Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV.

Ibrahim, however, had had enough of red coats and blue jackets, and left the people of Beyrout to themselves—an example which was followed by the author, who, being foiled in his expectations of riding down the Egyptians on the noble Arab left to him by the commodore, determined to put that fiery animal (the Arab) to its paces in scouring the country in all directions. It is not often that an assistant adjutant-general sets out on a tour in search of the picturesque; but in this instance the search was completely successful. Rock, ravine, precipice, and dell—running waters and waving woods, come as naturally to his pen as returns of effective force and other professional details; and, whatever the writing of them may be, we are prepared to contend that the reading of them is infinitely pleasanter. But as travellers and poets have of late left few mountains or molehills unsung in Palestine, we prefer extracting a picturesque account of a venerable abbess, who threw the light of Christian goodness over that benighted land about a century ago, and must have impressed the heathens in the neighbourhood with an exalted notion of the virtues of a nunnery:—

"Héndia was a Maronite girl, possessing extraordinary personal charms, who, in 1755, first brought herself into notice by her pretended piety and attention to her religious duties, till at last she was by this simple and credulous people considered almost in the light of a saint or prophetess. When she had thus established a reputation for sanctity, she next thought of becoming the head and chief of an extensive establishment of monks and nuns, to receive whom, with the aid of large contributions raised among her credulous admirers and followers, she erected two spacious stone buildings, which soon became filled with proselytes of both sexes. The patriarch of Lebanon was named the director of this establishment, and for twenty years Héndia reigned with unbounded sway over the little community—performing miracles, uttering prophecies, and giving other tokens of being in the performance of a divine mission; and though it was remarked that many deaths yearly occurred among the nuns, the circumstance was generally attributed to disease incident to the insalubrity of the situation. At last, chance brought to light the cause of this very great mortality, and disclosed all the secret horrors which had so long remained covered by the veil of mystery in this abode of monastic abominations. A traveller, on his way from Damascus to the coast, happened to arrive one fine summer night at a late hour before the convent gates, which he found closed, and not wishing to disturb its inmates, who had apparently retired to rest, he spread his travelling rug under some neighbouring trees, and laid himself down to sleep. His slumbers were, however, shortly disturbed by a number of persons, who, issuing from the convent, appeared to be clandestinely bearing away what seemed to be a heavy bundle. Prompted by curiosity, he cautiously followed the party, who, after going a short distance, deposited their burden, and commenced digging a deep hole, into which having placed and covered with earth what was evidently a dead body, they immediately took their departure. Astonished, and rather dismayed, at an occurrence of so mysterious a nature, the traveller lost no time in mounting his mule, and on arriving at Beyrout made known the extraordinary occurrence to which he had been witness the night before. This account reached the ears of a merchant who happened to have two daughters undergoing their noviciate at El Kourket, and reports had lately reached him of the illness of one of his children; this, together with the numerous deaths which had lately taken place at the convent, coupled with the traveller's narrative, excited in his mind the most serious apprehensions. He gave information on the subject, and laid a complaint before the Grand Prince at Dahr-el-Kamar, and, accompanied by his informant and a troop of horsemen furnished by the Emir, hastened to the spot of the alleged mysterious burial, when to his horror, on opening the newly made grave, he discovered it to contain the corpse of his youngest daughter! Frantic at this sight, he desired instant admission, in order to ascertain the safety of her sister. On this being refused, the gates were forced open, and the unfortunate girl was found closely confined in a dungeon, on the point of death, but retaining still strength enough to disclose horrors which led to an investigation, implicating the patriarch, the abbess, and several priests. This transaction, which happened in 1776, was submitted for the decision of the Papal See; when it appeared that the pretended prophetess had, by means of many ingenious mechanical devices, thus long imposed on public credulity, whilst in the retirement of the cloister the most licentious and profligate occurrences nightly took place; and that when any unfortunate nun gave offence, either by refusing to be sacrificed at the shrine of infamy, or that it became desirable to get rid of her, in order to appropriate for the convent the amount of her property, she was immured in a dungeon, left to perish by a lingering and miserable death, and then privately buried in the night. In consequence of these shocking discoveries, the patriarch was deposed—the priests, his accomplices, were severely punished, and the high priestess of this temple of cruelty and debauchery was immured in confinement, and survived for many years to repent of all the atrocities she had previously committed."

We should like to know the colonel's authority for this circumstantial account. It bears at present a startling resemblance to the confession of Maria Monk, and the villanies recorded of the nunnery at Montreal; and we will hope in the mean time, that the devil, even in the shape of a lady abbess, is not quite so black as he is painted. The present abbess of El Kourket is already as black as need be, for we are told she is an Ethiopian negress.

