CHAPTER I.

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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXXXVIII. DECEMBER, 1843. VOL. LIV.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved

to the end of each article.

CONTENTS.

LECTURES AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 691

SOMETHING ABOUT MUSIC. 709

THE PURPLE CLOAK; OR, THE RETURN OF SYLOSON TO SAMOS. 714

LOVE AND DEATH. 717

THE BRIDGE OVER THE THUR. 717

THE BANKING-HOUSE. A HISTORY IN THREE PARTS. PART II. 719

COLLEGE THEATRICALS. 737

LINES WRITTEN IN THE ISLE OF BUTE. 749

TRAVELS OF KERIM KHAN. CONCLUSION. 753

NOTES ON A TOUR OF THE DISTURBED DISTRICTS IN WALES. 766

ADVENTURES IN TEXAS. NO. II. 777

DEATH FROM THE STING OF A SERPENT. 798

GIFTS OF TEREK. 799

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART VI. 801

INDEX TO VOL. LIV. 815

* * * * *

LECTURES AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

HENRY FUSELI.

At a time when the eye of the public is more remarkably, and we trust

more kindly, directed to the Fine Arts, we may do some service to the

good cause, by reverting to those lectures delivered in the Royal

Academy, composed in a spirit of enthusiasm honourable to the

professors, but which kindled little sympathy in an age strangely dead

to the impulses of taste. The works, therefore, which set forth the

principles of art, were not read extensively at the time, and had little

influence beyond the walls within which they were delivered. Favourable

circumstances, in conjunction with their real merit, have permanently

added the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds to the standard literature

of our country. They have been transferred from the artist to the

scholar; and so it has happened, that while few of any pretension to

scholarship have not read the "The Discourses," they have not, as they

should have, been continually in the hands of artists themselves. To

awaken a feeling for this kind of professional reading--yet not so

professional as not to be beneficial--reflectingly upon classical

learning; indeed, we might say, education in general, and therefore more

comprehensive in its scope--we commenced our remarks on the discourses

of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which have appeared in the pages of Maga. There

are now more than symptoms of the departure of that general apathy which

prevailed, when most of the Academy lectures were delivered. It will be,

therefore, a grateful, and may we hope a useful, task, by occasional

notices to make them more generally known.

The successors of Reynolds labour under a twofold disadvantage; they

find that he has occupied the very ground they would have taken, and

written so ably and fully upon all that is likely to obtain a general

interest, as to leave a prejudice against further attempts. Of

necessity, there must be, in every work treating of the same subject,

much repetition; and it must require no little ingenuity to give a

novelty and variety, that shall yet be safe, and within the bounds of

the admitted principles of art. On this account, we have no reason to

complain of the lectures of Fuseli, which we now purpose to notice. Bold

and original as the writer is, we find him every where impressed with a

respect for Reynolds, and with a conviction of the truth of the

principles which he had collected and established. If there be any

difference, it is occasionally on the more debatable ground--particular

passages of criticism.

In the "Introduction," the student is supplied with a list of the

authorities he should consult for the "History and Progress of his Art."

He avoids expatiating on the books purely elementary--"the van of which

is led by Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Durer, and the rear by Gherard

Lavresse--as the principles which they detail must be supposed to be

already in the student's possession, or are occasionally interwoven with

the topics of the lectures;" and proceeds "to the historically critical

writers, who consist of all the ancients yet remaining, Pausanias

excepted." Fortunately, there remain a sufficient number of the

monuments of ancient art "to furnish us with their standard of style;"

for the accounts are so contradictory, that we should have little to

rely upon. The works of the ancient artists are all lost: we must be

content with the "hasty compilations of a warrior," Pliny, or the

"incidental remarks of an orator," (rhetorician,) Quintilian. The former

chiefly valuable when he quotes--for then, as Reynolds observed, "he

speaks the language of an artist:" as in his account of the glazing

method of Apelles; the manner in which Protogenes embodied his colours;

and the term of art _circumlitio_, by which Nicias gave "the line of

correctness to the models of Praxiteles;" the foreshortening the bull by

Pausias, and throwing his shade on the crowd--showing a forcible

chiaroscuro. "Of Quintilian, whose information is all relative to style,

the tenth chapter of the XII.th book, a passage on expression in the

XI.th, and scattered fragments of observations analogous to the process

of his own art, is all that we possess; but what he says, though

comparatively small in bulk, with what we have of Pliny, leaves us to

wish for more. His review of the revolutions of style in painting, from

Polygnotus to Apelles, and in sculpture, from Phidias to Lysippus, is

succinct and rapid; but though so rapid and succinct, every word is

poised by characteristic precision, and can only be the result of long

and judicious enquiry, and perhaps even minute examination." Still less

have we scattered in the writings of Cicero, who, "though he seems to

have had little native taste for painting and sculpture, and even less

than he had taste for poetry, had a conception of nature; and with his

usual acumen, comparing the principles of one art with those of another,

frequently scattered useful hints, or made pertinent observations. For

many of these he might probably be indebted to Hortensius, with whom,

though his rival in eloquence, he lived on terms of familiarity, and who

was a man of declared taste, and one of the first collectors of the

time." He speaks somewhat too slightingly of Pausanias,[1] as "the

indiscriminate chronicler of legitimate tradition and legendary trash,"

considering that he praises "the scrupulous diligence with which he

examined what fell under his own eye." He recommends to the epic or

dramatic artist the study of the heroics of the elder, and the Eicones

or Picture Galleries of the elder and younger Philostratus.

"The innumerable hints, maxims, anecdotes, descriptions, scattered over

Lucian, Oelian, Athenaeus, Achilles Tatius, Tatian Pollux, and many

more, may be consulted to advantage by the man of taste and letters, and

probably may be neglected without much loss by the student." "Of modern

writers on art Vasari leads the van; theorist, artist, critic, and

biographer, in one. The history of modern art owes, no doubt, much to

Vasari; he leads us from its cradle to its maturity with the anxious

diligence of a nurse; but he likewise has her derelictions: for more

loquacious than ample, and less discriminating styles than eager to

accumulate descriptions, he is at an early period exhausted by the

superlatives lavished on inferior claims, and forced into frigid

rhapsodies and astrologic nonsense to do justice to the greater. He

swears by the divinity of M. Agnolo. He tells us that he copied every

figure of the Capella Sistina and the stanze of Raffaelle, yet his

memory was either so treacherous, or his rapidity in writing so

inconsiderate, that his account of both is a mere heap of errors and

unpardonable confusion, and one might almost fancy he had never entered

the Vatican." He is less pleased with the "rubbish of his

contemporaries, or followers, from Condior to Ridolfi, and on to

Malvasia." All is little worth "till the appearance of Lanzi, who, in

his 'Storia Pittorica della Italia,' has availed himself of all the

information existing in his time, has corrected most of those who wrote

before him, and, though perhaps not possessed of great discriminative

powers, has accumulated more instructive anecdotes, rescued more

deserving names from oblivion, and opened a wider prospect of art, than

all his predecessors." But for the valuable notes of Reynolds, the idle

pursuit of Du Fresnoy to clothe the precepts of art in Latin verse,

would be useless. "The notes of Reynolds, treasures of practical

observation, place him among those whom we may read with profit." De

Piles and Felibien are spoken of next, as the teachers of "what may be

learned from precept, founded on prescriptive authority more than on the

verdicts of nature." Of the effects of the system pursued by the French

Academy from such precepts, our author is, perhaps, not undeservedly

severe.

"About the middle of the last century the German critics, established at

Rome, began to claim the exclusive privilege of teaching the art, and to

form a complete system of antique style. The verdicts of Mengs and

Winkelmann, become the oracles of antiquaries, dilettanti, and artists,

from the Pyrenees to the utmost north of Europe, have been detailed, and

are not without their influence here. Winkelmann was the parasite of the

fragments that fell from the conversation or the tablets of Mengs--a

deep scholar, and better fitted to comment on a classic than to give

lessons on art and style, he reasoned himself into frigid reveries and

Platonic dreams on beauty. As far as the taste or the instruction of his

tutor directed, he is right when they are; and between his own learning

and the tuition of the other, his history of art delivers a specious

system, and a prodigious number of useful observations." "To him Germany

owes the shackles of her artists, and the narrow limits of their aim."

Had Fuseli lived to have witnessed the "revival" at Munich, he would

have appreciated the efforts made, and still making, there. He speaks of

the works of Mengs with respect. "The works of Mengs himself are, no

doubt, full of the most useful information, deep observation, and often

consummate criticism. He has traced and distinguished the principles of

the moderns from those of the ancients; and in his comparative view of

the design, colour, composition, and expression of Raffaelle, Correggio,

and Tiziano, with luminous perspicuity and deep precision, pointed out

the prerogative or inferiority of each. As an artist, he is an instance

of what perseverance, study, experience, and encouragement can achieve

to supply the place of genius." He then, passing by all English critics

preceding Reynolds, with the petty remark, that "the last is undoubtedly

the first," says--"To compare Reynolds with his predecessors, would

equally disgrace our judgment, and impeach our gratitude. His volumes

can never be consulted without profit, and should never be quitted by

the student's hand but to embody, by exercise, the precepts he gives and

the means he points out." It is useful thus to see together the

authorities which a student should consult, and we have purposely

characterized them as concisely as we could, in our extracts, which

strongly show the peculiar style of Mr Fuseli. If this introduction was,

however, intended for artists, it implies in them a more advanced

education in Greek and Latin literature than they generally possess. Mr

Fuseli was himself an accomplished scholar. How desirable is it that the

arts and general scholarship should go together! The classics, fully to

be enjoyed, require no small cultivation in art; and as the greater

portion of ancient art is drawn from that source, Greek mythology, and

classical history and literature, such an education would seem to be the

very first step in the acquirements of an artist. We believe that in

general they content themselves with Lempriere's Dictionary; and that

rather for information on subjects they may see already painted, than

for their own use; and thus, for lack of a feeling which only education

can give, a large field of resources is cut off from them. If it be said

that English literature--English classics, will supply the place, we

deny it; for there is not an English classic of value to an artist, who

was not, to his very heart's core, embued with a knowledge and love of

the ancient literature. We might instance but two, Spenser and

Milton--the statute-books of the better English art--authors whom, we do

not hesitate to say, no one can thoroughly understand or enjoy, who has

not far advanced in classical education. We shall never cease to throw

out remarks of this kind, with the hope that our universities will yet

find room to foster the art within them; satisfied as we are that the

advantages would be immense, both to the art and to the universities.

How many would then pursue pleasures and studies most congenial with

their usual academical education, and, thus occupied, be rescued from

pursuits that too often lead to profligacy and ruin; and sacrifice to

pleasures that cannot last, those which, where once fostered, have ever

been permanent!

* * * * *

The FIRST LECTURE is a summary of ancient art--one rather of research

than interest--more calculated to excite the curiosity of the student

than to offer him any profitable instruction. The general matter is well

known to most, who have at all studied the subject. Nor have we

sufficient confidence in any theory as to the rise and growth of art in

Greece, to lay much stress upon those laid down in this lecture. We

doubt if the religion of Greece ever had that hold upon the feelings of

the people, artists, or their patrons, which is implied in the

supposition, that it was an efficient cause. A people that could listen

to the broad farce of Aristophanes, and witness every sort of contempt

thrown upon the deities they professed to worship, were not likely to

seek in religion the advancement of art; and their licentious

liberty--if liberty it deserved to be called--was of too watchful a

jealousy over greatness of every kind, to suffer genius to be free and

without suspicion. We will not follow the lecturer through his

conjectures on the mechanic processes. It is more curious than useful to

trace back the more perfect art through its stages--the "Polychrom," the

"Monochrom," the "Monogram," and "Skiagram"--nor from the pencil to the

"cestrum." Polygnotus is said to be the first who introduced the

"essential style;" which consisted in ascertaining the abstract, the

general form, as it is technically termed the central form. Art under

Polygnotus was, however, in a state of formal "parallelism;" certainly

it could boast no variety of composition. Apollodorus "applied the

essential principles of Polygnotus to the delineation of the species, by

investigating the leading forms that discriminate the various classes of

human qualities and passions." He saw that all men were connected

together by one general form, yet were separated by some predominant

power into classes; "thence he drew his line of imitation, and

personified the central form of the class to which his object belonged,

and to which the rest of its qualities administered, without being

absorbed." Zeuxis, from the essential of Polygnotus and specific

discrimination of Apollodorus, comparing one with the other, formed his

ideal style. Thus are there the three styles--the essential, the

characteristic, the ideal.

Art was advanced and established under Parrhasius and Timanthes, and

refined under Eupompus, Apelles, Aristides, and Euphranor. "The

correctness of Parrhasius succeeded to the genius of Zeuxis. He

circumscribed the ample style, and by subtle examination of outline,

established that standard of divine and heroic form which raised him to

the authority of a legislator, from whose decisions there was no appeal.

He gave to the divine and heroic character in painting, what Polycletus

had given to the human in sculpture by his Doryphorus, a canon of

proportion. Phidias had discovered in the nod of the Homeric Jupiter the

characteristic of majesty, _inclination of the head_. This hinted to him

a higher elevation of the neck behind, a bolder protrusion of the front,

and the increased perpendicular of the profile. To this conception

Parrhasius fixed a maximum; that point from which descends the ultimate

line of celestial beauty, the angle within which moves what is inferior,

beyond which what is portentous. From the head conclude to the

proportions of the neck, the limbs, the extremities; from the Father to

the race of gods; all, the sons of one, Zeus; derived from one source of

tradition, Homer; formed by one artist, Phidias; on him measured and

decided by Parrhasius. In the simplicity of this principle, adhered to

by the succeeding periods, lies the uninterrupted progress and the

unattainable superiority of Grecian art."

