed ‘first and last and midst’ in my thoughts. Well might it be so, for it had never been absent from them for twenty years. I had gazed myself almost blind in looking at the precious works of art it then contained—should I not weep myself blind in looking at them again, after a lapse of half a life—or on finding them gone, and with them gone all that I had once believed and hoped of human kind? What could ever fill up that blank in my heart, fearful to think upon—fearful to look upon? I was no longer young; and he who had collected them, and ‘worn them as a rich jewel in his Iron Crown,’ was dead, a captive and vanquished; and with him all we who remained were ‘thrown into the pit,’ the lifeless bodies of men, and wore round our necks the collar of servitude, and on our foreheads the brand, and in our flesh and in our souls the stain of thraldom and of the born slaves of Kings. Yet thus far had I come once more ‘to dream and be an Emperour!’ Thou sacred shrine of God-like magnificence, must not my heart fail and my feet stumble, as I approach thee? How gladly would I kneel down and kiss thy threshold; and crawl into thy presence, like an Eastern slave! For here still linger the broken remains and the faded splendour of that proud monument of the triumphs of art and of the majesty of man’s nature over the mock-majesty of thrones! Here Genius and Fame dwell together; ‘School calleth unto School,’ and mighty names answer to each other; that old gallery points to the long, dim perspective of waning years, and the shadow of Glory and of Liberty is seen afar off. In pacing its echoing floors, I hear the sound of the footsteps of my youth, and the dead start from their slumbers!... In all the time that I had been away from thee, and amidst all the changes that had happened in it, did I ever forget, did I ever profane thee? Never for a moment or in thought have I swerved from thee, or from the cause of which thou wert the pledge and crown. Often have I sought thee in sleep, and cried myself awake to find thee, with the heart-felt yearnings of intolerable affection. Still didst thou haunt me, like a passionate dream—like some proud beauty, the queen and mistress of my thoughts. Neither pain nor sickness could wean me from thee—

‘My theme in crowds, my solitary pride.’

In the tangled forest or the barren waste—in the lowly hovel or the lofty palace, thy roofs reared their vaulted canopy over my head, a loftier palace, an ampler space—a ‘brave o’er-hanging firmament,’ studded with constellations of art. Wherever I was, thou wert with me, above me and about me; and didst ‘hang upon the beatings of my heart,’ a vision and a joy unutterable. There was one chamber of the brain (at least) which I had only to unlock and be master of boundless wealth—a treasure-house of pure thoughts and cherished recollections. Tyranny could not master, barbarism slunk from it; vice could not pollute, folly could not gainsay it. I had but to touch a certain spring, and lo! on the walls the divine grace of Guido appeared free from blemish—there were the golden hues of Titian, and Raphael’s speaking faces, the splendour of Rubens, the gorgeous gloom of Rembrandt, the airy elegance of Vandyke, and Claude’s classic scenes lapped the senses in Elysium, and Poussin breathed the spirit of antiquity over them. There, in that fine old lumber-room of the imagination, were the Transfiguration, and the St. Peter Martyr, with its majestic figures and its unrivalled landscape background. There also were the two St. Jeromes, Domenichino’s and Correggio’s—there ‘stood the statue that enchants the world’—there were the Apollo and the Antinous, the Laocoon, the Dying Gladiator, Diana and her Fawn, and all the glories of the antique world—