issue are, is the art of Munich really better than that of England and France, and not founded upon a misconception of the primary condition of glass painting-an error natural enough in the minds of persons trained to paint in fresco on a solid wall? The craving for mere cheapness and expeditious execution is the real motive of the preference for German over British or French glass. Have we yet to learn that we cannot be cheaply magnificent?-Athenæum, Bonaparte Portraits.-In 1815, when Blucher was quartered in the Palace at St. Cloud, he found there a number of portraits of the Bonaparte family, by the first artists of the day. He thought them pretty, and, following an example the French generals had very frequently set, he carried away seven of them. One passed into the possession of the King of Prussia, another went to the King of Wurtemburg, the five others were hung up in Blucher's house, and are there still. But there has been a lawsuit about them between different members of the family, and the tribunals have decided that they must be sold in order that justice may be done to all. The period of the sale is soon to be fixed. The subjects of the pictures are: 1. Queen Hortense, holding by the hand the present Emperor of the French, then five or six years old. 2. Queen of Naples, Murat's wife, surrounded by her children. These two are by Gérard. 3. Empress Marie Louise, holding the King of Rome by the hand (David). 4. The Queen of Spain, with her daughter, then nine years old (Gérard). 5. Princess Borghese, by Lefevre. All the figures are of life size, and the pictures are said to be in perfect preservation. It is presumable that their authenticity, as originals by the artists named, can be proved, beyond a doubt, in which case it seems not unlikely that they will sell well, and perhaps be bought for Paris.-Times. place open to painters or sculptors. Now, however, our neighbors have copied our example in this respect; and besides the grand display perii odically made under the sanction of the Institute, Paris boasts of private enterprises set on foot by artists who seek to bring their productions before the public under the most favorable circumstances. M. About evidently approves of freetrade in works of art as well as in everything else. His notices of the different exhibitors are marked by his usual common sense, and by that vein of quiet satire in which he preeminently shines.-English Paper. -A figure of Edward the Black Prince is to be placed in one of the niches of Canterbury Cathe dral. -The new statue to the great speculative philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was lately erected in Konigsberg. The Crown-Prince of Russia promised to inaugurate it. VARIETIES. Lord Brougham and Charles Knight.-I had never come across the renowned orator in private life, or had seen him under an every-day charac ter. There was an image in my mind of the Queen's Attorney-General, as I had often beheld him in the House of Lords, wielding a power in the proceedings on the Bill of Pains and Penalties which no other man seemed to possess equivocating witnesses crouching beneath his withering scorn; mighty peers shrinking from his bold sarcasm; the whole assembly visibly agitated at times by the splendor of his eloquence. The Henry Brougham I had gazed upon was, in my mind's eye, a man stern and repellent; not to be approached with any attempt at familiarity; whose opinions must be received with the most The Arts Encouraged in France.-A few days respectful deference; whose mental superiority days ago the emperor and empress invited to would be somewhat overwhelming. The Henry the imperial table at St. Cloud the laureates of Brougham into whose chambers in Lincoln's Inn Rome who lately gained the grand prizes for I was ushered on a November night was sitting painting, sculpture, architecture, and musical amidst his briefs, evidently delighted to be intercomposition MM. Maillard, Delaplanche, Des-rupted for some thoughts more attractive. After champs, Guadet, Dutert, and Sieg. Among the other guests were Marshal Vaillant, minister of the Beaux-Arts, Count de Niewerkerke, superintendent of the Beaux-Arts; Count Baciocchi, superintendent-general of theatres; M. Auber of the Conservatoire, etc. According to Galignani, the emperor and empress gave the most gracious encouragement to the young artists; and during the evening her Majesty presented to them a photograph of the emperor, of herself, and of the Prince Imperial, signing each card with her name. M. Sieg was also informed that his cantata, which had gained the grand prize for musical composition, was shortly to be performed at the Grand Opera. In the course of another century or so, similar things will, perhaps, be done in England.-Builder. About on the Fine Arts.-After having reviewed, in the columns of Le Petit Journal, the Paris exhibition of pictures and sculptures for 1864, M. Edmond About republishes his amusing articles, and thus adds a fresh chapter to the history of the Fine Arts. Until very lately the government had, so to say, the monopoly of exhibitions, and the galleries of the Louvre were the only saluting my friend with a joke, and grasping my hand with a cordial welcome, he went at once to the subject upon which I came. The rapid conception of the features of my plan, the few brief questions as to my wishes, the manifestations of a warm interest in my views without the slightest attempt to be patronizing, were most gratifying to me. The image of the great orator of 1820 altogether vanished when I listened to the unpretentious and often hopeful words of one of the best table-talkers of 1826-it vanished, even as the full-bottomed wig of that time seemed to have belonged to some other head than the closecropped one upon which I looked. I went to work to elaborate the scheme of a rational and useful almanac. It was completed in a few days, and I took it to my steady friend, Matthew Hill. We went together to Westminster to consult Mr. Brougham. What an incalculable satisfaction to a projector, even of so apparently humble a work as an almanac, to find a man of ardent and capacious mind, quick to comprehend, frank to approve, not deeming a difficult task impossible, ready not only for counsel but for action. "It is now the middle of Novem ber," said the rapid genius of unprocrastinating labor; "can you have your almanac out before the end of the year?" 