The war carried on in Syria after the decisive battle of Boharsef, seems to have been on the model of those recorded by Major Sturgeon, and to have consisted of marching and counter-marching, without any definite object, except, perhaps, the somewhat Universal-Peace-Society one of getting out of the enemy's way. General Jochmus, we guess from his name, was a Scotch schoolmaster, with a Latin termination—there being no mistaking the Jock—and in his religious tenets we feel sure he was a Quaker. The English officers attached to the staff had immense difficulty in bringing the troops (if they deserve to be called so) to the scratch; and we trust that, in all future commentaries on the Art of War, the method adopted by Commodore Napier, of throwing stones at his gallant army to force them forward, will not be forgotten. The author before us had no sinecure, and after the news of Ibrahim's retreat, galloped hither and thither, like the wild huntsman of a German story, to discover by what route the vanquished lion was growling his way to his den. With a hundred irregular horse, furnished him by Osman Aga, he set out on a foray beyond Jordan; and we do not wonder his two friends, Captain Lane, a Prussian edition of Don Quixote, and Mr Hunter, who has written an excellent account of his expedition to Syria, besides his old Beyrout friend Giorgio, volunteered to accompany him.

"My motley troop, apparently composed of every tribe from the Caspian to the Red Sea, displayed no less variety in arms and accoutrements than in their personal appearance, varying from the sturdy-looking Kourd, mounted on his strong powerful steed, to the swarthy, spare, and sinewy Arab, with his long reed-like spear, his head encircled with the Kéfiah, or thick rope of twisted camels' hair; whilst the flowing 'abbage' waved gracefully down the shining flanks of the high-mettled steed of the desert. In short, such an assemblage of cut-throat looking ruffians was probably never before seen; and whilst the Prussian military eye of old Lane glanced down our wide-spread and irregular line, I could see a curl of contempt on his grey mustaches, though his weather-beaten countenance maintained all the gravity of Frederick the Great. The troop appeared to be divided into two distinct parties—one Arab, the other Turkish; and, on directing the two chiefs to call the 'roll' of their respective forces, I found that many were absent without leave, and the party which should have amounted to a hundred cavaliers only mustered between seventy and eighty. However, on the assurance that the rest would speedily follow—as there was no time to spare, after making them a short harangue, in which I promised abundance of nehub (plunder) whenever we came across the enemy, to which they responded by a wild yell of approbation—I gave the signal to move off, which was instantly obeyed, amidst joyous shouts, the brandishing of spears, and promiscuous discharge of fire-arms. Having thus got them under weigh, the next difficulty I experienced was to keep them together. I tried to form a rearguard to bring up the stragglers, but the guard would not remain behind, nor the stragglers keep up with the main body; and I soon, finding that something more persuasive than mere words was requisite to maintain them in order, took the first opportunity of getting a stout cudgel, with which I soundly belaboured all those whom I found guilty of thus disobeying my commands. The Eastern does not understand the suaviter in modo;—behave to him like a human being, he fancies you fear him, and he sets you at defiance—kick him and cuff him, treat him like a dog, and he crouches at your feet, the humble slave of your slightest wishes."

Discipline of so perfect a nature must have inspired the gallant colonel with the strongest hopes of success in case of an onslaught on the forces of Ibrahim Pasha, and in all probability his efforts, with those of Captain Lane, Hunter, and Giorgio, might have produced something like a skrimmage when they came near the tents of the Egyptians; but it would seem that the cudgels wielded by the Musree commanders were either not so strong or not so well applied, for on the first appearance of the hostile squadron, the heroes of Nezib evaporated as if by magic, but not before a similar feat of legerdemain had been performed by the rabble rout of Turks and Arabs; and on looking round, to inspire his followers with a speech after the manner of Thucydides, the colonel discovered the last of his escort disappearing at full speed on the other side of the plain, and the Europeans were left alone in their glory. As they had nobody to attack, (the enemy continuing still in a state of evaporation,) every thing ended well; and, if the trumpeter had not been among the fugitives, there might have been a triumphal blow performed although no blow had been struck. We do not believe in the courage of the Arabs. No amount of kicking and cuffing could cow a nation's spirit that had once been brave; and we therefore consider it the greatest marvel in history how the Arabians managed at one time to conquer half the world. They must have been very different fellows from the chicken-hearted children of the desert recorded in these volumes. One thing only is certain, that they have left their anti-fighting propensities to their mongrel descendants in Spain; for a series of actions—that is, jinking and skulking, and running up and down, hiding themselves as if they were the personages of a writ—more distinctly Arabian than the late campaign which ended in the overthrow of Espartero, could not have been performed under the shadows of Mount Ebal. All the nobility that we are so fond of picturing to ourselves in the deeds and thoughts of Saladin, has gone over to the horse. The wild steed retains its fire, though the miserable horseman would do for a Madrileno aide-de-camp. And yet this is the way they are treated:—

"It was a matter of surprise to us, how our horses stood without injury all the exposure, severe work, and often short commons, to which they were constantly subjected. When we came to a place where barley was to be procured, the grooms carried away as much as they could; when none was to be had, we gave our nags peas and tibbin, (chopped straw, the only forage used in the East,) or any thing we could lay hands on; they had little or no grooming, and frequently the saddles were not even removed from their backs. But I believe that nothing save the high mettle of the desert blood would carry an animal through all this toil and privation; and as to the much-extolled kindness of the Arab towards his horse, although it may be the case in the far deserts of the Hedged and Hedjar, I can avow that I never saw these noble animals treated with more inhuman neglect than I witnessed in the whole of my wanderings through Syria."