In speaking of Timanthes as the competitor with Parrhasius, as one who

brought into the art more play of the mind and passions, the lecturer

takes occasion to discuss the often discussed and disputed propriety of

Timanthes, in covering the head of Agamemnon in his picture of the

sacrifice of Iphigenia. He thinks it the more incumbent on him so to do,

as the "late president" had passed a censure upon Timanthes. Sir Joshua

expressed his _doubt_ only, not his censure absolutely, upon the

delivery of the prize at the Academy for the best picture painted from

this subject. He certainly dissents from bestowing the praise, upon the

supposition of the intention being the avoiding a difficulty. And as to

this point, the well-known authorities of Cicero, Quintilian, Valerius

Maximus, and Pliny, seem to agree. And _if_, as the lecturer observes in

a note, the painter is made to waste expression on inferior actors at

the expense of a principal one, he is an improvident spendthrift, not a

wise economist. The pertness of Falconet is unworthy grave criticism and

the subject, though it is quoted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He assumes that

Agamemnon is the principal figure. Undoubtedly Mr Fuseli is

right--Iphigenia is the principal figure; and it may be fairly admitted,

that the overpowering expression of the grief of the father would have

divided the subject. It might be more properly a separate picture. Art

is limited; nothing should detract from the principal figure, the

principal action--passion. Our sympathy is not called for on behalf of

the father here: the grief of the others in the picture is the grief in

perfect sympathy with Iphigenia; the father would have been absorbed in

his own grief, and his grief would have been an unsympathetic grief

towards Iphigenia. It was his own case that he felt; and it does appear

to us an aggravation of the suffering of Iphigenia, that, at the moment

of her sacrifice, she saw indeed her father's person, but was never

more--and knew she was never more--to behold his face again. This

circumstance alone would justify Timanthes, but other concurrent reasons

may be given. It was no want of power to express the father's grief, for

it is in the province of art to express every such delineation; but

there _is_ a point of grief that is ill expressed by the countenance at

all; and there is a natural action in such cases for the sufferer

himself to hide his face, as if conscious that it was not in agreement

with his feelings. Such grief is astounding: we look for the expression

of it, and find it not: it is better than receive this shock to hide the

face. We do it naturally; so that here the art of the painter, that

required that his picture should be a whole, and centre in Iphigenia,

was mainly assisted by the proper adoption of this natural action of

Agamemnon. Mr Fuseli, whose criticism is always acute, and generally

just and true, has well discussed the subject, and properly commented

upon the flippancy of Falconet. After showing the many ways in which the

painter might have expressed the parent's grief, and that none of them

would be _decere, pro dignitate, digne_, he adds--'But Timanthes had too

true a sense of nature to expose a father's feelings, or to tear a

passion to rags; nor had the Greeks yet learned of Rome to steel the

face. If he made Agamemnon bear his calamity as a man, he made him also

feel it as a man. It became the leader of Greece to sanction the

ceremony with his presence: it did not become the father to see his

daughter beneath the dagger's point: the same nature that threw a real

mantle over the face of Timoleon, when he assisted at the punishment of

his brother, taught Timanthes to throw an imaginary one over the face of

Agamemnon; neither height nor depth, _propriety_ of expression was his

aim.' It is a question whether Timanthes took the idea from the text of

Euripides, or whether it is his invention, and was borrowed by the

dramatist. The picture must have presented a contrast to that of his

rival Parrhasius, which exhibited the fury of Ajax.

Whether the invention was or was not the merit of Euripides, certainly

this is not the only instance wherein he has turned it to dramatic

advantage. No dramatist was so distinct a painter as Euripides; his mind

was ever upon picture. He makes Hecuba, in the dialogue with Agamemnon,

say, "Pity me, and, standing apart as would a painter, look at me, and

see what evils I have,"

[Greek: Oichteiron hemas, os grapheus t apostatheis,

Ida me chanathreson, oi echo chacha.]

And this Hecuba, when Talthybius comes to require her presence for the

burial of Polyxena, is found lying on the ground, _her face covered_

with her robe:--

[Greek: Aute pelas sou, not echous epi chthoni,

Talthubie, keitai, sugchechleismene peplois.]

And in the same play, Polyxena bids Ulysses to cover her head with a

robe, as he leads her away, that she might not see her mother's grief.

[Greek: Komiz, Odysseu, m'amphitheis peplois chara.]

But in the instance in question, in the Iphigenia, there is one

circumstance that seems to have been overlooked by the critics, which

makes the action of Agamemnon the more expressive, and gives it a

peculiar force: the dramatist takes care to exhibit the more than common

parental and filial love; when asked by Clytemnestra what would be her

last, her dying request, it is instantly, on her father's account, to

avert every feeling of wrath against him:--

[Greek: Patera ge ton emon me stugei, posin te son.]

And even when the father covers his face, she is close beside him,

_tells him that she is beside him_, and her last words are to comfort

him. Now, whether Timanthes took the scene from Euripides or Euripides

from Timanthes, it could not be more powerfully, more naturally

conceived; for this dramatic incident, the tender movement to his side,

and speech of Iphigenia, could not have been imagined, or at least with

little effect, had not the father first covered his face. Mr Fuseli has

collected several instances of attempts something similar in pictures,

particularly by Massaccio, and Raffaelle from him; and he well

remarks--"We must conclude that Nature herself dictated to him this

method, as superior to all he could express by features; and that he

recognized the same dictate in Massaccio, who can no more be supposed to

have been acquainted with the precedent of Timanthes than Shakspeare

with that of Euripides, when he made Macduff draw his hat over his

face." From Timanthes Mr Fuseli proceeds to eulogize Aristides; whom

history records as, in a peculiar excellence, the painter of the

passions of nature. "Such, history informs us, was the suppliant whose

voice you seemed to hear, such his sick man's half-extinguished eye and

labouring breast, such Byblis expiring in the pangs of love, and, above

all, the half-slain mother shuddering lest the eager babe should suck

the blood from her palsied nipple."--"Timanthes had marked the limits

that discriminate terror from the excess of horror; Aristides drew the

line that separates it from disgust." Then follows a very just criticism

upon instances in which he considered that Raffaelle himself and Nicolo

Poussin had overstepped the bounds of propriety, and averted the

feelings from their object, by ideas of disgust. In the group of

Raffaelle, a man is removing the child from the breast of the mother

with one hand, while the other is applied to his nostrils. Poussin, in

his plague of the Philistines, has copied the loathsome action--so,

likewise, in another picture, said to be the plague of Athens, but

without much reason so named, in the collection of J. P. Mills, Esq. Dr

Waagen, in his admiration for the executive part of art, speaks of it as

"a very rich masterpiece of Poussin, in which we are reconciled by his

skill to the horrors of the subject."

In the commencement of the lecture, there are offered some definitions

of the terms of art, "nature, grace, taste, copy, imitation, genius,

talent." In that of nature, he seems entirely to agree with Reynolds;

that of beauty leaves us pretty much in the dark in our search for it,

"as that harmonious whole of the human frame, that unison of parts to

one end, which enchants us. The result of the standard set by the great

masters of our art, the ancients, and confirmed by the submissive

verdict of modern imitation." This is unphilosophical, unsatisfactory;

nor is that of grace less so--"that artless balance of motion and

repose, sprung from character, founded on propriety, which neither falls

short of the demands, nor overleaps the modesty of nature. Applied to

execution it means that dexterous power which hides the means by which

it was attained, the difficulties it has conquered." We humbly suggest,

that both parts of this definition may be found where there is little

grace. It is evident that the lecturer did not subscribe to any theory

of lines, as _per se_ beautiful or graceful, and altogether disregarded

Hogarth's line of beauty. Had Mr Hay's very admirable short works--his

"Theory of Form and Proportion"--appeared in Mr Fuseli's day, he would

have taken a new view of beauty and grace. By taste, he means not only a

knowledge of what is right in art, but a power to estimate degrees of

excellence, "and by comparison proceeds from justness to refinement."

This, too, we think inadequate to express what we mean by taste, which

appears to us to have something of a sense, independent of knowledge.

Using words in a technical sense, we may define them to mean what we

please, but certainly the words themselves, "copy" and "imitation," do

not mean very different things. He thinks "precision of eye, and

obedience of hand, are the requisites for copy, without the least

pretence to choice, what to select, what to reject; whilst choice,

directed by judgment or taste, constitutes the essence of imitation, and

alone can raise the most dexterous copyist to the noble rank of an

artist." We do not exactly see how this judgment arises out of his

definition of "taste." But it may be fair to follow him still closer on

this point. "The imitation of the ancients was, _essential_,

_characteristic_, _ideal_. The first cleared nature of accident, defect,

excrescence, (which was in fact his definition of nature, as so

cleared;) the second found the _stamen_ which connects character with

the central form; the third raised the whole and the parts to the

highest degree of unison." This is rather loose writing, and not very

close reasoning. After all, it may be safer to take words in their

common acceptation; for it is very difficult in a treatise of any

length, to preserve in the mind or memory the precise ideas of given

definitions. "Of genius, I shall speak with reserve; for no word has

been more indiscriminately confounded. By genius, I mean that power

which enlarges the circle of human knowledge, which discovers new

materials of nature, or combines the known with novelty; whilst talent

arranges, cultivates, polishes the discoveries of genius." Definitions,

divisions, and subdivisions, though intended to make clear, too often

entangle the ground unnecessarily, and keep the mind upon the stretch to

remember, when it should only feel. We think this a fault with Mr

Fuseli; it often renders him obscure, and involves his style of

aphorisms in the mystery of a riddle.

* * * * *

SECOND LECTURE.--This lecture comprises a compendious history of modern

art; commencing with Massaccio. If religion gave the impulse to both

ancient and modern, so has it stamped each with the different characters

itself assumed. The conceptions the ancients had of divinity, were the

perfection of the human form; thus form and beauty became godlike. The

Christian religion wore a more spiritual character. In ancient art,

human form and beauty were triumphant; in modern art, the greater

triumph was in humility, in suffering; the religious inspiration was to

be shown in its influence in actions less calculated to display the

powers, the energies of form, than those of mind. Mere external beauty

had its accompanying vices; and it was compelled to lower its

pretensions considerably, submit to correction, and take a more

subordinate part. Thus, if art lost in form it gained in expression, and

thus was really more divine. Art in its revival, passing through the

barbarity of Gothic adventurers, not unencumbered with senseless

superstitions, yet with wondrous rapidity, raised itself to the noblest

conceptions of both purity and magnificence. Sculpture had, indeed,

preceded painting in the works of Ghiberti Donato and Philippo

Brunelleschi, when Massaccio appeared. "He first perceived that parts

are to constitute a whole; that composition ought to have a centre;

expression, truth; and execution, unity. His line deserves attention,

though his subjects led him not to investigation of form, and the

shortness of his life forbade his extending those elements, which

Raffaelle, nearly a century afterwards, carried to perfection." That

great master of expression did not disdain to borrow from him--as is

seen in the figure of "St Paul preaching at Athens," and that of "Adam

expelled from Paradise." Andrea Mantegna attempted to improve upon

Massaccio, by adding form from study of the antique. Mr Fuseli considers

his "taste too crude, his fancy too grotesque, and his comprehension too

weak, to advert from the parts that remained to the whole that inspired

them; hence, in his figures of dignity or beauty, we see not only the

meagre forms of common models, but even their defects tacked to ideal

torsos." We think, however, he is deserving of more praise than the

lecturer was disposed to bestow upon him, and that his "triumphs," the

processions, (at Hampton Court,) are not quite justly called "a copious

inventory of classic lumber, swept together with more industry than

taste, but full of valuable materials." Yet when it is said, that he was

"not ignorant of expression," and that "his Burial of Christ furnished

Raffaelle with composition, and even "some figures and attitudes," the

severity of the opinion seems somewhat mitigated. Luca Signorelli, more

indebted to nature than the study of the antique, "seems to have been

the first who contemplated with a discriminating eye his object; saw

what was accidental, and what essential; balanced light and shade, and

decided the motion of his figures. He foreshortened with equal boldness

and intelligence." It was thought by Vasari, that in his "Judgment,"

Michael Angelo had imitated him. At this period of the "dawn of modern

art, Leonardo da Vinci broke forth with a splendour which distanced

former excellence; made up of all the elements that constitute the

essence of genius; favoured by education and circumstances--all ear, all

eye, all grasp; painter, poet, sculptor, anatomist, architect, engineer,

chemist, machinist, musician, man of science, and sometimes empiric, he

laid hold of every beauty in the enchanted circle, but without exclusive

attachment to one, dismissed in her turn each." "We owe him chiaroscuro,

with all its magic--we owe him caricature, with all its incongruities."

His genius was shown in the design of the cartoon intended for the

council-chamber at Florence, which he capriciously abandoned, wherein

the group of horsemen might fairly rival the greatness of Michael Angelo

himself; and in the well-known "Last Supper," in the refectory of the

Dominicans at Milan, best known, however, from the copies which remain

of it, and the studies which remain. Fra Bartolomeo, "the last master of

this period, first gave gradation to colour, form and masses to drapery,

and a grave dignity, till then unknown, to execution." His was the merit

of having weaned Raffaelle "from the meanness of Pietro Perugino, and

prepared for the mighty style of Michael Angelo Buonarotti." Mr Fuseli

is inspired by his admiration of that wonderful man, as painter,

sculptor, and architect.

"Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are

the elements of Michael Angelo's style. By these principles, he selected

or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as

architect, he attempted--and above any other man, succeeded--to unite

magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the

utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand. Character

and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient

to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him

indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the

patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity;

his women are moulds of generation, his infants teem with man; his men

are a race of giants. This is the 'terribile via' hinted at by Agostino

Caracci; though, perhaps, as little understood by the Bolognese as by

the blindest of his Tuscan adorers, with Vasari at their head. To give

the appearance of perfect ease to the most perplexing difficulty, was

the exclusive power of Michael Angelo. He is the inventor of epic in

painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine chapel which exhibits

the origin, the progress, and the final dispensations of theocracy. He

has personated motion in the groups of the cartoon of Pisa; embodied

sentiment on the monuments of St Lorenzo; unraveled the features of

meditation in the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine chapel; and in the

'Last Judgment,' with every attitude that varies the human body, traced

the master trait of every passion that sways the human heart. Though, as

sculptor, he expressed the character of flesh more perfectly than all

who went before or came after him, yet he never submitted to copy an

individual--Julio the Second only excepted; and in him he represented

the reigning passion rather than the man. In painting, he contented

himself with a negative colour, and as the painter of mankind, rejected

all meretricious ornament. The fabric of St Peter's scattered into

infinity of jarring parts by Bramante and his successors, he

concentrated; suspended the cupola, and to the most complex, gave the

air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him for all in all, was

Michael Angelo, the salt of art; sometimes, no doubt, he had his moments

of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the grandeur of his

forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy; both met with armies of

copyists, and it has been his fate to have been censured for their

folly." This studied panegyric is nevertheless vigorous--emulous as that

of Longinus, of showing the author to be--

"Himself, the great sublime he draws."

