In our last we briefly adverted to the gratifying fact that Mr. Barry had
at least a thousand superficial feet on the walls of the new Houses of
Parliament at the services of the historical painters of England; and we
also, in a passing manner, suggested a few compositions worthy of their
pencils. A reconsideration of the matter convinces us that the subject is
too important--too national, to be adopted as merely the fringe of our
article; and we have therefore determined within ourselves to devote our
present essay to a serious discussion of the various pictures that are, or
_ought_, to decorate the interior of the new House of Commons. As for the
House of Lords, we see no necessity whatever for lavishing the fine
inspirations of art on that temple of wisdom; inasmuch as the sages who
deliberate there are, for the most part, born legislators, coming into the
world with all the rudiments of government in embryo in their baby heads,
and, on the twenty-first anniversary of their birthday, putting their legs
out of bed adult, full-grown law-makers. It would be the height of
democratic insolence to attempt to teach these chosen few: it would, in
fact, be a misprision of treason against the sovereignty of Nature, who,
when making the _pia mater_ of a future peer of England, knows very well
the delicate work she has in hand, and takes pains accordingly. It is
different when she manufactures a mob of skulls which, by a jumble of
worldly accidents, or by the satire of Fortune in her bitterest mood, may
ultimately belong to Members of the House of Commons. These she makes, as
they make blocks in Portsmouth-yard, a hundred a minute. All she has to do
is to fulfil her contract with the world, taking care that there shall be
no want of the raw material for Members of Parliament, leaving it to
Destiny to work it up as she may. We have not the slightest doubt,
by-the-by, that poor Nature is often very much confounded by the ultimate
application of her own handiwork. We can fancy the venerable old gossip at
her business, patting up skulls as serenely as our lamented great
grandmother (she wrote a very pretty book on the beauties of population,
and illustrated the work, too, with portraits from her own hand) was wont
to pat up apple-dumplings:--we can imagine Nature--good old soul!--looking
over her spectacles at the infant dough, and saying to herself as she
finishes skull by skull--"Ha! that will do for a pawnbroker;"--"That, as
it's rather low and narrow, for a sharp attorney;"--"That for a parish
constable;"--"That for a clown at a fair,"--and so on. And we can well
imagine the astonishment of simple-hearted old Nature on getting a ticket
for the gallery of the House of Commons (for very seldom, indeed, has she
been known to show herself on the floor), to see her skull of a pawnbroker
on the shoulders of a Chancellor of the Exchequer; her _caput_ of the
sharp attorney belonging to a Minister of the Home Department; her head of
a parish constable as a Paymaster of the Forces; and the dough she had
intended to swallow knives and eat fire at wakes and fairs gravely
responded to as "an honourable and gallant member!" Whereupon, who can
wonder at the amazement and indignation of Mother Nature, and that, with a
keen sense of the misapplication of her skulls, she sometimes abuses
Mother Fortune in good set terms, mingling with her reproaches the
strongest reflections on her chastity?
We have thought it due to the full consideration of our subject so far, to
dwell upon the natural difference between the skull of a Peer and the
skull of a Commoner. The skull of the noble, as we have shown, is a thing
made to order--fitted up, like Mr. MECHI'S pocket-dressing-case, with the
ornamental and useful: no instrument can be added to it--the thing is
complete. Hence, to employ historical painters for the education of the
House of Lords would be a useless and profligate expenditure of art and
money. It would be to paint the lily LONDONDERRY--to add a perfume to the
violet ELLENBOROUGH. All Peers being from the first--indeed, even _in
utero_--ordained law-makers, statute-making comes to them by nature. How
much history goes to prove this, showing that the House of Lords--like the
Solomons of the _fleur-de-lis_--have learned nothing, and forgotten
nothing! To attempt to instruct a Peer would be as gross an impertinence
to the instinct of his order as to present MINERVA--who no doubt came from
the head of JOVE a Peeress in her own right--with a toy alphabet or
horn-book.
For the skulls of the House of Commons,--that is, indeed, another
question! We are so far utilitarian that we would have the pictures for
which Mr. BARRY offers a thousand feet selected solely with a view to the
dissemination of knowledge amongst the many benighted members of the House
of Commons. We would have the subjects so chosen that they should entirely
supersede _Oldfield's Representative History_; never forgetting the wants
of the most illiterate. For instance, for the politicians on the fifth
form, the SIBTHORPS and PLUMPTRES, whose education in their youth has been
shamefully neglected, we would have a nice pictorial political alphabet.