The dreariness of a ride through the desolate plains and rugged rocks of Palestine, was diversified with startling adventures; and the fact of several of the powers of Europe and many of the tribes of Asia having chosen that sterile region for their battle-place, gave rise to some very odd coincidences. People from all the ends of the earth, who were lounging away their existence some three or four months before, without any anticipation of treading in the footsteps of the crusaders—some smoking strong tobacco in the coffeehouses of Berlin, or leaning gracefully (like the Chinese Admiral Kwang) against the pillars of the Junior United Service Club in London—or driving a heavy curricle in the Prado at Vienna—or reading powerfully for honours at the Great Go at Oxford—or climbing Albanian hills—or reclining in the silken recesses of a harem at Constantinople—all were thrown together in such unexpected groups, and found themselves so curiously banded together, that the tame realities of an ordinary campaign were thrown completely into the shade. The following introduces us to another member of the foray, whose character seems to have been such a combination of the gallant soldier and light-hearted troubadour, that we read of his after fate, in dying of the plague at Damascus, with great regret:—

"My troop had not yet cleared a difficult pass close to the khan, running between an abrupt face of the hill and the river, when the advanced guard came back at full speed with the announcement that a body of the enemy's infantry was near at hand. Closely jammed in a narrow defile, between inaccessible cliffs and the precipitous banks of the Jordan, with nothing but cavalry at my disposal, I was placed in rather a disagreeable position. There remained, however, no alternative but to put spurs to our horses, push forward through the pass, deploy on the level ground beyond it, and then trust to the chances of war. Having explained these intentions to the Sheikh and Aga, we lost no time in carrying them into effect; and on taking extended order after clearing the pass, saw immediately in front of us what we took to be an advanced guard of the enemy, consisting of some twenty or thirty soldiers, whom their white foustanellis" (the foustanellis is that part of the Albanian costume corresponding with the highland kilt) "and tall active forms immediately marked as Arnouts, or Albanians. Seeing, probably, that we had now the advantage of the ground, they hastily retired, recrossing a ravine which intersected the path, and extending in capital light infantry style, were soon sheltered behind the stones and rocks on the opposite bank, over the brow of which nought was to be seen but the protruding muzzles and long shining barrels of their firelocks. All this was the work of a few seconds, and passed in a much briefer space of time than it has taken to relate. I had now the greatest difficulty in keeping Mahommed Aga and his men from charging up to enemies who, from their present position, could have picked them easily off with perfect safety to themselves; and riding rapidly forward with Captain Lane, to see if we could by some means turn their flank, a few horsemen at this moment suddenly appeared over the swell on the opposite side of the ravine, the foremost of whom, whilst making many friendly signals, galloped across the intervening space, hailing us a friend, and at the same time waving his hand, to prevent his own people from opening their fire. Lane and myself were not backward in returning this greeting; and on approaching we beheld a handsome young man, dressed in the showy Austrian uniform, with a black Tartar sheepskin cap on his head, who, coming up, accosted us in French, and with all the frankness of a soldier, introduced himself as Count Szechinge, a captain of Austrian dragoons, then on his way from Tiberias with a party composed of one or two Turkish lancers, about twenty-five Albanian deserters, his German servant, dragoman, and suite, to raise troops in the Adjelloun hills—a mission very similar to the one I was myself employed on at Naplouse."