It hurries away the mind of the reader till it kindles a congenial

enthusiasm, we have the more readily given the quotation, as it is not

an unfair specimen of Mr Fuseli's power, both of thought and language.

Our author is scarcely less eloquent in his eulogy of Raffaelle which

follows. He has seized on the points of character of that great painter

very happily. "His composition always hastens to the most necessary

point as its centre, and from that disseminates, to that leads back, as

rays, all secondary ones. Group, form, and contrast are subordinate to

the event, and common-place ever excluded. His expression, in strict

unison with, and inspired by character; whether calm, agitated,

convulsed, or absorbed by the inspiring passion, unmixed and pure, never

contradicts its cause, equally remote from tameness and grimace: the

moment of his choice never suffers the action to stagnate or expire; it

is the moment of transition, the crisis, big with the past, and pregnant

with the future."

It is certainly true--the moment generally chosen by Raffaelle, is not

of the action completed, the end--but that in which it is doing. You

instantly acknowledge the power, while your curiosity is not quenched.

For instance, in the cartoon of the "Beautiful Gate," you see the action

at the word is just breaking into the miracle--the cripple is yet in his

distorted infirmity--but you see near him grace and activity of limb

beautifully displayed, in that mother and running child; and you look to

the perfection which, you feel sure, the miracle will complete. This is

by no means the best instance--it is the case in all his compositions

where a story is to be told. It is this action which, united with most

perfect character and expression, makes the life of Raffaelle's

pictures. We think, however, that even in so summary a history of art as

this, the object of which seems to be to mark the steps to its

perfection, the influence of Pietro Perugino should not have been

omitted. He is often very pure in sentiment, often more than bordering

on grace, and in colour perhaps superior to Raffaelle. Notwithstanding

Mr Fuseli's eulogy of Raffaelle, we doubt if he fully entered into his

highest sentiment. This we may show when we comment on another lecture.

While Rome and Tuscany were thus fostering the higher principles of art,

the fascination of colour was spreading a new charm to every eye at

Venice, from the pencils of Giorgione, and of Titian. Had not Titian

been a colourist, his genius was not unequal to the great style; perhaps

he has admitted of that style as much as would suit the predominant

character of his colouring. He worked less with chiaroscuro than colour,

which he endowed with all the sentiment of his subject. Mr Fuseli

considers landscape to have originated with Titian.

"Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the

rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon,

dates its origin from him:" so of portrait, he says--"He is the father

of portrait painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity,

and costume with subordination." The yet wanting charm of art--perfect

harmony, was reserved for Correggio. "The harmony and grace of Correggio

are proverbial; the medium which, by breadth of gradation, unites two

opposite principles, the coalition of light and darkness, by

imperceptible transition, are the element of his style." "This unison of

a whole predominates in all that remains of him, from the vastness of

his cupolas to the smallest of his oil pictures. The harmony of

Correggio, though assisted by exquisite hues, was entirely independent

of colour; his great organ was chiaroscuro in its most extensive

sense--compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of

Leonardi da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the

concentrated flash of Giorgione discordant abruptness. The bland,

central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demi-tints

into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Correggio, and affects

us with the soft emotions of a delicious dream." Here terminates the

great, the primal era. Such were the patriarchs of modern art. Here, it

may be said, terminated the great discoverers. Mr Fuseli pauses here to

observe, that we should consider the characteristic of each of these

painters, not their occasional deviations; for not unfrequently did

Titian rise to the loftiness of conception of Michael Angelo, and

Correggio occasionally "exceeded all competition in expression in the

divine features of his _Ecce Homo_." If Mr Fuseli alludes to the _Ecce

Homo_ now in our National Gallery, we cannot go along with him in this

praise--but in that picture, the expression of the true "Mater dolorosa"

was never equaled. Art now proceeds to its period of "Refinement." The

great schools--the Tuscan, the Roman, the Venetian, and the

Lombard--from whatever cause, separated. Michael Angelo lived to see his

great style polluted by Tuscan and Venetian, "as the ostentatious

vehicle of puny conceits and emblematic quibbles, or the palliative of

empty pomp and degraded luxuriance of colour." He considers Andrea del

Sarto to have been his copyer, not his imitator. Tibaldi seems to have

caught somewhat of his mind. As did Sir Joshua, so does Mr Fuseli

mention his Polypheme groping at the mouth of his cave for Ulysses. He

expresses his surprise that Michael Angelo was unacquainted with the

great talent of Tibaldi, but lavished his assistance on inferior men,

Sebastian del Piombo and Daniel of Volterra. We think he does not do

fair justice to the merits of these undoubtedly great men. We shall have

occasion hereafter to notice his criticism on the great work of

Sebastian, in our National Gallery. We are surprised that he should

consider Sebastian del Piombo deficient in ideal colour, and that the

lines of Daniel of Volterra are meagre and sterile of idea--his

celebrated Descent from the Cross being in its lines, as tending to

perfect the composition, and to make full his great idea, quite

extraordinary. Poor Vasari, who can never find favour with our author,

is considered the great depravator of the style of Michael Angelo.

At the too early death of Raffaelle, his style fell into gradual decay.

Still Julio Romano, and Polidoro da Carravaggio, "deserted indeed the

standard of their master, but with a dignity and magnitude of compass

which command respect."

The taste of Julio Romano was not pure enough to detach him from

"deformity and grimace" and "ungenial colour." Primaticcio and Nicolo

dell Abate propagated the style of Julio Romano on the Gallic side of

the Alps, in mythologic and allegoric works. These frescoes from the

Odyssea at Fontainbleau are lost, but are worthy admiration, though in

the feeble etchings of Theodore van Fulden. The "ideal light and shade,

and tremendous breadth of manner" of Michael Angelo Amerigi, surnamed

Il Caravaggi, are next commended. "The aim and style of the Roman school

deserve little further notice here, till the appearance of Nicolo

Poussin." His partiality for the antique mainly affected his style. "He

has left specimens to show that he was sometimes sublime, and often in

the highest degree pathetic." Mr Fuseli takes occasion, by contrasting

"the classic regularity" of Poussin with the "wildness of Salvator

Rosa"--we think unnecessarily, because there seems to be no true point

of comparison, and unjustly to censure that great, we may say, that

original painter. We have noticed occasionally a capricious dislike in

our author to some artists, for which we are at a loss to account. That

Salvator should "hide by boldness of hand his inability of exhibiting

her (Nature) impassioned," is a sentence that will scarcely meet with an

assenting critic. The wealth and luxury of Venice soon demanded of art,

to sacrifice the modesty of nature to ostentation. The principle of

Titian was, however, followed by Tintoretto, Bassan, Paul Veronese, and

then passed to Velasquez the Spaniard, in Italy. From him "Rubens and

Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France, and England,

with unequal success." The style of Correggio scarcely survived him, for

he had more imitators of parts than followers of the whole. His grace

became elegance under the hand of Parmegiano. "That disengaged play of

delicate forms, the 'saltezza' of the Italians, is the prerogative of

Parmegiano, though nearly always obtained at the expense of proportion."

We cannot agree with the lecturer, that the Moses of Parmegiano--if he

speaks of _the_ Moses referred to in the Discourses of Sir Joshua, of

which Mr Burnet, in his second edition, has given a plate--loses "the

dignity of the lawgiver in the savage." Such was the state of art to the

foundation of the Eclectic School by the Caracci--an attempt to unite

the excellences of all schools. The principles are perpetuated in a

sonnet by Agostino Caracci. The Caracci were, however, in their practice

above their precepts. Theirs, too, was the school of the "Naturalists."

Ludovico is particularly praised for his solemnity of hue, most suited

to his religious subjects--"that sober twilight, the air of cloistered

meditation, which you have so often heard recommended as the proper tone

of historic colour." If the recommendation has at our Academy been often

heard, it has entirely lost its influence; our English school is--with

an ignorance of the real object of colour, or with a very bad taste as

to its harmony--running into an opposite extravagance, destructive of

real power, glaring and distracting where it ought to concentrate

through vision the ideas of the mind. Annibal Caracci had more power of

execution, but not the taste of Agostino. In their immediate scholars,

the lecturer seems little disposed to see fairly their several

excellences. They are out of the view of his bias. They are not Michael

Angelesque. His judgment of Domenichino--a painter who greatly restored

the simplicity and severity of the elder schools, and greatly surpassed

his masters--is an instance of blindness to a power in art which we

would almost call new, that is very strange to see. "Domenichino, more

obedient than the rest to his masters, aimed at the beauty of the

antique, the expression of Raphael, the vigour of Annibal, the colour of

Ludovico; and mixing something of each, fell short of all." Nor do we

think him just with regard to Guercino, or even at all describing his

characteristic style, when he speaks of his "fierceness of chiaroscuro,

and intrepidity of hand." We readily give up to him "the great but

abused talents of Pietro da Cortona," a painter without sentiment, and

the "fascinating but debauched and empty facility of Luca Giordano."

The German schools here come under consideration, which, simultaneously

with those of Italy, and without visible communication, spread the

principles of art. "Towards the decline of the fifteenth century, the

uncouth essays of Martin Schoen, Michael Wolgemuth, and Albrecht

Altorfer, were succeeded by the finer polish and the more dexterous

method of Albert Durer." His well-known figure of "Melancholy" would

alone entitle him to rank. The breadth and power of his wood engravings

are worthy of admiration. Mr Fuseli thinks "his colour went beyond his

age, and as far excelled, in truth and breadth of handling, the

oil-colour of Raphael, as Raphael excels him in every other quality.

His influence was not unfelt in Italy. It is visible in the style of

even the imitators of Michael Angelo--Andrea del Sarto, particularly in

the angular manner of his draperies. Though Albert Durer had no

scholars, he was imitated by the Dutch Lucas of Leyden. Now it was that

the style of Michael Angelo, spread by the graver of Giorgio Mantuano,

brought to Italy "those caravans of German, Dutch, and Flemish students,

who, on their return from Italy, at the courts of Prague and Munich, in

Flanders and the Netherlands, introduced the preposterous manner, the

bloated excrescence of diseased brains, which, in the form of man, left

nothing human; distorted action and gesture with insanity of

affectation, and dressed the gewgaws of children in colossal shapes."

But though such as Golzius, Spranger, Heyntz, and Abach, "fed on the

husks of Tuscan design, they imbibed the colour of Venice, and spread

the elements of that excellence which distinguished the succeeding

schools of Flanders and of Holland." So it was till the appearance of

Rubens and Rembrandt--"both of whom, disdaining to acknowledge the usual

laws of admission to the temple of Fame, boldly forged their own keys,

entered, and took possession, each of a most conspicuous place, by his

own power." Rubens, with many advantages, acquired in his education at

Antwerp, and already influenced by the gorgeous pomp of Austrian and

Spanish superstition, arrived in Italy rather as the rival than pupil of

the masters whom he travelled to study. Whatever he borrowed from the

Venetian school--the object of his admiration--he converted into a new

manner of florid magnificence. It is just the excellence of Rubens--the

completeness, the congruity of his style--that has raised him to the

eminence in the temple of fame which he will ever occupy. A little short

of Rubens is intolerable: the clumsy forms and improprieties of his

imitators are not to be endured. Mr Fuseli excepts Vandyck and Abraham

Drepenbeck from the censure passed upon the followers of Rubens. As

Drepenbeck is not so well known, we quote the passage respecting

him:--"The fancy of Drepenbeck, though not so exuberant, if I be not

mistaken, excelled in sublimity the imagination of Rubens. His

Bellerophon, Dioscuri, Hippolytus, Ixion, Sisyphus, fear no competitor

among the productions of his master." Rembrandt he considers a genius of

the first class in all but form. Chiaroscuro and colour were the

elements, in fact, in which Rembrandt reveled. In these he was the

poet--the maker. He made colour and chiaroscuro throw out ideas of

sublimity: that he might throw himself the more into these great

elements of his art, and depend solely on their power, he seems

purposely not to have neglected form, but to have selected such as,

without beauty to attract, should be merely the objects of life, the

sensitive beings in his world of mystery. That such was his intention we

cannot doubt; because we cannot imagine the beautiful but too attractive

figures of the Apollo or the Venus adopted into one of his pictures.

Excepting in a few instances, we would not wish Rembrandt's forms other

than they are. They appear necessary to his style. Mr Fuseli speaks very

favourably of art in Switzerland; but says there are only two painters

of name--Holbein, and Francis Mola. The designs of the Passion and Dance

of Death of the former, are instanced as works of excellence. Mola, we

are surprised to find ranked as Swiss; for he is altogether, in art,

Italian. The influence of the school and precepts of the Caracci,

produced in France an abundant harvest of mediocrity. In France was the

merit of Michael Angelo first questioned. There are, however, names that

rescue France from the entire disgrace of the abandonment of the true

principles of art: Nicolo Poussin, Le Sueur, Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon,

and Pierre Mignard. The Seven Works of Charity, by Seb. Bourdon, teem

with surprising, pathetic, and always novel images; and in the Plague of

David, by Pierre Mignard, our sympathy is roused by energies of terror

and combinations of woe, which escaped Poussin and Raphael himself." Of

Spanish art he says but little, but that "the degree of perfection

attained by Diego Velasquez, Joseph Ribera, and Murillo, in pursuing the

same object by means as different as successful, impresses us with deep

respect for the variety of their powers." Art, as every thing else, has

its fashion. The Spanish school have, of later years, been more eagerly

sought for; and a strange whim of the day has attached a very

extraordinary value to the works of Murillo--a painter in colour

generally monotonous, and in form and expression almost always vulgar.