'Yes, with a little help in the scientific matters." Then tell Mr. Coates to call a meeting of the General Committee at my chambers, at half-past eight o'clock to-morrow morning. You shall have help enough. There's Lubbock, and Wrottesley, and Daniel, and Beaufort-you may have your choice of good men for your astronomy and meteorology, your tides and your eclipses. Go to work and never fear." Every difficulty was swept away by the energy of the Chairman (Mr. Brougham), the support of the Committee (of Useful Knowledge), and the perseverance of Mr. Knight; and before the first of January, 1828, the first number of the British Almanac was published. A few months later, the Companion to the Almanac was in the pressthen, and ever since, among the best of useful manuals.-Passages of a Working Life. months in the work, and has discovered two manuscripts of real interest, some scholiasts of Aristotle believed to be new, and an invaluable historical work. This is "an account by an eye-witness of the events of the reign of Mohammed the Great, of the capture of Constantinople, and in a word, of all the exciting scenes of the last seventeen years of that long and eventful history. The manuscript is a beautiful one,” and “full of curious details." Late English papers announce the death of John Leech, the celebrated humorous artist, in the forty-eighth year of his age. He died of extreme nervousness, brought on by excessive brain-work, and aggravated by the sound of hand-organs and other noises, which annoyed him greatly, and which he was unable to escape. For twenty years he has been the chief artist of Punch, and has held a position at the head of his line of the profession-humorous illustration. Banting's pamphlet on Corpulence is having an immense sale in England. Already fifty-three thousand copies have been disposed of, and it is purchased at the book-stalls as "light," pleasant reading, in preference to the creations of novelists, or the narratives of travellers. The only recent work that can at all compete with it in popularity is Tennyson's recent volume of poems. A new edition of Robinson Crusoe, collated from the original copy in the British Museum, is published in London, by the Knights. It will include a third part, or volume, omitted in all recent editions, and called "Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; with his Vision of the Angelic World— written by Himself." Of the authenticity of this part of the work-which was never popularthere has always been much doubt. M. Renan intends to supplement his Lives of Jesus and the Virgin Mary with the Lives of the Apostles, and for this purpose will soon visit the East, intending to go over the ground St. Paul travelled between the period of his conversion and of his martyrdom. St. Paul will be the principal figure in the forthcoming work. The Areopagus.-This very day I went up to the Areopagus. At first the place was utterly deserted. Not a human being was there, nor in the Agora, once so full of busy life, nor in the Pnyx, where the whole population used to assemble to hear their orators; nor at the Propyleæa, once thronged by stately processions. I was absorbed by the thoughts such objects could not fail to inspire, and by the infinite contrast between the past and the present. I thought of Paul preaching to the philosophers on the spot where I was sitting silent and alone; of Demosthenes thrilling the assembled Athenians with the loftiest sentiments of patriotism, as he stood on the rocky platform on the opposite hill; of Socrates, discoursing to his weeping friends on the immortality of the soul, in the dungeon almost within a stone's throw-so near that I could see the mortises in the living rock where the beams of the wooden front were inserted. I was running over the thoughts of the great apostle, and of the scarcely less great heathens, whose names are forever linked to these spots; and as I mused, a ragged but bright-looking boy came up, and spoke to me. I entered into conversation with him. He told me, in excellent Greek, that he The Daily and Periodical Press of England.came from Chalcis, beyond the mountains; his The edition of the London journals amounts to father died two years ago; his mother was still 248,000 copies daily. The total sale of copies of alive. I asked what he was doing in Athens. weekly journals amounts to 2,263,200, of which He waited and did errands in a coffee-house. number 1,149,000 copies are issued by newspaWishing to try him a little further, I pointed to pers partly political, partly literary. 510,400 the Temple of Theseus, and asked him what it copies thereof are purely political; 252,500 are was. He answered, in as good Greek as Xeno- issued as sporting sheets; 47,000 copies are dephon would have used, "The Temple of Theseus." voted to agriculture; 44,050 copies are devoted to I pointed to the dungeon of Socrates. Said he, architectural and polytechnic arts; 40,750 copies "The prison of Socrates." "Who was Socrates?" are issued by periodicals devoted to general litsaid I. "The ancient philosopher," was the in- erature; 15,300 copies are issued by periodicals stant reply. This again was odd, though of exclusively devoted to medicine, chemistry, pharcourse perfectly natural, that this little Chalcid-macy, etc.; 12,000 copies devoted to law; 8500 ian ragamuffin should converse in Greek with so to music; and 183,700 to theology. much greater facility than I could, using only a single word that was not classical--and that was coffee-house-in the course of fifteen or twenty minutes.--Familiar Letters from Europe. A Valuable Manuscript.