An acquaintance begun under such circumstances grows into friendship with amazing rapidity; and many are the joyous hours the foragers spend together, in spite of intolerable weather and storms of sleet and snow, which bear a far greater resemblance to the climate of Lochaber than to that of Syria, "land of roses." Reinforced with the count and his companions, Colonel Napier pushes on—gets into the vicinity of Ibrahim—his rabble rout turn tail, in case of being swallowed alive by the ferocious pasha, whose reputation for cruelty and all manner of iniquities seems well deserved, and having ascertained the movements of that formidable ruffian, he returned to Naplouse to take the command of 1500 half-tamed, undisciplined savages, with whom to oppose his retreat. Luckily, the ratification of the convention come in the nick of time; for it is very evident that the best cudgels that were ever cut in "the classic woods of Hawthornden," could not have awakened a spark of military ardour in the wretched riff-raff assemblage appointed for this service—and of all the abortive efforts at generalship we have ever read of, the attempt of the Turkish commanders was infinitely the worse—no foresight in providing for difficulties—no valour in fighting their way out of them; but, to compensate for these trifling deficiencies, a plentiful supply of pride and cruelty, with a due admixture of dishonesty. We heartily join, with Colonel Napier, in wondering where the deuce the "integrity of the Ottoman empire" is to be found, as, beyond all doubt, not a particle of it exists in any of its subjects. The pashas of Egypt, bad as they undoubtedly are, have redeeming points about them, which the Hassans, and Izzets, and Reschids of the Turks have no conception of; and, lively and sparkling as the gallant colonel's narrative is, we confess it leaves a sadder impression on our minds of the hopelessness and the degeneracy of the Moslems, than any book we have met with. Turk and Egyptian should equally be whipped back into the desert, and the fairest portions of the world be won over to civilization, wealth, and happiness. The present volumes close at the end of January 1841, and perhaps they are among the best results of the campaign. We shall be glad to see the proceedings at Alexandria sketched off in the same pleasant style.

THE FATE OF POLYCRATES.—Herod. iii. 124-126

"Oh! go not forth, my father dear—oh! I go not forth to-day,
And trust not thou that Satrap dark, for he fawns but to betray;
His courteous smiles are treacherous wiles, his foul designs to hide;
Then go not forth, my father dear—in thy own fair towers abide."

"Now, say not so, dear daughter mine—I pray thee, say not so!
Where glory calls, a monarch's feet should never fear to go;
And safe to-day will be my way through proud Magnesia's halls,
As if I stood 'mid my bowmen good beneath my Samian walls.

"The Satrap is my friend, sweet child—my trusty friend is he—
The ruddy gold his coffers hold he shares it all with me;
No more amid these clustering isles alone shall be my sway,
But Hellas wide, from side to side, thy empire shall obey!

"And of all the maids of Hellas, though they be rich and fair,
With the daughter of Polycrates, oh! who shall then compare?
Then dry thy tears—no idle fears should damp our joy to-day—
And let me see thee smile once more before I haste away!"

"Oh! false would be the smile, my sire, that I should wear this morn,
For of all my country's daughters I shall soon be most forlorn;
I know, I know,—ah, thought of woe!—I ne'er shall see again
My father's ship come sailing home across the Icarian main.

"Each gifted seer, with words of fear, forbids thee to depart,
And their warning strains an echo find in every faithful heart;
A maiden weak, e'en I must speak—ye gods, assist me now!
The characters of doom and death are graven on thy brow!

"Last night, my sire, a vision dire thy daughter's eyes did see,
Suspended in mid air there hung a form resembling thee;
Nay, frown not thus, my father dear; my tale will soon be done—
Methought that form was bathed by Jove, and anointed by the sun!"

"My child, my child, thy fancies wild I may not stay to hear.
A friend goes forth to meet a friend—then wherefore should'st thou fear?
Though moonstruck seers with idle fears beguile a maiden weak,
They cannot stay thy father's hand, or blanch thy father's cheek.

"Let cowards keep within their holds, and on peril fear to run!
Such shame," quoth he, "is not for me, fair Fortune's favourite son!"
Yet still the maiden did repeat her melancholy strain—
"I ne'er shall see my father's fleet come sailing home again!"

The monarch call'd his seamen good, they muster'd on the shore,
Waved in the gale the snow-white sail, and dash'd the sparkling oar;
But by the flood that maiden stood—loud rose her piteous cry—
"Oh! go not forth, my dear, dear sire—oh, go not forth to die!"

A frown was on that monarch's brow, and he said as he turn'd away,
"Full soon shall Samos' lord return to Samos' lovely bay;
But thou shalt aye a maiden lone within my courts abide—
No chief of fame shall ever claim my daughter for his bride!

"A long, long maidenhood to thee thy prophet tongue hath given—"
"Oh would, my sire," that maid replied, "such were the will of Heaven!
Though I a loveless maiden lone must evermore remain,
Still let me hear that voice so dear in my native isle again!"

'Twas all in vain that warning strain—the king has crost the tide—
But never more off Samos shore his bark was seen to ride!
The Satrap false his life has ta'en, that monarch bold and free,
And his limbs are black'ning in the blast, nail'd to the gallows-tree!

That night the rain came down apace, and wash'd each gory stain,
But the sun's bright ray, the next noonday, glared fiercely on the slain;
And the oozing gore began once more from his wounded sides to run;
Good-sooth, that form was bathed by Jove, and anointed by the Sun!

MODERN PAINTERS.[16 - Modern Painters—their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, &c. &c. By a Graduate of Oxford.]