Art in England is the next subject of the lecture. He takes a view of it

from the age of Henry VIII. to our own. No great encouragement was here

given to art till the time of Charles I.: Holbein, indeed, and Zucchero,

under Elizabeth, were patronized, but "were condemned to Gothic work and

portrait painting." The troubles and death of Charles I. were a sad

obstacle to art. "His son, in possession of the Cartoons of Raphael, and

with the magnificence of Whitehall before his eyes, suffered Verio to

contaminate the walls of his palaces, or degraded Lely to paint the

Cymons and Iphigenias of his court; whilst the manner of Kneller swept

completely what might yet be left of taste under his successors. Such

was the equally contemptible and deplorable state of English art, till

the genius of Reynolds first rescued from the mannered depravation of

foreigners his own branch; and, soon extending his view to the higher

departments of art, joined that select body of artists who addressed the

ever open ear, ever attentive mind, of our royal founder with the first

idea of this establishment." After this little parade of our artists as

a body, but four are mentioned by name--"Reynolds, Hogarth,

Gainsborough, and Wilson."

We are surprised that, in this summary history of art, no notice has

been taken of Van Eyck, and the influence of his discovery on art. Nor

are we less surprised that so important a branch as landscape painting

should have been omitted; Claude and Gaspar Poussin not mentioned; yet,

in the English school, Wilson is spoken of, whose sole merit rested upon

his landscape. He should more distinctly have stated his purpose to

treat only of high and historical art.

* * * * *

THIRD LECTURE.--In the commencement, there is an unnecessary, and rather

affectedly written disquisition of the old question, or rather

comparison between poetry and painting, from which nothing is to be

learned; nor does it suggest any thing. Nor do we now-a-days want to

read pages to tell us what invention is, and how it differs from

creation--nor is it at all important in matters of art, that we should

draw any such distinction at all. It is far better to go at once "in

medias res," and take it for granted that the reader both knows and

feels, without metaphysical discussion, what that invention is which is

required to make a great painter. Nor are we disposed to look upon

otherwise than impertinent, while we are waiting for didactic rules, the

being told that "he who discovers a gold mine, is surely superior to him

who afterwards adapts the metal for use;" especially when it is paraded

with comparisons between "Colombo" and "Amerigo Vespucci," and a

misplaced panegyric on Newton. And much of this is encumbered with

language that fatigues and makes a plain matter obscure. There is a

little affectation sometimes in Mr Fuseli's writing of Ciceronic

_ambages_, that is really injurious to the good sense and just thoughts,

which would without this display, come free, open, and with power. Some

pages, too, are taken up with a preliminary argument--"_whether it be

within the artist's province or not, to find or to combine a subject

from himself, without having recourse to tradition, or the stores of

history and poetry_." We have a display of learning to little purpose,

quotations from Latin and Greek, really "nihil ad rem;" the "[Greek:

phantasias]" of the Greek, and "visiones" of the Romans. Who that ever

saw even one work of Hogarth, the "Marriage a la Mode," would for a

moment think the question worth a thought. "The misnamed gladiator of

Agasias," seems forced into this treatise, for the sole purpose of

showing Mr Fuseli's reading, and after all, he leaves the figure as

uncertain as he finds it. He _once_ thought it might have been an

Alcibiades rushing from the flames, when his house was fired; but is

more satisfied that "it might form an admirable Ulysses bestriding the

deck of his ship to defend his companions from the descending fangs of

Scylla, or rather, with indignation and anguish, seeing them already

snatched up, and writhing in the mysterious gripe." In such fanciful

humours, it might be made to mean any thing or any body. And we are,

after all, quite at a loss to know whether the _conjecture_ is offered

as a specimen of "_invention_." He considers the cartoon of Pisa "the

most striking instance, of the eminent place due to this _intuitive

faculty among the principal organs of invention_"--we mark these words

in italics, not quite certain of their meaning. The work is engraved for

Foster, by Schiavonetti; and a wonderful work it is--the work of Michael

Angelo begun in competition with Leonardo da Vinci. The original is said

to have been destroyed by Baccio Bandinelli; still there are the ancient

prints and drawings which show the design, and there is a small copy at

Holkham. Benvenuto Cellini--and could there be a better

authority?--denies that the powers afterwards exerted in the Capella

Sistina, arrive at half its excellence. Mr Fuseli's description is so

good, that we give it entire. "It represents an imaginary moment

relative to the war carried on by the Florentines against Pisa; and

exhibits a numerous group of warriors, roused from their bathing in the

Arno, by the sudden signal of a trumpet, and rushing to arms. This

composition may, without exaggeration, be said to personify with

unexampled variety, that motion which Agasias and Theon embodied in

single figures. In imagining this transient moment from state of

relaxation to a state of energy, the ideas of motion, to use the bold

figure of Dante, seem to have showered into the artist's mind. From the

chief, nearly placed in the centre, who precedes, and whose voice

accompanies the trumpet, every age of human agility, every attitude,

every feature of alarm, haste, hurry, exertion, eagerness, burst into so

many rays, like sparks flying from the hammer. Many have reached, some

boldly step, some have leaped on the rocky shore; here two arms emerging

from the water, grapple with the rock, there two hands cry for help, and

their companions bend over or rush on to assist them: often imitated,

but inimitable, is the ardent feature of the grim veteran, whose every

sinew labours to force over the dripping limbs his clothes, whilst

gnashing, he pushes the foot through the rending garment. He is

contrasted by the slender elegance of a half-averted youth, who, though

eagerly buckling the armour to his thigh, methodizes haste; another

swings the high-raised hauberk on his shoulder; whilst one, who seems a

leader, mindless of his dress, ready for combat, and with brandished

spear, overturns a third, who crouched to grasp a weapon; one, naked

himself, buckles on the mail of his companion, and he, turned toward

the enemy, seems to stamp impatiently the ground. Experience and rage;

old vigour, young velocity; expanded or contracted, vie in exertions of

energy. Yet in this scene of tumult, one motive animates the

whole--eagerness to engage, with subordination to command. This

preserves the dignity of the action, and from a strangling rabble,

changes the figures to men, whose legitimate contest interests our

wishes." Another example is given--Raffaelle's "Incendio del Borgo"--a

good description follows: "the enraged elements of _wind_ and fire," we

do not see in the original, not even in the drapery of the woman with

her back to us in the foreground. Speaking of this power of "invention,"

he says--after having, as we conceive, mistaken the aim of Raffaelle in

his Madonnas, and Holy families, which was somewhat beyond even the

"charities of father, son, and mother"--"Nor shall I follow it in its

more contaminated descent, to those representations of local manners and

national modifications of society, whose characteristic discrimination

and humorous exuberance, for instance, we admire in Hogarth, but which,

like the fleeting passions of the day, every hour contributes something

to obliterate, which soon become unintelligible by time, or degenerate

into caricature, the chronicle of scandal, the history-book of the

vulgar." It seems, strangely enough, to have been the fashion among the,

in comparison with Hogarth, puny academicians of that day, to underrate

that great painter, that moral painter. We really should pity the

infatuated prejudice of the man, who could see in the deep tragedy, the

moral tragedy, "Marriage a la Mode," any _humorous_ exuberance; or not

understand that the passions set forth, and for a moral end, are not

"the fleeting passions of the day," but as permanent as human

nature--who could see, in such series of pictures, any "caricature," or

that their object is to "chronicle scandal." That it is the "history of

the vulgar," we dispute not. For it is drama of the vulgar as of the

unvulgar--a deep tragedy of human nature; alas! time has not made

"_unintelligible_" these _not_ "fleeting passions of the day." As long

as man is man, will Hogarth be true to nature; and nothing in art is

more strange, than that such opinions should emanate from an Academy,

and be either ventured upon or received _ex cathedra_.

Invention, according to Mr Fuseli, receives its subjects from poetry or

tradition--"they are _epic_ or sublime, _dramatic_ or impassioned,

_historic_ or circumscribed by truth. The first _astonishes_, the second

_moves_, the third _informs_." We confess ourselves weary of this sort

of classification. They only tend to hamper the writer, painter, and

critic. It is possible for a work to admit all three, and yet preserve

its unity. And such we believe to be the case with Homer. He is epic and

dramatic in one, and certainly historic. It is more ingenious than

unquestionable, that Homer's purpose was to "impress one forcible idea

of war--its origin, its progress, and its end." Nor will the "Iliad" be

read with greater delight, by the reader's reception of such an idea.

The drawing forth the purpose of Michael Angelo's design--his invention,

in the series of frescoes in the Sistine Chapel--is more happy. That

theocracy is the subject--the dispensations of Providence to man--the

Creation--life and adoration in Adam and Eve, their sin, their

punishment, their separation from God--justice and grace in the Deluge

and covenant with Noah--prophets, sibyls, herald the Redeemer--and the

patriarchs--the Son of Man--the brazen serpent--and the Fall of

Haman--the giant subdued by the stripling in Goliah and David--and the

conqueror destroyed by female weakness in Judith, are types of his

mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces him immortal. The Last

Judgment, and the Saviour the Judge of man, complete the whole--and the

Founder and the race are reunited. Such is the spirit of the general

invention. "The specific invention of the pictures separate, as each

constitutes an independent whole, deserves our consideration next: each

has its centre, from which it disseminates, to which it leads back all

secondary points, arranged, hid, or displayed, as they are more or less

organs of the inspiring plan; each rigorously is circumscribed by its

generic character." The more particular criticism on this great work of

Michael Angelo, is very good, and we earnestly refer the reader to it.

He thinks the genius of Michael Angelo more generic in its aim--that of

Raffaelle more specific. That as M. Angelo's aim was the "destiny of

man, simply considered as the subject of religion, faithful or

rebellious," admitting only a "general feature of the passions;" so, in

the hands of Raffaelle, the subject would have teemed with a choice of

imagery to excite our sympathies; "he would have combined all possible

emotions with the utmost variety of probable or real character; all

domestic, politic, religious relations--whatever is not local in virtue

and in vice; and the sublimity of the greatest events would have been

merely the minister of sympathies and passions." The latter mode of

representing the subject, that of Raffaelle, he considers dramatic. The

distinction is, however, doubtful: we do not see why the mode of M.

Angelo may not be held to be equally dramatic. The criticism on the

comparison between Raffaelle's and Michael Angelo's Adam and Eve, if not

quite just, is striking. "The elevation of Michael Angelo's soul,

inspired by the operation of creation itself, furnished him at once with

the feature that stamped on human nature its most glorious prerogative;

whilst the characteristic subtility, rather than sensibility, of

Raffaelle's mind, in this instance, offered nothing but a frigid

succedaneum--a symptom incident to all, when, after the subsided

astonishment on a great and sudden event, the mind, recollecting itself,

ponders on it with inquisitive surmise. In Michael Angelo, all

self-consideration is absorbed in the sublimity of the sentiment which

issues from the august presence that attracts Eve; 'her earthly,' in

Milton's expression, 'by his heavenly overpowered,' pours itself in

adoration; whilst, in the inimitable cast of Adam's figure, we trace the

hint of that half-conscious moment, when sleep began to give way to the

vivacity of the dream inspired. In Raffaelle, creation is complete--Eve

is presented to Adam, now awake; but neither the new-born charms, the

submissive grace, and virgin purity, of the beauteous image; nor the

awful presence of her Introductor, draw him from his mental trance, into

effusions of love or gratitude; at ease reclined, with fingers pointing

at himself and his new mate, he seems to methodize the surprising event

that took place during his sleep, and to whisper the words--'flesh of my

flesh.'" Not subscribing to any criticism which concludes insensibility

of mind to Raffaelle, and which is rather inconsistent with the judgment

made by Mr Fuseli, that he was the painter of expression, from the

utmost conflict of passions, to the enchanting round of gentler emotion,

and the nearly silent hints of mind and character--we look to the object

of the painter in this his series of works called his Bible. The first

five pictures represent only the act of creation--the Deity, the

Creator--all nature, is as yet passive--even adoration, the point chosen

by Michael Angelo, might be said scarcely to have begun--the plan is

developed, not put in action. As yet, the Deity is all in all--Eve, his

gift to Adam, is the last of this division of the series. As in Genesis,

there is the bare, short statement, grand from its simplicity, and our

knowledge of its after consequences; but in the words unimpassioned--so

Raffaelle, that he might make his pictorial language agree with the

written book, with utmost forbearance, lest he should tell more, and

beyond his authority, in this portion of the series manifestly avoids

expression, or the introduction of any feeling that would make the

creatures more than the most passive recipients of the goodness of their

Maker. Nor is there authority to show, that as _yet_ they were fully,

perfectly conscious of the nature of the gifts of life and

companionship; and we certainly do not agree with Mr Fuseli, that it was

a moment for Adam to show his sensibility to the personal charms of

Eve--the pure Adam--nor was he--the as yet untransgressing Adam--to feel

fear, in "the awful presence of the Introductor." Raffaelle's aim seems

to have been, to follow the text in its utmost simplicity, that the

unlettered might read--and this justifies in him the personality of the

Creator, and the apparently manual act of his creation, corresponding

with the words--"God _made_." The "allegoric drama" of the Church

empire, that fills the stanzas of the Vatican, is praised by Mr Fuseli,

with a full understanding of the purpose of the painter, and feeling for

its separate parts. He does not cavil, as some have done, at the

anachronisms. "When," says an able, reflecting, and very amusing

author,[2] "Aristotle, Plato, Leo X., and Cardinal Bembo, are brought

together in the school of Athens, every person must admit, that such

offences as these, against truths so obvious, if they do not arise from

a defect of understanding, are instances of inexcusable carelessness."

