"Strong of the arm, and weak of the head;"
and I was assured that, like most proverbs, it had a good deal of truth in
it. The laboring people of Edale and its neighborhood, so far as I could
learn, are not remarkable for good morals, and indifferent, or worse than
indifferent, to the education of their children. They are, however, more
fortunate in regard to the wages of their labor, than in many other
agricultural districts. A manufactory for preparing cotton thread for the
lace-makers, has been established in Edale, and the women and girls of the
place, who are employed in it, are paid from seven to eight shillings a
week. The farm laborers receive from twelve to thirteen shillings a week,
which is a third more than is paid to the same class in some other
counties.
The people of the Peak, judging from the psalmody I heard at church, are
not without an ear for music. "I was at a funeral, not long since," said
our host, "a young man, born deaf and dumb, went mad and cut his throat.
The people came from far and near to the burial. Hot ale was handed about
and drunk in silence, and a candle stood on the table, at which the
company lighted their pipes. The only sound to be heard was the passionate
sobbing of the father. At last the funeral service commenced, and the hymn
being given out, they set it to a tune in the minor key, and I never heard
any music performed in a manner more pathetic."
On Monday we left Edale, and a beautiful drive we had along the banks of
the Derwent, woody and rocky, and wild enough in some places to be thought
a river of our own country. Of our visit to Chatsworth, the seat of the
Duke of Devonshire, one of the proudest of the modern English nobility,
and to Haddon Hall, the finest specimen remaining of the residences of
their ancestors, I will say nothing, for these have already been
described till people are tired of reading them. We passed the night at
Matlock in sight of the rock called the High Tor. In the hot season it
swarms with cockneys, and to gratify their taste, the place, beautiful as
it is with precipices and woods, has been spoiled by mock ruins and
fantastic names. There is a piece of scene-painting, for example, placed
conspicuously among the trees on the hill-side, representing an ancient
tower, and another representing an old church. One place of retreat is
called the Romantic Rocks, and another the Lover's Walk.
To-day we arrived at Derby, and hastened to see its Arboretum. This is an
inclosure of eleven acres, given by the late Mr. Josiah Strutt to the
town, and beautifully laid out by London, author of the work on Rural
Architecture. It is planted with every kind of tree and shrub which will
grow in the open air of this climate, and opened to the public for a
perpetual place of resort. Shall we never see an example of the like
munificence in New York?
Letter XX.
Works of Art.
London, _June_ 18, 1845.
I have now been in London a fortnight. Of course you will not expect me to
give you what you will find in the guide-books and the "Pictures of
London."
The town is yet talking of a statue of a Greek slave, by our countryman
Powers, which was to be seen a few days since at a print-shop in Pall
Mall. I went to look at it. The statue represents a Greek girl exposed
naked for sale in the slave-market. Her hands are fettered, the drapery of
her nation lies at her feet, and she is shrinking from the public gaze. I
looked at it with surprise and delight; I was dazzled with the soft
fullness of the outlines, the grace of the attitude, the noble, yet sad
expression of the countenance, and the exquisite perfection of the
workmanship. I could not help acknowledging a certain literal truth in the
expression of Byron, concerning a beautiful statue, that it
"——fills
The air around with beauty."
It has fixed the reputation of Powers, and made his fortune. The
possessor of the statue, a Mr. Grant, has refused to dispose of it, except
to a public institution. The value which is set upon it, may be inferred
from this circumstance, that one of the richest noblemen in England told
the person who had charge of the statue, that if Mr. Grant would accept
two thousand pounds sterling for it, he should be glad to send him a check
for the amount. Some whispers of criticism have been uttered, but they
appear to have been drowned and silenced in the general voice of
involuntary admiration. I hear that since the exhibition of the statue,
orders have been sent to Powers from England, for works of sculpture which
will keep him employed for years to come.
The exhibition of paintings by the Royal Academy is now open. I see
nothing in it to astonish one who has visited the exhibitions of our
Academy of the Arts of Design in New York, except that some of the worst
pictures were hung in the most conspicuous places. This is the case with
four or five pictures by Turner—a great artist, and a man of genius, but
who paints very strangely of late years. To my unlearned eyes, they were
mere blotches of white paint, with streaks of yellow and red, and without
any intelligible design. To use a phrase very common in England, they are
the most extraordinary pictures I ever saw. Haydon also has spoiled
several yards of good canvas with a most hideous picture of Uriel and
Satan, and to this is assigned one of the very best places in the
collection. There is more uniformity of style and coloring than with us;
more appearance of an attempt to conform to a certain general model, so
that of course there are fewer unpleasant contrasts of manner: but this is
no advantage, inasmuch as it prevents the artist from seeking to attain
excellence in the way for which he is best fitted. The number of paintings
is far greater than in our exhibitions; but the proportion of good ones is
really far smaller. There are some extremely clever things by Webster, who
appears to be a favorite with the public; some fine miniatures by
Thorburn, a young Scotch artist who has suddenly become eminent, and
several beautiful landscapes by Stanfield, an artist of high promise. We
observed in the catalogue, the names of three or four of our American
artists; but on looking for their works, we found them all hung so high as
to be out of sight, except one, and that was in what is called the
condemned room, where only a glimmer of light enters, and where the
hanging committee are in the practice of thrusting any such pictures as
they can not help exhibiting, but wish to keep in the dark.
My English friends apologize for the wretchedness of the collection, its
rows of indifferent portraits and its multitude of feeble imitations in
historical and landscape painting, by saying that the more eminent artists
are preparing themselves to paint the walls and ceilings of the new Houses
of Parliament in fresco. The pinnacles and turrets of that vast and
magnificent structure, built of a cream-colored stone, and florid with
Gothic tracery, copied from the ancient chapel of St. Stephen, the greater
part of which was not long ago destroyed by fire, are rising from day to
day above the city roofs. We walked through its broad and long passages
and looked into its unfinished halls, swarming with stone-cutters and
masons, and thought that if half of them were to be painted in fresco, the
best artists of England have the work of years before them.
With the exhibition of drawings in water-colors, which is a separate
affair from the paintings in oil, I was much better pleased. The late
improvement in this branch of art, is, I believe, entirely due to English
artists. They have given to their drawings of this class a richness, a
force of effect, a depth of shadow and strength of light, and a truth of
representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the
meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any
landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two
which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade
myself that a flower-piece on which I looked, representing a bunch of
hollyhocks, was not the real thing after all, so crisp were the leaves, so
juicy the stalks, and with such skillful relief was flower heaped upon
flower and leaf upon leaf.