We read this title with some pain, not doubting but that our modern landscape painters were severely handled in an ironical satire; and we determined to defend them. "Their superiority to all the ancient masters"—that was too hard a hit to come from any but an enemy! We must measure our man—a graduate of Oxford! The "scholar armed," without doubt. He comes, too, vauntingly up to us, with his contempt for us and all critics that ever were, or will be; we are all little Davids in the eye of this Goliath. Nevertheless, we will put a pebble in our sling. We saw this contempt of us, in dipping at hap-hazard into the volume. But what was our astonishment to find, upon looking further, that we had altogether mistaken the intent of the author, and that we should probably have not one Goliath, but many, to encounter; while our own particular friends, to whom we might look for help, were, alas! all dead men. We found that there were not "giants" in those days, but in these days—that the author, in his most superlative praise, is not ironical at all, but a most serious panegyrist, who never laughs, but does sometimes make his readers laugh, when they see his very unbecoming, mocking grimaces against the "old masters"—not that it can be fairly asserted that it is a laughable book. It has much conceit, and but little merriment; there is nothing really funny after you have got over, (vide page 6,) that he "looks with contempt on Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin." This contempt, however, being too limited for the "graduate of Oxford," in the next page he enlarges the scope of his enmity; "speaking generally of the old masters, I refer only to Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Teniers (in his landscapes,) P. Potter, Canaletti, and the various Van Somethings and Back Somethings, more especially and malignantly those who have libelled the sea." Self-convicted of malice, he has not the slightest suspicion of his ignorance; whereas he knows nothing of these masters whom he maligns. Still is he ready to be their general accuser—has not the slightest respect for the accumulated opinions of the best judges for these two or three hundred years—he puts them by with the wave of his hand, very like the unfortunate gentleman in an establishment of "unsound opinions," who gravely said—"The world and I differed in opinion—I was right, the world wrong; but they were too many for me, and put me here." We daresay that, in such establishments may be found many similar opinions to those our author promulgates, though, as yet, none of our respectable publishers have been convicted of a congenial folly. We said, that he suspects not his ignorance of the masters he maligns. Let it not hence be inferred that it is the work of an ignorant man. He is only ignorant with a prejudice. We will not say that it is not the work of a man who thinks, who has been habituated to a sort of scholastic reasoning, which he brings to bear, with no little parade and display, upon technicalities and distinctions. He can tutor secundum artem, lacking only, in the first point, that he has not tutored himself. With all his arrangements and distinctions laid down, as the very grammar of art, he confuses himself with his "truths," forgetting that, in matters of art, truths of fact must be referable to truths of mind. It is not what things in all respects really are, but what they appear, and how they are convertible by the mind into what they are not in many ways, respects, and degrees, that we have to consider, before we can venture to draw rules from any truths whatever. For art is something besides nature; and taste and feeling are first—precede practical art; and though greatly enhanced by that practical cultivation, might exist without it—nay, often do; and true taste always walks a step in advance of what has been done, and ever desires to do, and from itself, more than it sees. We discover, therefore, a fallacy in the very proposal of his undertaking, when he says that he is prepared "to advance nothing which does not, at least in his own conviction, rest on surer ground than mere feeling or taste." Notwithstanding, however, that our graduate of Oxford puts his "demonstrations" upon an equality with "the demonstrations of Euclid," and "thinks it proper for the public to know, that the writer is no mere theorist, but has been devoted from his youth to the laborious study of practical art," and that he is "a graduate of Oxford;" we do not look upon him as a bit the better judge for all that, seeing that many have practised it too fondly and too ignorantly all their lives, and that Claude, and Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin must, according to him, have been in this predicament, and more especially do we decline from bowing down at his dictation, when we find him advocating any "surer ground than feeling or taste." Now, considering that thus, in initio, he sets aside feeling and taste, the reader will not be astonished to find a very substantial reason given for his contempt of the afore-mentioned old masters; it is, he says, "because I look with the most devoted veneration upon Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, that I do not distrust the principles which induce me to look with contempt," &c. We do not exactly see how these great men, who were not landscape painters, can very well be compared with those who were, but from some general principles of art, in which the world have not as yet found any very extraordinary difference. But we do humbly suggest, that Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, are in their practice, and principles, if you please, quite as unlike Messrs David Cox, Copley Fielding, J. D. Harding, Clarkson Stanfield, and Turner—the very men whom our author brings forward as the excellent of the earth, in opposition to all old masters whatever, excepting only Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, to whom nevertheless, by a perverse pertinacity of their respective geniuses, they bear no resemblance whatever—as they are to Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin. We do not by any means intend to speak disrespectfully of these our English artists, but we must either mistrust those principles which cause them to stand in opposition to the great Italians, or to conceive that our author has really discovered no such differing principles, and which possibly may not exist at all. Nor will we think so meanly of the taste, the good feeling, and the good sense of these men, as to believe that they think themselves at all flattered by any admiration founded on such an irrational contempt. They well know that Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, have been admired, together with Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin, and they do not themselves desire to be put upon a separate list. The author concludes his introduction with a very bad reason for his partiality to modern masters, and it is put in most ambitious language, very readily learned in the "Fudge School,"—a style of language with which our author is very apt to indulge himself; but the argument it so ostentatiously clothes, and which we hesitate not to call a bad one, is nothing more than this, (if we understand it,)—that the dead are dead, and cannot hear our praise; that the living are living, and therefore our love is not lost; in short, as a non-sequitur, "that if honour be for the dead, gratitude can only be for the living." This might have been simply said; but we are taken to the grave—with "He who has once stood beside the grave," &c. &c.; we have "wild love—keen sorrow—pleasure to pulseless hearts—debt to the heart—to be discharged to the dust—the garland—the tombstone—the crowned brow—the ashes and the spirit—heaven-toned voices and heaven-lighted lamps—the learning—sweetness by silence—and light by decay;" all which, we conceive, might have been very excusable in a young curate's sermon during his first year of probation, and might have won for him more nosegays and favours than golden opinions, but which we here feel inclined to put our pen across, as so we remember many similarly ambitious passages to have been served, before we were graduate of Oxford, with the insignificant signification from the pen of our informator of nihil ad rem. As the author threatens the public with another, or more volumes, we venture to throw out a recommendation, that at least one volume may serve the purpose and do the real work of two, if he will check this propensity to unnecessary redundancy. His numerous passages of this kind are for the most part extremely unintelligible; and when we have unraveled the several coatings, we too often find the ribs of the mummy are not human. We think it right to object, in this place, to an affectation in phraseology offensive to those who think seriously of breaking the third commandment—he scarcely speaks of mountains without taking the sacred name in vain; there is likewise a constant repetition of expressions of very doubtful meaning in the first use, for the most part quite devoid of meaning in their application. One of these is "palpitating." Light is "palpitating," darkness is "palpitating"—every conceivable thing is "palpitating." We must, however, in justice say, that by far the best part of the book, the laying down rules and the elucidating principles, is clearly and expressively written. In this part of the work there is greater expansion than the student will generally find in books on art. Not that we are aware of the advancement of any thing new; but the admitted maxims of art are, as it were, grammatically analysed, and in a manner to assist the beginner in thinking upon art. To those who have already thought, this very studied analysis and arrangement will be tedious enough.