Here we think this writer has missed the key of explanation. The very

picture is the history of the progress of mind, through science and

philosophy, to the acknowledgment of an immortal being. The very subject

amalgamates, in one moral idea, times, epochs, localities. It treats of

that which passes over time, and embodies only its results. Mr Fuseli

notices not these anachronisms, but says aptly of the picture--"What was

the surmise of the eye and wish of hearts, is gradually made the result

of reason, in the characters of the school of Athens, by the researches

of philosophy, which, from bodies to mind, from corporeal harmony to

moral fitness, and from the duties of society, ascends to the doctrine

of God and hopes of immortality." The very entertaining author whom we

have quoted above, we must here, somewhat out of place, observe, has,

with Mr Fuseli, mistaken the character of Hogarth's works. He

says--"Hogarth has painted comedy!" and what is very strange, he seems

to rank him as a comedian with "Pope, Young and Crabbe"--the last, the

most tragic in his pathos of any writer. The invention in the Cartoons

comes next under Mr Fuseli's observation. "In whatever light we consider

their invention, as parts of _one whole_, relative to each other, or

independent _each of the rest_, and as single subjects, there can be

scarcely named a beauty or a mystery, of which the Cartoons furnish not

an instance or a clue; _they are poised between perspicuity and

pregnancy of moment_." We believe we understand the latter sentence; it

is, however, somewhat affected, and does not rightly balance the

_perspicuity_. We must go back, however, to a passage preceding the

remarks on the Cartoons; because we wish, above all things, to vindicate

the purest of painters from charges of licentiousness. He sees in Cupid

and Psyche a voluptuous history: this may or may not be so--we think it

is far from being such; but when he adds, "the voluptuous history of his

(Raffaelle's) own _favourite passion_," he is following a prejudice, an

unfounded story--one which we think, too, has in no slight degree

influenced his general criticism and estimation of Raffaelle. We would

refer the reader to "Passavant's Life of Raffaelle," where he will see

this subject investigated, and the tale refuted. It is surprising, but

good men affect to speak of amorous passion as if it were a crime; by

itself it may disgust, but surely coldness is not the better nature.

Insensibilities of all kinds must be avoided, even where "Amor," as Mr

Fuseli calls him, and Psyche are the subjects. It is the happiest genius

that shall signify without offence the necessary existence of passion,

and leave purity in its singleness and innocence. How exquisitely is

this done by Shakspeare in his "Romeo and Juliet!" He keeps the lovers

free from every grosser particle of love, while he throws it all upon

the subordinate characters, particularly the nurse, whose part in the

drama, in no small degree, tends to naturalise to our sympathy the

youth, the personal beauty, and whole loveliness, of the unhappy Romeo

and Juliet.

The differences of manner in which the same subject, "the Murder of the

Innocents," has been represented by several painters, according to the

genius of each, are well noticed. "History, strictly so called, follows

the drama; fiction now ceases, and invention consists only in selecting

and fixing with dignity, precision, and sentiment, the moments of

_reality_." He instances, by a given subject, that were the artist to

choose the "Death of Germanicus," he is never to forget that he is to

represent "a Roman dying amidst Romans," and not to suffer individual

grief to un-Romanize his subject. "Germanicus, Agrippina, Caius,

Vitellius, the Legates, the Centurions at Antioch, the hero, the

husband, the father, the friend, the leader--the struggles of nature and

sparks of hope, must be subjected to the physiognomic character and

features of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the Caesar of Tiberius.

Maternal, female, connubial passion, must be tinged by Agrippina, the

woman absorbed in the Roman, less lover than companion of her husband's

grandeur. Even the bursts of friendship, attachment, allegiance, and

revenge, must be stamped by the military ceremonial, and distinctive

costume of Rome." For an instance of this propriety of invention in

history, reference is made, we presume as much, to Mr West's "Death of

Wolfe." Undoubtedly, this is Mr West's best picture. The praise from Mr

Fuseli was, in all probability, purely academic; he frequently showed

that he did not too highly estimate the genius of the painter. Having

given these outlines of general and specific invention in the epic,

dramatic, and historic branches of art, he admits that there is not

always a nice discrimination of their limits: "and as the mind and fancy

of man, upon the whole, consist of mixed qualities, we seldom meet with

a human performance exclusively made up of epic, dramatic, or pure

historic materials." This confession, as it appears to us, renders the

classification useless to a student, and shows a yet incomplete view of

arrangement, and specification of the power, subjects, and means of art.

Indeed Mr Fuseli proceeds to instances wherein his epic assumes the

dramatic, the dramatic the epic, and the historic both. There does seem

something wanting in an arrangement which puts the _Iliad_ and

_Odyssey_, two works essentially different, in the same category. We do,

therefore, venture the opinion, that such distinctions are, more

particularly in painting, not available. With Sir Joshua, he considers

borrowing justifiable, and that it does not impair the originality of

invention. The instances given of happy adoption are the "Torso of

Apollonius," by Michael Angelo; of the figure of "Adam dismissed from

Paradise," by Raffaelle, borrowed from Massaccio, as likewise the figure

of "Paul at Athens;" and for figures of Michael Angelo's, Raffaelle,

Parmegiano, Poussin, are all indebted to the cartoon of Pisa. The

lecture concludes with some just remarks upon the "Transfiguration," and

a censure upon the coldness of Richardson, and the burlesque of the

French critic Falconet, who could not discover the point of contact

which united the two parts of this celebrated picture. "Raphael's design

was to represent Jesus as the Son of God, and, at the same time, the

reliever of human misery, by an unequivocal fact. The transfiguration on

Tabor, and the miraculous cure which followed the descent of Jesus,

united, furnished the fact. The difficulty was, how to combine two

successive actions in one moment. He overcame it, by sacrificing the

moment of cure to that of the apparition, by implying the lesser miracle

in the greater. In subordinating the cure to the vision, he obtained

sublimity; in placing the crowd and patient on the foreground, he gained

room for the full exertion of his dramatic powers. It was not necessary

that the demoniac should be represented in the moment of recovery, if

its certainty could be expressed by other means. It is implied, it is

placed beyond all doubt, by the glorious apparition above; it is made

nearly intuitive by the uplifted hand and finger of the apostle in the

centre, who, without hesitation, undismayed by the obstinacy of the

demon, unmoved by the clamour of the crowd, and the pusillanimous

scepticism of some of his companions, refers the father of the maniac,

in an authoritative manner, for certain and speedy help to his Master on

the mountain above, whom, though unseen, his attitude at once connects

with all that passes below. Here is the point of contact; here is that

union of the two parts of the fact in one moment, which Richardson and

Falconet could not discover."

It is with diffidence that we would suggest any thing upon a work that

has so nearly exhausted criticism; but we will venture an observation,

and if we are correct, the glory of the subject is heightened by its

adoption. It has ever appeared to us to have purposed showing at one

view, humanity in its highest, its divinely perfected state, the manhood

taken into Godhead; and humanity in its lowest, its most forlorn, most

degraded state, in the person of a demoniac: and this contrast seems

acknowledged--abhorrently felt, by the reluctant spirit within the

sufferer, whose attitude, starting from the effulgence and the power

which is yet to heal him, being the strong action of the lower part of

the picture, and one of suffering, throws the eye and mind of the

spectator at once and permanently from earth to the heavenly vision, to

ascending prophets, and that bright and central majesty, "whose

countenance," Mr. Fuseli observes, "is the only one we know expressive

of his superhuman nature." This idea of transformation to a higher

nature is likewise kept up in the figures of the ascending prophets, and

the apostles below.

* * * * *

The Fourth Lecture is in continuation of the subject--Invention; but we

have left little space for further remarks. In another number of Maga we

shall resume our review of the lectures.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Perhaps the author of the lectures received this ill

opinion of Pausanias from Julius Caesar Scaliger, who treats him as an

impostor; but he is amply vindicated by Vossius. He lived in the second

century, and died very old at Rome. In his account of the numerous

representations of the [Greek: Charites], he seems to throw some light

upon a passage in Xenophon's Memorabilia, which, as far as we know, has

escaped the notice of the commentators. It is in the dialogue between

Socrates and the courtesan Theodote. She wishes that he would come to

her, to teach her the art of charming men. He replies, that he has no

leisure, being hindered by many matters of private and public

importance; and he adds, "I have certain mistresses which will not allow

me to be absent from them day nor night, on account of the spells and

charms, which learning, they receive from me"--[Greek: eisi de kai

philai moi, ai oute hemeras oute nuktos aph auton easousi me apienai,

philtra te manthanousai par emon kai epodas.] Who were these [Greek:

philai]? Had he meant the virtues or moral qualities, he would have

spoken plainer, as was his wont; but here, where the subject is the

personal beauty, the charms of Theodote, it is more in the Socratic vein

that he refers to other _personal_ charms, which engage his thoughts

night and day, and keep him at home. Now, it appears too, that Socrates

was taken to see her, on account of the fame of her beauty, and goes to

her when she is sitting, or rather standing, to a painter; and it is

evident from the dialogue, that she did not refuse the exhibition of her

personal charms. It seems, then, not improbable, that Socrates was

induced to go to her as the painter went, for the advantage of his art

as a sculptor, and that the art was that one at home, the [Greek: tis

philotera sou endon]. Be that as it may, it is extremely probable that

the [Greek: philai] were some personifications of feminine beauty, upon

which he was then at work. Are there, then, any such recorded as from

his hand? Pausanias says there were. "Thus Socrates, the son of

Sophroniscus, made for the Athenians statues of the Graces, before the

vestibule of the citadel," And adds the curious fact, that after that

time the Graces were represented naked, and that these were clothed.

[Greek: Sokrates te o Sophrotonischon pro tes es ten akropolin esodon

Chariton eirgasato agalmata Athenaiois. Kai tauta men estin homoios

apanta en estheti. Oi de usteron, ouk oida eph hoto, metabeblekasi to

schema autais. Charitas goun, oi kat eme eplasson te kai egraphon

gumnas]. Did not Socrates allude to these his statues of the

Graces?--_Pausanias_, cap. xxxv. lib. 9.

[2] _The Literary Conglomerate, or Combination of Various

Thoughts and Facts._ Oxford: 1839. Printed by Thomas Combe.

SOMETHING ABOUT MUSIC.

Gentle Christians, pity us! We are just returned from a musical

entertainment, and, with aching head and stunned ears, sit down and try

to recover our equanimity, sorely disturbed by the infliction which, we

regret to say, we have survived. Had we known how to faint, we had done

so on the spot, that ours might have been the bliss of being carried out

over the heads and shoulders of the audience ere the performance had

well begun--a movement that would have insured us the unfeigned thanks

of all whom we had rescued from their distressing situation under

pretence of bearing us off, splashing us with cold water, causing doors

to bang impressively during our exit, and the various other _petit

soins_ requisite to the conducting a "faint" with dignity.

But it could not be accomplished. We made several awkward attempts, so

little like, that their only result was our being threatened with a

policeman it we made any more disturbance; so, after a hasty glance

round had assured us of the impracticability of making our escape in any

more everyday style, we sat down with a stern resolution of

endurance--lips firmly compressed, eyes fixed in a stony gaze on the

orchestra, whence issued by turns groans, shrieks, and screams, from

sundry foully-abused instruments of music; accompanied by equally

appalling sounds from flat, shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,

backed by gigantic "basses," (double ones surely,) who, with voices like

the "seven devils" of the old Grecian, bellowed out divers

sentimentalisms about dying for love, when assuredly their most

proximate danger was of apoplexy.

Well, the affair came to an end, as, it is to be hoped, will every other

evil in this wicked world; in a spasm of thankfulness we extricated

ourselves from the crush, and reached our home, where, under the genial

influence of quiet and a cup of coffee, we can afford to laugh at the

past, (our own vehement indignation included,) and ruminate calmly on

the "how" and the "why" of the nuisance, which appears to us as well

worthy of being put down by act of parliament, as the ringing of muffin

bells and crying "sweep!"

It is a perfect puzzle to us by what process the standard of music has

become so lowered, as to make what is ordinarily served up under that

name be received as the legitimate descendant of the harmony divine

which erst broke on the ear of the listening world, when "the morning

stars sang together;" and, in the first freshness of its

creation--teeming with melody--angels deigned to visit this terrestrial

paradise, nor turned an exile's gaze to that heaven whose strains were

chanted in glad accordance with the murmuring stream, and music of the

waving forest--which, in its greenness and beauty, seemed but "a little

lower" than its celestial archetype, for

"Earth hath _this_ variety from heaven."

(Blessings on the poet for that line! We have a most firm belief in

Milton, and receive his representations of heaven as we would those of a

Daguerreotype.)

But it is even so. There is but one step from the sublime to the

ridiculous, and this entrancing art, it seems, has taken it; sorely

dislocating its graceful limbs, and injuring its goodly proportions in

the unseemly escapade. There--we have played over a simple air, one that

thrills through our heart of hearts; and as the notes die on our ears,

soothing though the strain be, we feel our indignation increase, and

glow still more fiercely against this--music, as it is by courtesy

called, for Heaven knows it has no legitimate claim to the name!--till

it reaches the crusading point, and we rush headlong to a war of

extermination against bars, rests, crotchets, quavers--undaunted even by

"staves," and formidable inflated semibreves.

We hate your crashing, clumsy chords, and utterly spit at and defy

chromatic passages from one end of the instrument to the other, and back

again; flats, sharps, and most appropriate "naturals," splattered all

over the page. The essential spirit of discord seems let loose on our

modern music, tainted, as it were, with the moral infection that has

seized the land; it is music for a democracy, not the stately, solemn

measure of imperial majesty. Music to soothe! the idea is obsolete,

buried with the ruffs and farthingales of our great-grandmothers; or, to

speak more soberly, with the powdered wigs and hoops of their daughters.

There is music to excite, much to irritate one, and much more to drive a

really musical soul stark mad; but none to soothe, save that which is

drawn from the hiding-places of the past.

We should like to catch one of the old masters--Handel, for

instance--and place him within the range of one of our modern

executioners, to whose taste(!) _carte-blanche_ had been given. We think

we see him under the infliction. Neither the hurling of wig, nor yet of

kettle-drum, at the head of the performer, would relieve his outraged

spirit: he would strangle the offender on the spot, and hang himself

afterwards; and the jury would, in the first case, return a verdict of

justifiable homicide, and, in the second, of justifiable suicide, with a

deodand of no ordinary magnitude on the musical instrument that had led

to the catastrophe.