We do not pride ourselves, be it understood, upon writing unwrinkled
verse; we only present the subjoined as a crude idea of our plan, taken we
confess, from certain variegated volumes, to be had either of Mr. SOUTER,
St. Paul's Churchyard, or Messrs. DARTON and HARVEY, Holborn.
A was King ALFRED, a monarch of note;
B is BURDETT, who can well turn a coat.
Here we would have the chief incidents of Alfred's life nicely painted,
with BURDETT, late Old Glory, and now Old Corruption. As for the poetry,
when we consider the capacities of the learners, _that_ cannot be too
simple, too homely. The House, however, may order a Committee of
Versification, if it please; all that we protest against is D'ISRAELI
being of the number.
C is the CORN-LAWS, that famish'd the poor;
D is the DEBT, that will famish them more.
Here, for the imaginative artist, is an opportunity! To paint the wholesale
wickedness and small villanies of the Corn-laws! What a contrast of scene
and character! Squalid hovels, and princely residences--purse-proud,
plethoric injustice, big and bloated with, its iniquitous gains, and gaunt,
famine-stricken multitudes! Then for the Debt--that hideous thing begotten
by war and corruption; what a tremendous moral lesson might be learned from
a nightly conning of the terrific theme!
We have neither poetic genius nor space of paper to go through the whole
of the alphabet; we merely throw out the above four lines--and were we not
assured that they are better lines, far more musical, than any to be found
in BULWER'S SIAMESE TWINS, we should blush much nearer scarlet than we
do--to give an idea of the utility and beautiful comprehensiveness of our
plan.
The great difficulty, however, will be to compress the subjects--so
multitudinous are they--within the thousand feet allowed by the architect.
To begin with the Wittenagemot, or meeting of the wise men, and to end
with portraits of Mr. Roebuck's ancestors--to say nothing of the fine
imaginative sketch of the Member for Bath tilting, in the mode of Quixote
with the steam-press of Printing-house-square--will require the most
extraordinary powers of condensation on the parts of the artists.
Nevertheless, if the undertaking be even creditably executed, it will be a
monument of national wisdom and national utility to unborn generations of
Members. What crowds of subjects press upon us! The _History of Bribery_
might make a sort of Parliamentary Rake's Progress, if we could but hit
upon the artist to portray its manifold beauties. _The Windsor Stables_
and _the Education of the Poor_ would form admirable companion-pictures,
in which the superiority of the horse over the human animal could be most
satisfactorily delineated--the quadruped having considerably more than
three times the amount voted to him for snug lodging, hay, beans, and
oats, that the English pauper obtained from Parliament for that manure of
the soil--as congregated piety at Exeter Hall denominates it--a Christian
education!
What a beautiful arabesque border might be conceived from a perusal of the
late Lord Castlereagh's speeches! We should here have Parliamentary
eloquence under a most fantastic yet captivating phase. Who, for instance,
but the artist to PUNCH could paint CASTLEREAGH'S figure of a smug,
contented, selfish traitor, the "crocodile with his hand in his breeches'
pocket?" Again, does not the reader recollect that extraordinary person
who, according to the North Cray Demosthenes, "turned his back _upon
himself_?" There would be a portrait!--one, too, presenting food for the
most "sweet and bitter melancholy" to the GRAHAMS and the STANLEYS. There
is also that immortal Parliamentary metaphor, emanating from the same
mysterious source,--"The _feature_ upon which the question _hinges_!" The
only man who could have properly painted this was the enthusiastic BLAKE,
who so successfully limned the ghost of a flea! These matters, however,
are to be considered as merely supplementary ornaments to great themes.
The grand subjects are to be sought for in _Hansard's Reports_, in
petitions against returns of members, in the evidence that comes out in
the committee-rooms, in the abstract principles of right and wrong, that
make members honest patriots, or that make them give the harlot "ay" and
"no," as dictated by the foul spirit gibbering in their breeches' pockets.
That we may have painted all these things, Mr. BARRY offers up one
thousand feet. Oh! Mr. B. can't you make it ten!