In the "Definition of Greatness in Art," we find—"If I say that the greatest picture is that which conveys to the mind of the spectator the greatest number of the greatest ideas, I have a definition which will include as subjects of comparison every pleasure which art is capable of conveying." Now, there are great ideas which are so conflicting as to annul the force of each other. This is not enough; there must be a congruity of great ideas—nay, in some instances, we can conceive one idea to be so great, as in a work of art not to admit of the juxtaposition of others. This is the principle upon which the sonnet is built, and the sonnet illustrates the picture not unaptly. "Ideas of Power" are great ideas—not always are ideas of beauty great; yet is there a tempering the one with the other, which it is the special province of art to attain, and that for its highest and most moral purposes. In his "Ideas of Power," he distinguishes the term "excellent" from the terms "beautiful," "useful," "good," &c.; thus—"And we shall always, in future, use the word excellent, as signifying that the thing to which it is applied required a great power for its production." Is not this doubtful? Does it not limit the perception of excellence to artists who can alone from their practice, and, as it were, measurement of powers with their difficulties, learn and feel its existence in the sense to which it is limited. The inference would be, that none but artists can be critics, as none but artists can perceive excellence, and we think in more than one place some such assertion is made. This is startling—"Power is never wasted; whatever power has been employed, produces excellence in proportion to its own dignity and exertion; and the faculty of perceiving this exertion, and approaching this dignity, is the faculty of perceiving excellence." "It is this faculty in which men, even of the most cultivated taste, must always be wanting, unless they have added practice to reflection; because none can estimate the power manifested in victory, unless they have personally measured the strength to be overcome." For the word strength use difficulty, and we should say that, to the unpractised, the difficulties must always appear greatest. He gives, as illustration, "Titian's flesh tint;" it may be possible that, by some felicitous invention, some new technicality of his art, Titian might have produced this excellence, and to him there would have been no such great measurement of the difficulty or strength to be overcome; while the admirer of the work, ignorant of the happy means, fancies the exertion of powers which were not exerted. In his chapter on "Ideas of Imitation," he imagines that Fuseli and Coleridge falsely apply the term imitation, making "a distinction between imitation and copying, representing the first as the legitimate function of art—the latter as its corruption." Yet we think he comes pretty much to the same conclusion. In like manner, he seems to disagree with Burke in a passage which he quotes, but in reality he agrees with him; for surely the "power of the imitation" is but a power of the "jugglery," to be sensible of which, if we understand him, is necessary to our sense of imitation. "When the object," says Burke, "represented in poetry or painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then we may be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of imitation." "We may," says our author, "be sure of the contrary; for if the object be undesirable in itself, the closer the imitation the less will be the pleasure." Certainly not; for Burke of course implied, and included in his sense of imitation, that it should be consistent with a knowledge in the spectator, that a certain trick of art was put upon him. And our author says the same—"Whenever the work is seen to resemble something which we know it is not, we receive what I call an idea of imitation." Again—"Now, two things are requisite to our complete and most pleasurable perception of this: first, that the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to deception; secondly, that there be some means of proving at the same moment that it is a deception." He justly considers "the pleasures resulting from imitation the most contemptible that can be received from art." He thus happily illustrates his meaning—"We may consider tears as a result of agony or of art, whichever we please, but not of both at the same moment. If we are surprised by them as an attainment of the one, it is impossible we can be moved by them as a sign of the other." This will explain why we are pleased with the exact imitation of the dewdrop on the peach, and why we are disgusted with the Magdalen's tears by Vanderwerf; and we further draw this inevitable conclusion, of very important consequence to artists, who have very erroneous notions upon the subject, that this sort of imitation, which, by the deception of its name, should be most like, is actually less like nature, because it takes from nature its impression by substituting a sense of the jugglery. This chapter on ideas of imitation is good and useful. We think, in the after part of his work, wherein is much criticism on pictures by the old masters and by moderns, our author must have lost the remembrance of what he has so well said on his ideas of imitation; and in the following chapter on "Ideas of Truth." "The word truth, as applied to art, signifies the faithful statement, either to the mind or senses, of any fact of nature." The reader will readily see how "ideas of truth" differ from "ideas of imitation." The latter relating only to material objects, the former taking in the conceptions of the mind—may be conveyed by signs or symbols, "themselves no image nor likeness of any thing." "An idea of truth exists in the statement of one attribute of any thing; but an idea of imitation only in the resemblance of as many attributes as we are usually cognizant of in its real presence." Hence it follows that ideas of truth are inconsistent with ideas of imitation; for, as we before said, ideas of imitation remove the impression by an ever-present sense of the deception or falsehood. This is put very conclusively—"so that the moment ideas of truth are grouped together, so as to give rise to an idea of imitation, they change their very nature—lose their essence as ideas of truth—and are corrupted and degraded, so as to share in the treachery