There is no repose, no refreshment to the mind, in our popular

compositions; they are like Turner's skies--they harass and fatigue,

leaving you certainly wondering at their difficulty, but, as certainly,

wishing they had been "impossible." There is to us more of touching

pathos, heart-thrilling expression, in some of the old psalm-tunes,

feelingly played, than in a whole batch of modernisms. The strains go

_home_, and the "fountains of the great deep are broken up"--the great

deep of unfathomable feeling, that lies far, far below the surface of

the world-hardened heart; and as the unwonted, yet unchecked, tear

starts to the eye, the softened spirit yields to their influence, and

shakes off the moil of earthly care; rising, purified and spiritualized,

into a clearer atmosphere. Strange, inexplicable associations brood over

the mind,

"Like the far-off dreams of paradise,"

mingling their chaste melancholy with musings of a still subdued, though

more cheerful character. How many glad hearts in the olden time have

rejoiced in these songs of praise--how many sorrowful ones sighed out

their complaints in those plaintive notes, that steal sadly, yet

sweetly, on the ear--hearts that, now cold in death, are laid to rest

around that sacred fane, within whose walls they had so often swelled

with emotion! Tell us not of neatly trimmed "cemeteries," redolent of

staring sunflowers, priggish shrubs, and all the modern coxcombry of the

tomb; with nicely swept gravel walks, lest the mourner should get "wet

on's feet," and vaults numbered like warehouses, where "parties may

bring their own minister," and be buried with any form, or no form, if

they like it better. No, give us the village churchyard with its sombre

yew-trees, among which

"The dial, hid by weeds and flowers,

Hath told, by none beheld, the solitary hours;"

its grassy hillocks, and mouldering grave-stones, where haply all record

is obliterated, and nought but a solitary "resurgam" meets the enquiring

eye; its white-robed priest reverently committing "earth to earth," in

sure and certain hope "of a joyful resurrection" to the slumbering clay,

that was wont to worship within the grey and time-stained walls, whence

the mournful train have now borne him to his last rest; while on the

ivy-clad tower fall the slanting golden beams of an autumnal sun, that,

in its declining glory, seems to whisper of hope and consolation to the

sorrowful ones, reminding them that the night of the tomb shall not

endure for ever, but that, so surely as the great orb of day shall

return on the wings of the morning to chase away the tears of the

lamenting earth, so surely shall the dust, strewed around that temple,

scattered though it may be to the winds of heaven, "rise again" in the

morning of the Resurrection, when death "shall be swallowed up in

victory."

"'Tis fit his trophies should be rife

Around the place where he's subdued;

The gate of death leads forth to life."

But we are wandering sadly from our subject; it is perhaps quite as well

that we have done so, for we should have become dangerous had we dwelt

much longer on it. We were on the point of wishing (Nero-like) that our

popular professors of the tuneful art had but one neck, that we might

exterminate them at a blow, or hang them with one gigantic

fiddle-string; but now, thanks to our episode, our exacerbated feelings

are so far mollified, that we will be content with wishing them

sentenced to grind knives on oil-less stones with creaking axles, till

the sufferings of their own shall have taught them consideration for the

ears of other people.

But music, real music--not in the harsh, exaggerated style now in the

ascendant, but simple, pure, melodious, such as might have entranced the

soul of a Handel, when, in some vision of night, sounds swept from

angelic harps have floated around him, the gifted one, in whose liquid

strains and stately harmonies fall on our ravished ears the echoes of

that immortal joy--such we confess to be one of our idols, before whose

shrine we pay a willing, gladsome homage; though now, alas! it must be

in dens and caves of the earth, since _modern_ heresy has banished it

from the temple of Apollo.

See how Toryism peeps out even in the fine arts! _Even_ did we say? They

are its legitimate province; "The old is better," is inscribed in

glowing character on the portals of the past. Old Painting! See the

throbbing form start from the pregnant canvass--the "Mother of God"

folding her Divine Son to her all but celestial arms--the Son of God

fainting beneath a load of woe, not his own. Old Poetry! Glorious old

Homer, with his magic song; and sturdy, oak-like in his strength, as in

his verdure, old Chaucer. Old Music! Hail, ye inspired sons of the lyre!

A noble host are ye, enshrined in the hearts of all loyal worshippers of

the tuneful god. And yet (we grieve to confess it) we, even we, spite of

all our enthusiasm, have been seen laughing at "old music," the aspiring

psalmody of a country church singing-pew.

Oh, to see the row of performers, the consequential choir, transcending

in importance (in their own eyes) the clerk, the curate, the rector, and

even the squire from the great hall, majestic and stern though he be,

with his awful wig and gold-headed cane! There are the fubsy

boys--copied apparently from cherubim--who, with glowing, distended

cheeks, are simpering on the ceiling, _doing_ the tenor, with wide open

mouths that would shame e'er a barn-door in the village; their red,

stumpy fingers sprawling over the music which they are (not) reading.

The pale, lantern-jawed youths, in yellow waistcoats and tall

shirt-collars, who look as if they were about to whistle a match, are

holloing out what is professionally, and in this instance with most

distressing truth, termed counter. "Counter" it is with a vengeance; and

not only so, but it is a neck-and-neck race between them and the urchins

aforesaid, which shall have done first. The shock-headed man, with chin

dropped into his neckerchief, and mouth twisted into every

_un_imaginable contortion, as though grinning through a horse-collar,

has the bass confided to his faithful keeping; and emits a variety of

growls and groans truly appalling, though evidently to his own great

comfort and satisfaction. The bassoon, the clarinet, the flute--but

how shall we describe them! Suffice it to say, that they appeared

to be suffering inexpressible torments at the hands of their

apoplectic-looking performers; who were all at the last gasp, and all

determined to die bravely at their posts. And then the entranced

audience, with half-shut eyes and quivering palms! Oh, it was too much;

we lost our character typo irretrievably that day; half suppressed

titters from the squire's pew were not to be borne. In that unhappy

moment we sinned away some quarter of a century's unrivalled reputation

for good manners and musical taste. Old Fiddlestrings never forgave us,

never did he vouchsafe us another anthem, spite of our entreaties and

protestations, and the thousand and one apologies for our ill-timed

merriment, which our fruitful brain invented on the spot. To his dying

day he preserved the utmost contempt for our judgment, not only in this

department of the fine arts, but also on every other subject. Not to

admire his music, was condemnation in every thing--an unpardonable

offence. We, who had been his great friend, patron, (or rather he was

ours,) to whom he had so often condescended on the Saturday evening to

hum, whistle, and too-too over the tune--of his own composing--that was

to be the admiration of the whole parish on the succeeding day--we were

henceforth to be as the uninitiated, and left to find out, and follow,

as we best might, the very eccentric windings of his Sunday's asthmatic

performance; which always went at the rate of three crotchets and a

cough, to the end of the psalm, which he took care should be an especial

long one.

Poor old man! we see him now, with his unruly troop of Sunday scholars

(in training for some important festival, to the due celebration of

which their labours were essential) singing, bawling we should say, out

of time and tune, to the utter discomfiture of his irritable temper,

(there is nothing like a false note for throwing your musical man into a

perfect tantrum,) and the bringing down on their unlucky heads a smart

tap with the bow of his violin, which led the harmony. There they stood

with their brown cheeks and white heads, fine specimens of the

agricultural interest; each one of them looking as if he could bolt a

poor, half-starved factory child at a mouthful--but certainly no

singers. It was beyond the power even of the accomplished old clerk

himself to make then such--an oyster, with its mouth full of sand, would

have sung quite as well; but still he laboured on with might and

main--with closed eyes, and open mouth--delightedly beating time with

his head, as long as matters went on not intolerably; for David's

musical soul supplied the deficiency in the sounds that entered his

unwearied ears. And then he sang so loud himself, that he certainly

could hear no one else, his voice being as monopolizing as the drone of

a bagpipe--or as a violent advocate for free trade! Happy urchins when

this was the case! for they were sure to be dismissed with the most

flattering encomiums on their vocal powers, when, if truth must be told,

the good old man had not heard a note.

But he is gathered to his fathers, and now sleeps beneath the sod in the

quiet churchyard of----. We well remember his funeral. 'Twas a lovely

day in spring when the long, lifeless trees and fields were bursting

into all the glory of May--for May was spring then, and not, as now,

cousin-german to winter; while the gay sunbeams played lovingly, like

youth caressing age, on the low church-tower, gilding the ivy that waved

in wild luxuriance around it. Slowly moved on the lowly train that bore

to the "house appointed for all living" the mortal remains of one whom

they well loved, and whose removal from among them--essential as he had

always seemed to the very identity of the village--was an event they had

never contemplated and which they now, in its unexpectedness, sorely

lamented. The village choir preceded it, singing those strains which

poor David's voice had so often led; and surely, for once, the spirit of

the old man rested on his refractory pupils; for rarely have I heard

sweeter notes than those that swelled on the balmy air, as the dusky

procession wound its way across the heath, waving with harebells, and

along the narrow lane, whose hedges were beginning to show the first

faint rose, till it reached the church porch, where the good rector

himself was waiting to pay the last token of respect to his humble

friend; while groups of villagers were loitering around to witness the

simple rites. Entering within the church, again was the voice of melody

heard, and again was as sweetly chanted that mournful psalm, which is

appointed, with such affecting appropriateness, for the burial of the

dead. "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my

tongue; I will keep my mouth, as it were, with a bridle, while the

ungodly is in my sight." Then came the dull, hollow sound of "earth to

earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes;" and so, amid many tears, (and we

confess our eyes were not dry,) closed the grave over one who, despite

some innocent, though mirth-provoking failings, was honoured by all who

knew him for the stern, unbending integrity of his character, and the

strictness with which he fulfilled all the duties of life. David was an

_honest_ man, one whose "word was as good as his bond," who "promised to

his hurt, and changed not." Would that as much might be said of many who

move in a higher sphere, and make far larger professions of sanctity

than he did! But he shall be remembered, when their names are blotted

out for ever.

"Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust."

The music which we hear in our social intercourse, is too generally--we

say it in grief, but in truth--detestable. "Like figures on a

dial-plate," sit the four-and-twenty Englishmen and Englishwomen, who

have been drawn together to receive their friend's hospitality; till the

awful silence convinces the host that some desperate effort must be made

to break the spell, and that the best thing is some music to set them

a-talking. Some _mimini-pimini_ Miss is in consequence selected as the

victim, (or rather, the victimizer,) and requested to "pain" the

company. She fidgets, bridles, and duly declines, at the same time

vigorously pulling off one of her gloves in evident preparation for the

attack. After much pressing, she reluctantly yields to what she had from

the first made up her mind to do; takes her seat at a grand pianoforte,

behind a couple of candles and an enormous music-book, and--crash go the

keys in a thundering prelude, (the pedal, and every other means of

increasing the noise being unscrupulously resorted to,) which, after

superhuman exertions, lands her in what, to our affrighted and stunned

ears, is evidently the key of Z flat! Who would have thought those

delicate hands could thus descend with the vigour of a pavior's hammer

on the unhappy ivories, that groan and shriek beneath the infliction, as

though fully sensible of the surpassing cruelty with which they are

treated.

But hark! she sings--"Rome, Rome, thou art _n'more_," (_sic_)--a furious

scramble on the keys, with a concluding bang--"On thy seven hills thou

satt'st of yore,"--another still more desperate and discordant flourish,

which continues alternating with her "most sweet voice," till she has

piped through the whole of her song: when the group around, apprehensive

of a repetition of the torture to which they have been subjected,

overwhelm her with thanks and expressions of admiration, under cover of

which they hurry her to her seat. Such is the stuff palmed off on us,

varied as it is by glees, screamed out by four voices all in different

keys; solos, squeaked out by stout gentlemen, and roared by pale lanky

lads of eighteen; duets by young ladies, who accidentally set out on

discordant notes, and don't find out the mistake till they come to the

finale; with occasionally a psalm crooned by worthy sexagenarians,

guiltless alike of ear and voice, but who, seeming to think it a duty to

add their mite to the inexpressible dissonance, perform the same to the

unmixed dismay of all their hearers.

We would far rather hear an unpretending street organ than such

abominations; and, indeed, some of the itinerant music is, to our

unsophisticated ears, sweet beyond expression, especially when

accompanied, as it is sometimes, by a rich Italian or reedy German

voice; for whose sake we can forgive the tuneless squalls that too often

greet our ears from ambulatory minstrels, be they of the Madonna, or

fishy, Dutch-swamp style of beauty. A sweet-toned street organ, heard in

the distance, when all around is still, is not a thing to be despised,

by those who have music enough in their souls to respond to the

slightest touches of Apollo's lyre. If the heart be but attuned to

harmony, it will vibrate to the simplest notes, faint though they be, as

by the wafting of the evening breeze among the chords of a neglected

harp, sadly hung upon the willows; it will cherish the feeblest idea,

and nurture it into perfect melody. As love begets love, so does harmony

beget its kind in the heart of him who can strike the keynote of nature,

and listen to the wild and solemn sounds that swell from her mysterious

treasure-house, and echo among her "eternal hills," while the celestial

arch concludes and re-affirms the wondrous cadence. But these are

secrets revealed to none but her loving worshipper; he who, with a

reverential homage, seeks the hidden recesses of her temple, to bend in

awe before her purest shrine. From him who lingers heedlessly in her

antechamber with faint loyalty, they are deeply veiled, and the glowing

revelations of her favoured ones seem but as the recital of a dream to

his cold heart: for "to _love_ is to know."

But surely of all instruments, the violin, first-rately played, is the

most--yes, we will say it--heavenly. Hark! to the clear, vocal melody,

now rapturously rising in one soul-exalting strain, anon melting away in

the saddest, tenderest lament, as though the soft summer breeze sighed

forth a requiem over the dying graces of its favourite flower; then

bursting forth in haughty, triumphant notes, swept in gusts from the

impassioned strings, as though instinct with life, and glowing with

disdain. Any one may see that painters are no musicians, else had they

furnished their angels not with harps--beautiful and sparkling as the

sea-foam, as are their most graceful chords--but with this, of all

instruments the most musical, whose tones admit of more variety than

any, (the Proteus organ alone excepted,) and whose delicious long-drawn

notes must entrance every one not absolutely soulless. Oh, they are

excruciatingly delightful! And yet you shall hear this identical violin,

in the hands of an everyday performer, emit such squeals and screams as

shall set your teeth on edge for a twelvemonth, curdle your whole frame,

and make you vehemently anathematize all benevolent institutions for the

relief of deafness.

Verily your violin is an exclusive instrument, and approachable by none

but the eldest born of Apollo, who, in all the majesty of hereditary

prerogative, calmly sway the dominions of their sire; while usurpers (as

is the meed of all who grasp unrighteous rule) are plunged in utter

confusion and ruin.

Warming with our theme, and impatient to manifest our royal descent, in

a paroxysm of enthusiasm we clutch our Cremona, clasp him lovingly to

our shoulder, and high waving in air our magical bow, which is to us a

sceptre, bring it down with a crash, exulting in the immortal harmony

about to gush, like a mountain torrent, from the teeming strings; when

lo! to our unmitigated disgust, it glides noiselessly along its hitherto

resounding path, for--ye gods and little fishes!--some murderous wretch,

at the instigation of we know not what evil sprite, has _greased_ the

horsehair, for which we solemnly devote him to the "bowstring," the

first time he is caught napping.

Well, it is over now, and we find ourselves once more on earth, after

knocking our head gainst the stars; and, ---- ---- bless us! we have sat

the fire out, having precisely one inch of candle left to go to bed by.

Good night, dearest reader. Can you find your way in the dark?

M. J.

THE PURPLE CLOAK; OR, THE RETURN OF SYLOSON TO SAMOS.

HEROD. III. 139.

I.

The king sat on his lofty throne in Susa's palace fair,

And many a stately Persian lord, and satrap proud, was there:

Among his councillors he sat, and justice did to all--

No supplicant e'er went unredrest from Susa's palace-hall.

II.

There came a slave and louted low before Darius' throne,

"A wayworn suppliant waits without--he is poor and all alone,

And he craves a boon of thee, oh king! for he saith that he has done

Good service, in the olden time, to Hystaspes' royal son."

III.

"Now lead him hither," quoth the king; "no suppliant e'er shall wait,

While I am lord in Susa's halls, unheeded at the gate;

And speak thy name, thou wanderer poor, pray thee let me know

To whom the king of Persia's land this ancient debt doth owe."

IV.

The stranger bow'd before the king--and thus began to speak--

Full well, I ween, his garb was worn, and with sorrow pale his cheek,

But his air was free and noble, and proudly flash'd his eye,

As he stood unknown in that high hall, and thus he made reply--

V.

"From Samos came I, mighty king, and Syloson my name;

My brother was Polycrates, a chief well known to fame;

That brother drove me from my home--a wanderer forth I went--

And since that hour my weary soul has never known content!

VI.

"Methinks I need not tell to thee my brother's mournful fate;

He lies within his bloody grave--a churl usurps his state--

Moeandrius lords it o'er the land, my brother's base born slave;

Restore me to that throne, oh king! this, this, the boon I crave.

VII.

"Nay, start not; let me tell my tale! I pray thee look on me,

And, prince, thou soon shalt know the cause that I ask this gift of thee;

Round Persia's king a bristling ring of spearmen standeth now,

But when Cambyses wore the crown--a wanderer poor wast _thou_!

VIII.

"Remember'st not, oh king! the day when, in old Memphis town,

Upon the night ye won the fight, thou wast pacing up and down?

The costly cloak that then I wore, its colours charm'd thy eye--

In sooth it was a gorgeous robe, of purple Tyrian dye--

IX.

"Let base-born peasants buy and sell, I gave that cloak to thee!

And for that gift on thee bestow'd, grant thou this boon to me--

I ask not silver, ask not gold--I ask of thee to stand

A prince once more on Samos' shore--my own ancestral land!"

X.

"Oh! best and noblest," quoth the king, "thou ne'er shalt rue the day,

When to Cambyses' spearman poor thou gav'st thy cloak away;

The faithless eye each well-known form and feature may forget,

But the deeds of generous kindness done--the heart remembers yet.

XI.

"To-day thou art a wanderer sad, but thou shalt sit, erelong,

Within thy fair ancestral hall, and hear the minstrel's song;

To-day thou art a homeless man--to-morrow thou shalt stand--

A conqueror and a sceptred king--upon thy native land.

XII.

"A cloud is on thy brow to-day--thy lot is poor and low,

To all who gaze on thee thou seem'st a man of want and wo;

But thou shalt drain the bowl erelong within thy own bright isle,

A wreath of roses round thy head, and on thy brow a smile."

XIII.

And he called the proud Otanes, one of the seven was he

Who laid the Magian traitor low, and set their country free;

And he bade him man a gallant fleet, and sail without delay,

To the pleasant isle of Samos, in the fair Icarian bay.

XIV.

"To place yon chief on Samos' throne, Otanes, be thy care,

But bloodless let thy victory be, his Samian people spare!"

For thus the generous chieftain said, when he made his high demand,

"I had rather still an exile roam, than waste my native land."

* * * * *

PART II.

I.

Oh, "monarchs' arms are wondrous long!"[3] their power is wondrous great,

But not to them 'tis given to stem the rushing tide of fate.

A king may man a gallant fleet, an island fair may give,

But can he blunt the sword's sharp edge, or bid the dead to live?

II.

They leave the strand, that gallant band, their ships are in the bay,

It was a glorious sight, I ween, to view that proud array;

And there, amid the Persian chiefs, himself he holds the helm,

Sits lovely Samos' future lord--he comes to claim his realm!

III.

Moeandrius saw the Persian fleet come sailing proudly down,

And his troops he knew were all too few to guard a leaguer'd town;

So he laid his crown and sceptre down, his recreant life to save--

Who thus resigns a kingdom fair deserves to be a slave.

IV.

He calls his band--he seeks the strand--they grant him passage free--

"And shall they then," his brother cried, "have a bloodless victory?

No--grant me but those spears of thine, and I soon to them shall show,

There yet are men in Samos left to face the Persian foe."

V.

The traitor heard his brother's word, and he gave the youth his way;

"An empty land, proud Syloson, shall lie beneath thy sway."

That youth has arm'd those spearmen stout--three hundred men in all--

And on the Persian chiefs they fell, before the city's wall.

VI.

The Persian lords before the wall were sitting all in state,

They deem'd the island was at peace--they reck'd not of their fate;

When on them came the fiery youth[4]--with desperate charge he came--

And soon lay weltering in his gore full many a chief of fame.

VII.

The outrage rude Otanes view'd, and fury fired his breast--

And to the winds the chieftain cast his monarch's high behest.

He gave the word, that angry lord--"War, war unto the death!"

Then many a scimitar flash'd forth impatient from its sheath.

VIII.

Through Samos wide, from side to side, the carnage is begun,

And ne'er a mother there is seen, but mourns a slaughter'd son;

From side to side, through Samos wide, Otanes hurls his prey,

Few, few, are left in that fair isle, their monarch to obey!

IX.

The new-made monarch sits in state in his loved ancestral bow'rs,

And he bids his minstrel strike the lyre, and he crowns his head

with flow'rs;

But still a cloud is on his brow--where is the promised smile?

And yet he sits a sceptred king--in his own dear native isle.

X.

Oh! Samos dear, my native land! I tread thy courts again--

But where are they, thy gallant sons? I gaze upon the slain--

"A dreary kingdom mine, I ween," the mournful monarch said,

"Where are my subjects good and true? I reign but o'er the dead!

XI.

"Ah! woe is me--I would that I had ne'er to Susa gone,

To ask that fatal boon of thee, Hystaspes' generous son.

Oh, deadly fight! oh, woeful sight! to greet a monarch's eyes!

All desolate--my native land, reft of her children, lies!"

XII.

Thus mourn'd the chief--and no relief his regal state could bring.

O'er such a drear unpeopled waste, oh! who would be a king?

And still, when desolate a land, and her sons all swept away,

"The waste domain of Syloson," 'tis call'd unto this day!

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Greek proverb.

[4] "The fiery youth, with desperate charge,

Made for a space an opening large."--MARMION.

LOVE AND DEATH.

O strong as the Eagle,

O mild as the Dove!

How like, and how unlike,

O Death and O Love!

Knitting Earth to the Heaven,

The Near to the Far--

With the step on the dust,

And the eyes on the star!

Interweaving, commingling,

_Both_ rays from God's light!

Now in sun, now in shadow,

Ye shift to the sight!

Ever changing the sceptres

Ye bear--as in play;

Now Love as Death rules us,

Now Death has Love's sway!

Why wails so the New-born?

Love gave it the breath.

The soul sees Love's brother--

Life enters on Death!

Why that smile the wan lips

Of the dead man above?

The soul sees Death changing

Its shape into Love.

So confused and so blending

Each twin with its brother,

The frown of one melts

In the smile of the other.

Love warms where Death withers,

Death blights where Love blooms;

Death sits by our cradles,

Love stands by our tombs!

Edward Lytton Bulwer.

Nov. 9, 1843.

THE BRIDGE OVER THE THUR.

FROM THE GERMAN.--GUSTAV SCHWAB.

Spurning the loud THUR'S headlong march,

Who hath stretcht the stony arch?

That the wayfarer blesses his path!

That the storming river wastes his wrath!

Was it a puissant prince, in quelling

This watery vassal, oft rebelling?--

Or earthly Mars, the bar o'erleaping,

That wrong'd his war of its onward sweeping?

Did yon high-nesting Castellan

Lead the brave Street, for horse and man?

And, the whiles his House creeps under the grass,

The Road, that he built, lies fair to pass?

Nay! not for the Bridge, which ye look upon,

Manly hest knit stone with stone.

The loved word of a woman's mouth

Bound the thundering chasm with a rocky growth.

She, in turret, who sitteth lone,

Listing the broad stream's heavier groan,

Kenning the flow, from his loosen'd fountains,

From the clouds, that have wash'd a score of mountains.

A skiff she notes, by the shelvy marge,

Wont deftly across to speed its charge;

Now jumping and twisting, like leaf on a lynn,

Wo! if a foot list cradle therein!

Sooner, than hath she THOUGHT her FEELING,

With travellers twain is the light plank reeling.

Who are they?... Marble watcher! Who?

Thy beautiful, youthful, only two!

Coming, glad, from the greenwood slaughter,

They reach the suddenly-swollen water;

But the nimble, strong, and young,

Boldly into the bark have sprung.

The game in the forest fall, stricken and bleeding;

Those river-waves are of other breeding!

And the shriek of the mother helpeth not,

At seeing turn upwards the keel of the boat.

Whilst her living pulses languish,

As she taketh in her anguish,

By the roar, her soul which stuns,

On the corses of her sons.

Needs must she upon the mothers think,

Who yet may stand beholding sink,

Under the hastily-roused billow,

Sons, upthriven to be their pillow.

Till, in her deeply-emptied bosom,

There buds a melancholy blossom,

Tear-nourisht:--the will the wo to spare

To others, which hath left her bare.

Ere doth her sorrow a throe abate,

Is chiseling and quarrying, early, late.

The hoarse flood chafes, with straiten'd tides:

Aloft, the proud Arch climbs and strides.

How her eyes, she fastens on frolicsome boys,

O'er the stone way racing, with careless noise.

Hark!--hark!--the wild Thur, how he batters his rocks!

But YE gaze, laugh, and greet the gruff chider, with mocks.

Or, she vieweth with soft footfall,

Mothers, following their children all.

A gleam of pleasure, a spring of yearning,

Sweetens her tears, dawns into her mourning.

And her pious work endureth!

And her pain a slumber cureth!

Heareth not yonder torrent's jars!

Hath her young sons above the stars!

Fontainbleau, 1843.

THE BANKING-HOUSE.

A HISTORY IN THREE PARTS. PART II.

CHAPTER I.

A NEGOTIATION.

It is vastly amusing to contemplate the activity and perseverance which

are exhibited in the regard shown by every man for his individual

interests. Be our faults what they may--and our neighbours are not slow

to discover them--it is very seldom indeed that we are charged with

remissness in this respect. So far from this being the case, a moralist

of the present day, in a work of no mean ability, has undertaken to

prove that selfishness is the great and crying evil of the age. Without

venturing to affirm so wholesale a proposition, which necessarily

includes in its censure professors and professions _par excellence_

unsecular and liberal, we may be permitted in charity to express our

regret, that the rewards apportioned to good men in heaven are not

bestowed upon those in whom the selfish principle is most rampant,

instead of being strictly reserved for others in whom it is least

influential; since it is more pleasing to consider celestial joys in

connexion with humanity at large, than with an infinitesimal minority of

mortals.

Whilst Michael Allcraft coolly and designedly looked around him, in the

hope of fixing on the prey he had resolved to find--whilst, cautious as

the midnight housebreaker, who dreads lest every step may wake his

sleeping victim, he almost feared to do what most he had at heart, and

strove by ceaseless effort to bring into his face the show of

indifference and repose;--whilst he was thus engaged, there were many,

on the other hand, eager and impatient to crave from him, as for a boon,

all that he himself was but too willing to bestow. Little did Michael

guess, on his eventful wedding-day, as his noble equipage rattled along

the public roads, what thoughts were passing in the minds of some who

marked him as he went, and followed him with longing eyes. His absorbing

passion, his exhilaration and delight, did not suffer him to see one

thin and anxious-looking gentleman, who, spyglass in hand, sat at his

cottage window, and brought as near as art allowed--not near enough to

satisfy him--the entranced and happy pair. That old man, with nine times

ten thousand pounds safe and snug in the stocks, was miserable to look

at, and as miserable in effect. He was a widower, and had a son at

Oxford, a wild, scapegrace youth, who had never been a joy to him, but a

trial and a sorrow even from his cradle. Such punishments there are

reserved for men--such visitations for the sins our fathers wrought, too

thoughtless of their progeny. How the old man envied the prosperous

bridegroom, and how vainly he wished that his boy might have done as

well; and how through his small grey eye, the labouring tear-drops

oozed, as he called fresh to mind again all that he had promised himself

at the birth of his unhappy prodigal! What would he not give to recover

and reform the wayward boy? The thought occurred to him, and he dallied

with it for his pleasure. "If I could but settle him with this young

Allcraft! Why should it not be done? I will give him all I have at once,

if necessary, and live in a garret, if it will save my poor Augustus. I

will speak to him on his return. What a companion and example for my

boy! Open and straightforward--steady as a rock--as rich as Croesus.