of what they have produced. Hence, finally, ideas of truth are the foundation, and ideas of imitation the distinction, of all art. We shall be better able to appreciate their relative dignity after the investigation which we propose of functions of the former; but we may as well now express the conclusion to which we shall then be led—that no picture can be good which deceives by its imitation; for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true." This is perhaps rather too indiscriminate. It has been shown that ideas of imitation do give pleasure; by them, too, objects of beauty may be represented. We should not say that a picture by Gerard Dow or Van Eyck; even with the down on the peach and the dew on the leaf, were not good pictures. They are good if they please. It is true, they ought to do more, and even that in a higher degree; they cannot be works of greatness—and greatness was probably meant in the word good. In his chapter on "Ideas of Beauty," he considers that we derive, naturally and instinctively, pleasure from the contemplation of certain material objects; for which no other reason can be given than that it is our instinct—the will of our Maker—we enjoy them "instinctively and necessarily, as we derive sensual pleasure from the scent of a rose." But we have instinctively aversion as well as desire; though he admits this, he seems to lose sight of it in the following—"And it would appear that we are intended by the Deity to be constantly under their influence, (ideas of beauty;) because there is not one single object in nature which is not capable of conveying them," &c. We are not satisfied; if the instinctive desire be the index to what is beautiful, so must the instinctive aversion be the index to its opposite. We have an instinctive dislike to many reptiles, to many beasts—as apes. These may have in them some beauty; we only object to the author's want of clearness. If there be no ugliness there is no beauty, for every thing has its opposite; so that we think he has not yet discovered and clearly put before us what beauty consists in. He shows how it happens that we do admire it instinctively; but that does not tell us what it is, and possibly, after all that has been said about it, it yet remains to be told. Nor are we satisfied with his definition of taste—"Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection." This will not do; for taste will take material sources, unattractive in themselves, and by combination, or for their contrast, receive pleasure from them. All literature and all art show this. That taste, like life itself, is instinctive in its origin and first motion, we doubt not; but what it is by and in its cultivation, and in its application to art, is a thing not to be altogether so cursorily discussed and dismissed. The distinction is laid down between taste and judgment—judgment being the action of the intellect; taste "the instinctive and instant preferring of one material object to another without any obvious reason," except that it is proper to human nature in its perfection so to do. But leaving this discussion of this original taste, taste in art is surely, as it is a thing cultivated, that for which a reason can be given, and in some measure, therefore, the result of judgment. For by the cultivation of taste we are actually led to love, admire, and desire many things of which we have no instinctive love at all; so that the taste for them arises from the intellect and the moral sense—our judgment. He proceeds to "Ideas of Relation," by which he means "to express all those sources of pleasure, which involve and require at the instant of their perception, active exertion of the intellectual powers." As this is to be more easily comprehended by an illustration, we have one in an incident of one of Turner's pictures, and, considering the object, it is surprising the author did not find one more important; but he herein shows that, in his eyes, every stroke of the brush by Mr Turner is important—indeed, is a considerable addition to our national wealth. In the picture of the "Building of Carthage," the foreground is occupied by a group of children sailing toy-boats, which he thinks to be an "exquisite choice of incident expressive of the ruling passion." He, with a whimsical extravagance in praise of Turner, which, commencing here, runs throughout all the rest of the volume, says—"Such a thought as this is something far above all art; it is epic poetry of the highest order." Epic poetry of the highest order! Ungrateful will be our future epic poets if they do not learn from this—if such is done by boys sailing toy-boats, surely boys flying a kite will illustrate far better the great astronomical knowledge of our days. But he is rather unfortunate in this bit of criticism; for he compares this incident with one of Claude's, which we, however, think a far better and more poetical incident. "Claude, in subjects of the same kind," (not, by the by, a very fair statement,) "commonly introduces people carrying red trunks with iron locks about, and dwells, with infantine delight, on the lustre of the leather and the ornaments of the iron. The intellect can have no occupation here, we must look to the imitation or to nothing." As to the "infantine delight," we presume it is rather with the boys and their toy-boats; but let us look a little into these trunks—no, we may not—there is something more in them than our graduate imagines—the very iron locks and precious leather mean to tell you there is something still more precious within, worth all the cost of freightage; and you see, a little off, the great argosie that has brought the riches; and we humbly think that the ruling passion of a people whose "princes were merchants, and whose merchants princes," as happily expressed by the said "red trunks" as the rise of Carthage by the boys and boats; and in the fervour of this bit of "exquisite" epic choice, probably Claude did look with delight on the locks and the leather; and, whenever we look upon that picture again, we shall be ready to join in the delight, and say, in spite of our graduate's "contempt," there is nothing like leather. If the boys and boats express the beginning, the red trunks express the thing done—merchandise "brought home to every man's door;" so that the one serves for an "idea of relation," quite as well as the other. And here ends section the first.