Most certainly I'll see him. I knew his father. I'll not grudge a few

thousands to establish him. Stick him to business, and he shall do yet."

The equipage rolled on as unconscious of the old man's dreams as were

its animated inmates; and in due time it passed a massive lodge, which

led through green and winding paths to the finest park and mansion in

the parish. Close to the lodge's porch there stood a tall and

gloomy-looking man, neatly dressed--alone. His arms were folded, and he

eyed the carriage thoughtfully and seriously, as though he had an

interest there, known to himself, and to no one else. He was a very

proud man that--the owner of this vast estate, master of unnumbered

acres, and feared rather than loved by the surrounding people. Wealth is

the most royal of despots--the autocrat of all the world. Men whose

sense of liberty forbids them to place their worst passions under wise

control, will crawl in fetters to lick the basest hand well smeared with

gold. There was not an individual who could say a good word for the

squire behind his back. You would hardly believe it, if you saw

individual and squire face to face. And there he stood, with as

ill-omened a visage as ever brought blight upon a party of pleasure. He

watched the panting horses out of sight--opened his gate, and walked the

other way. He, like the old man, had his plans, and an itching for a

share in Michael Allcraft's fortune. How he, so wealthy and respected,

could need a part of it, remains a mystery at present. The squire knew

his business. He went straightway to the banking-house, and made enquiry

respecting Allcraft's destination. He gained intelligence, and followed

him at once. They met abroad--they returned home in company. They became

great friends, and within three months--PARTNERS. And the old man had

been, as he threatened to be, very busy likewise. He had fought his

son's battle very hardly and very successfully, as he believed, and with

twenty thousand pounds had purchased for him a junior partner's interest

in the estate. The hopeful boy was admitted into the concern during his

residence in Oxford. He had never been seen, but his father was a man of

substance, well known and esteemed. The character which he gave with his

son was undeniable. Its truth could not be questioned, backed as it was

by so liberal an advance.

Let it not be supposed that Michael, in his anxiety to involve other men

in his own fearful responsibility, was injudicious enough to act without

all forethought and consideration. Not he. He had inherited from his

sire the valuable faculty of detecting the wishes and views of men in

their external evidences. On the countenances of men he read their

hearts. It did not take long to discover that the venerable Mr Brammel

and the haughty Mr Bellamy were bent upon the partnership, and would

secure it at any cost. Satisfied of this, like a lazy and plethoric fish

he kept within sight of his bait, close upon it, without deigning for a

time as much as a nibble. It was his when he chose to bite. But there

were deep enquiries to make, and many things to do, before he could

implicate himself so far. In every available quarter he sought

information respecting the one partner, and the father of the other, and

of both; the intelligence that he received well repaid his trouble.

Nothing could be more promising and satisfactory. Nor did he content

himself with such arms against the selfishness of gentlemen, who, he was

shrewd enough to know, were seeking only their own advantage in their

earnest desire of a union with him. He had an eye to the balance of

power. Two men, united and active, in the firm, pulling together on all

occasions, might, not by one blow perhaps, but in the course of time,

and by accumulating force and skill, oust him from his present elevated

and natural position. Once admit them to authority, and the limits of

their dominion must be prescribed by their own sense of honour, or by

the opportunities afforded them of supremacy and independent action.

Michael the impulsive saw and felt this most acutely, and took occasion,

from their eagerness, to insure a proper equilibrium of the forces

before permitting them to coalesce. There lived in the same city with

Michael, and within a quarter of a mile of the banking-house, an

individual to whom he turned his thoughts in his emergency. Mr Planner

was his name, and his character is worth more than a mere passing

observation. He was a study for an artist--a lesson for mankind. He was

a man of surprising abilities, ill directed, and badly educated; at any

period of his life capable of any thing--to the last moment of his

existence accomplishing nothing. From a child he had displayed a love of

admiration and applause, a craving after superiority and distinction, a

burning ambition for fame. He had the body of a giant, and a giant's

mental apparatus. But with all his gifts, physical and spiritual, all

his energies and aims, he arrived at middle life a melancholy spectacle

of failure and incompetency. There was no one object which he could

pursue with steadiness and patience--no single mark to which he could

perseveringly apply the combined powers of his gifted intellect. He

frittered his faculties upon a hundred trifles, never concentrated them

upon a worthy purpose once. Pride, emulation, and the internal

consciousness of strength, led him, year after year, and day after day,

into difficulties and trials, and carried him through them only to drag

him into deeper. There was no one man whom he would allow to perform any

one thing so skilfully as himself. There was no branch of knowledge into

which he did not grope his way, and from which he would not manage to

extract sufficient learning to render his conceit intolerable, and his

opposition dangerous to a more erudite antagonist. He could build a

church--dam a river--form a company--warm a house--cool a room--one and

all he would undertake at a minute's notice, and engage to execute

better than any person living. He asserted it with confidence, and you

believed him when he spoke with all the earnestness of self-conviction

and of truth. He despised all works--all theories but his own; and these

were unapproachable, inimitable. He wrote with his own invented pen,

used his own ink, sat on his own chair, made with his own incomparable

tools. Men were ignorant, behind their age--burdened with superstitions,

clogged by false principles. This was a text from which he never ceased

to preach. As a youth he was engaged in profitable business. Before he

reached his thirtieth year he had realized a handsome competency. He

retired from his occupation, and went abroad to found a city across the

ocean, with views that were unknown to man, and which, well carried out,

must prove infallible. He chose a spot removed from civilized

society--lived for three years amongst a tribe of savages, and came home

at last without a farthing in his scrip--beggared but not depressed. He

had dwelt for many months in a district of swamps, and he had discovered

a method of draining lands cheaper and more effectual than any hitherto

attempted. He contracted to empty some thousand acres--began his work,

succeeded for a time, and failed at last, from having falsely calculated

his expenses, and for lack of means to carry out his plans. There were

few public matters in which Mr Planner did not meddle. He wrote

pamphlets, and "hints," and "original views" by dozens. His articles on

the currency and corn-laws were full of racy hits and striking

points--his criticisms on the existing state of art worthy of the

artist's best attention. The temper of Mr Planner was such as might be

expected from such a mass of arrogance and conceit. A man who, in the

easiness of his heart, would listen humbly, patiently, approvingly to Mr

Planner, must pronounce the ardent character an angel. The remarkable

docility which Mr Planner evinced under such treatment, was only to be

equalled by the volubility and pleasure with which he communicated his

numerous and ingenious ideas. Sceptics--nay, men who had ventured only

to contend for the soundness of their preconceived ideas, and who had

been met with a torrent of vituperation and reproach in consequence--did

not hesitate to call Mr Planner--the devil incarnate. Such as he was, he

had become an agent and a tool in the hands of Allcraft's father.

Michael had been his friend for years, and Planner liked the boy who had

ever regarded him with awe and veneration. The youth had been taught by

his parent to note the faults and inconsistencies of his character; but

these had not rendered him insensible to the talents which had commanded

even that discerning parent's respect and admiration. It was this

personage, for some years the hanger-on at the bank, and the traveller

and negotiator of many things for Allcraft senior, whose name suggested

to Michael the means of providing against the encroachments of his

future brethren. Planner could be relied upon. The smallest possible

interest in the business would excite in him a corresponding interest in

its prosperity, and secure his steadiness and good behaviour. Why not

offer it then, and make his entrance into the firm a _sine qua non_ in

the bargain with Bellamy and Brammel? He revolved the matter, and saw no

real objection to it. Planner was reputed a first-rate accountant; his

services would be important, no remuneration could be too great,

provided he would settle down, and fix his energies upon the one great

object of advancing the welfare of the establishment. His friendship was

secured, and a word or two would suffice to gain his faithful support

and co-operation. So far from his becoming burdensome and useless in the

bank, his talents would be in every way desirable. A coadjutor, such as

he might be, firm and trusty, was invaluable. And why should he not be?

A day had been fixed for accepting or rejecting the propositions of the

gentlemen. The time was drawing on, when Michael visited his friend to

sound him on his purpose.

Planner lived in a very humble part of a very humble house, in a very

humble street. The two-pair back was his domain, and his territory was

less adorned than crowded with the evidences of his taste and handiwork.

In the remote corner of his unclean apartment was a lathe for turning

ivory--near it the material, a monstrous elephant's tusk. Shelves,

carried round the room, supported bottles of various sizes, externally

very dirty, and internally what you please; for eyes could not penetrate

so far, and determine the contents. A large label, crowning all,

announced them to be "samples." Books were strewed every

where--manuscripts met you at every turn. The walls were filled with

charts and drawings, one of the former representing the field of

Waterloo, dissected and intersected, with a view to prove Lord

Wellington guilty of winning a battle, which, in conformity with every

law of strategy, he should have lost. One drawing was a rough sketch of

his unhappy swamp; another, the elaborate delineation of a hydraulic

pump. In the niche corresponding to that in which the lathe was fixed,

there was a small iron bedstead; and in this, although it was nearly

noon when Michael paid his friendly visit, Mr Allcraft caught sight of

Mr Planner when he opened the door, in obedience to the very sharp and

loud voice which invited him to "walk in." The ingenious gentleman had

breakfasted. The tea things were on a stool at his side. He wore his

nightcap, and he was busy in examining a crimson liquid, which he held

in a glass close to his eyes. "That man was murdered, Allcraft!"

exclaimed Mr Planner after the briefest possible salutation. "Murdered,

as I am a living Christian!"

"What man?" asked Allcraft.

"Him they hanged last week for poisoning his father. What was the

evidence? Why, when they opened the body, they found a grain or two of

arsenic. Hang a man upon that! A pretty state of things--look here,

sir--look here!"--and he pointed triumphantly to his crimson liquid.

"What is that, Mr Planner?" inquired the visitor.

"What? My blood, sir. I opened a vein the very day they hanged him. I

suspected it all along, and there it is. There is more arsenic there,

sir, than they found in the entire carcass of that man. Arsenic! Why,

it's a prime ingredient in the blood. This it is to live in the clouds.

Talk of dark ages--when shall we get light?"

"I was not aware, Mr Planner,"----

"Of course you were not. How should you be? It is the interest of the

ruling powers to darken the intellect of society. Why am I kept down?

Why don't I prosper? Why don't my works sell? Ah, Allcraft--put that

small pamphlet in your pocket--there it is--under the model--take care

what you are about--don't break it--there, that's right! What is it

called?"

"Popular delusions."

"Ah, true enough!--put it into your pocket and read it. If Pitt could be

alive to read it!---- Well, never mind! I say, Allcraft, how does that

back room flue get on--any smoke now?"

"None."

"No. I should think not. Michael, I must say it, though the old

gentleman is dead, he was one of the hardest fellows to move I ever met.

He would have been smoke-dried--suffocated, years ago, if it hadn't been

for me. I was the first man that ever sent smoke up that chimney. Nobody

could do it, sir. A fellow came from London, tried, and failed."

"It is a pity, Mr Planner, that, with abilities like yours, you have not

been more successful in life. Pardon me if I say that success would have

made you a quieter and a happier man."

"Ah, Michael, so your father used to say! Well, I don't know--people are

such fools. They will not think for themselves, and they are ready to

crush any one who offers to think for them. It has ever been so. Men in

advance of their generation have always fared badly. Ages ago they were

put to death cruelly and violently. Now they are left to starve, and

die. The creatures are ignorant, but they are worse than that; they are

selfish and jealous, and will rather sit in gloom, than owe light, and

confess they owe it, to a fellow mortal and a superior spirit."

"I am afraid, Mr Planner, after such an observation, that you will

hardly give me credit for the feeling which has induced me to visit you

this morning."

"You are a good fellow, Michael. You were always a generous-hearted

lad--an exception to the general rule. When you were five years old, you

used to share your biscuits with me. It was a fine trait in your

character. Proceed."

"You are aware, Mr Planner, that through my father's death increased

responsibilities have come upon me."

"You may say that. He never would take my advice about the bank-notes.

Stop--remind me before you go, of the few hints to bankers, which I drew

up. You will do well to look at them. You'll see the advantages of my

system of paper issues. Your father, sir, was stone-blind to his own

interests---- but I am interrupting you."

"I have for some time past determined to associate with me in the bank,

two gentlemen of noble fortunes and the first respectability. I would

not willingly carry on the concern alone, and the accession of two such

gentlemen as I describe, cannot but be in every way desirable."

"Humph--go on."

"Now Mr Planner, you are a very, very old friend of my father's, and I

know he valued your advice as it deserved to be."

"The old gentleman was good in the main, Michael."

"Had he been aware of my position, he would have recommended the step

which I am about to adopt. Mr Planner, I am young, and therefore

inexperienced. These gentlemen are very worthy persons no doubt; indeed,

I am assured they are; still, they are comparatively strangers to me,

and I am certain you would advise me to be most cautious."

"Proceed."

"What I feel to want is the constant presence of a friend--one who, from

personal attachment, may have my welfare and interest at heart, and form

as it were a second self at all times--let me be present or absent--and

absent I must be very often--you perceive?"

"Precisely."

"A sort of counterpoise to the opposite weight, in fact, if I may be

allowed to call it so. Now, I can sincerely affirm that I know no

person, Mr Planner, in whom I could rely so entirely and unreservedly as

yourself; and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to serve a man

so highly gifted, so long connected with our family by the closest

friendship. If you think the occupation of a banker suitable to your

present tastes, I believe that I can offer you an appointment worthy

your serious consideration."

Mr Planner rose in his bed, and grasped firmly the hand of Mr Michael

Allcraft. The latter sat at the bedside until past three o'clock, and

then retired, leaving his friend in a state of great mental excitement.

When Michael, upon taking his departure, reached the street door, he

stopped short, and retraced his steps. Entering the apartment for a

second time, he discovered Mr Planner in his night clothes, standing

before a looking glass, and repeating one of his own compositions in a

voice of thunder, and with the most vehement gesticulation.

"I beg your pardon. You told me to remind you, Planner, of your hints to

bankers. Have you the book handy?"

"It is here, Michael. Read it attentively, my boy--trust to me. I'll

make the house's name ring throughout the country. Don't forget what I

have said. We must have a new facade to the old building after a while.

I have such a plan for it!"