The study of ideas of imitation are thrown out of the consideration of ideas of power, as unworthy the pursuit of an artist, whose purpose is not to deceive, and because they are only the result of a particular association of ideas of truth. "There are two modes in which we receive the conception of power; one, the most just, when by a perfect knowledge of the difficulty to be overcome, and the means employed, we form a right estimate of the faculties exerted; the other, when without possessing such intimate and accurate knowledge, we are impressed by a sensation of power in visible action. If these two modes of receiving the impression agree in the result, and if the sensation be equal to the estimate, we receive the utmost possible idea of power. But this is the case perhaps with the works of only one man out of the whole circle of the fathers of art, of him to whom we have just referred—Michael Angelo. In others the estimate and the sensation are constantly unequal, and often contradictory." There is a distinction between the sensation of power and the intellectual perception of it. A slight sketch will give the sensation; the greater power is in the completion, not so manifest, but of which there is a more intellectual cognizance. He instances the drawings of Frederick Tayler for sensations of power, considering the apparent means; and those of John Lewis for more complete ideas of power, in reference to the greater difficulties overcome, and the more complicated means employed. We think him unfortunate in his selection, as the subjects of these artists are not such as, of themselves, justly to receive ideas of power, therefore not the best to illustrate them. He proceeds to "ideas of power, as they are dependent on execution." There are six legitimate sources of pleasure in execution—truth, simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, decision, velocity. "Decision" we should think involved in "truth;" as so involved, not necessarily different from velocity. Mystery and inadequacy require explanation. "Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable." Execution, therefore, should be "incomprehensible." "Inadequacy" can hardly, we think, be said to be a quality of execution, as it has only reference to means employed. Insufficient means, according to him, give ideas of power. We otherwise conclude—namely, that if the inadequacy of the means is shown, we receive ideas of weakness. "Ars est celare artem"—so is it to conceal the means. Strangeness in execution, not a legitimate source of pleasure, is illustrated by the execution of a bull's head by Rubens, and of the same by Berghem. Of the six qualities of execution, the three first are the greatest, the three last the most attractive. He considers Berghem and Salvator to have carried their fondness for these lowest qualities to a vice. We can scarcely agree with him, as their execution seems most appropriate to the character of their subjects—to arise, in fact, out of their "ideas of truth." There is appended a good note on the execution of the "drawing-master," that, under the title of boldness, will admit of no touch less than the tenth of an inch broad, and on the tricks of engravers' handling.