-A correspondent of the Times supplies an interesting piece of literary intelligence. Dr. Dêthier, director of the Austrian School, has been permitted to examine the relics of the library of Matthias Corvinus preserved in the old Seraglio. He has turned over every leaf and manuscript, spending twelve The statistics of magazine literature, inclusive of "Reviews," weekly, monthly, and quarterly, show still more astounding results, they having been quadrupled within five years. A dealer in old books in London occasions a good deal of amusement to those who inspect his stock by the curious labels which he attaches to different works. What, for instance, would Dr. Johnson say to the following: "Lundun, and how to see hit;" and another labelled "Leives of they Poayts-price 'arf a crown?" tinctly seen can be as certainly attained. STATESMANSHIP IN CONSTITUTIONAL In place of such men we have two dis COUNTRIES. tinct classes, who rather caricature true statesmanship than imitate or approach Ir is a common complaint that states- it. There are some who have wondermanship is at a low ebb in England just ful skill in gaining party victories-that now. What we have is of a poor kind, is, in adapting immediate means to imand there is very little of it. Among mediate ends; and there are others who our public men there is abundance of are fanatically devoted to one object or political ability, of clever parliamentary one principle, and who pursue it as perstrategy, of practical knowledge, of de- sistently as any statesman of any counbating skill and eloquence, and a fair try, but they are doctrinaires, not statesamount of administrative capacity. But men. They are irrational devotees. the views and action of our public men, They are not so much thinkers, as men even the best of them, lack width, possessed with an idea. We have two steadiness, and persistent harmony; and admirable illustrations of this among it is the union of these three characteris- living celebrities, in the case of two tics in an adequate degree that gives to men, of whom it is as impossible to politics the quality and dignity of states- speak without respect and gratitude as manship. We miss men gifted with without regret and censure. Lord John the faculty of taking a wide survey Russell became eminent and powerful of the present or the future, a true by identifying himself with the cause of perception of the enduring elements of parliamentary reform, at a time when a nation's greatness, a clear comprehen- reform was, of all measures, perhaps the sion and an unswerving pursuit of those one most essential to the well-being and measures by which the objects thus dis-progress of the country. He adhered NEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 2. 10 to his object through long, disastrous, and disheartening years; and when the tide turned and the victory was at last won, he rode into power with the flow. ing wave of popular strength, and as a just and appropriate reward became the prominent idol of the hour. His name was forever associated with his cause, not only in the minds of the people, but, unfortunately, in his own too. The question became in a manner his possession, his hobby, idée fixé. It haunted him, so to speak. He grew to feel that he owed it the homage of constant attention perpetual, fidgety, fussy petits soins. From being the aim of a sound mind, it grew to be the crotchet of an infirm one. He seemed to be startled from his sounder condition by the clamor which greeted some unfortunate remarks which he once made about "finality." He took an opportunity not long afterwards of astonishing the soberer portion of the nation by announcing that he had been an advocate of parliamentary reform when he entered public life, that he was its advocate still, and that he trusted he should always remain so: in fact, that at one time before dinner he had felt very hungry, which was natural enough; that he had had a plentiful dinner, of his own ordering, and that now he felt more hungry than before-which did not sound very natural or healthy; and that he trusted his appetite would always continue as robust and insatiable as ever, which sounded hardly like good sense or sound morality. Since that memorable declaration he has been pertinaciously waving the old banner and crying the old watchword, without perceiving that his face was set in a precisely opposite direction, and that he was confronting an entirely different set of antagonists from those whom he routed in his youth; and has, in fact, been steadily, though happily unsuccessfully, endeavoring to undo his own work, under the delusion that he was completing it. At first he toiled to transfer political preponderance from the aristocratic to the middle classes-that is, from a fraction of the propertied and educated classes to the whole of them. Since then he has been trying to transfer political preponderance from the middle classes to the ignorant and the working classes, and he calls both proceedings by the name of "Parliamentary Reform." Our other persistent politician is Mr. Cobden. His consistency is far more real than Earl Russell's, and his errors and deficiencies are of a different order. It was given to him to gain a victory, perhaps even greater than that of parlia mentary reform, and against a phalanx of foes even more formidable to begin with. He stood upon a simple truth, he fought for a distinct and definable purpose, he conquered by the pure force of demonstration. He was truly grand when he was fighting that battle; he has never been truly grand since. He saw that peace, the wealth and prosperity of the country, and the physical welfare of the masses, depended on liberating trade and industry from the shackles with which selfish aims and unwise fondness had bound them. He succeeded. The commercial, financial, and industrial results of the free commercial policy which he persuaded the country to adopt, have not only justified but far surpassed, not only his, but all other anticipations. No wonder that he should have felt that it was impossible to exaggerate the value of the principle he had proclaimed. His error has lain in seeing it alone, or in looking at it so exclusively and so intently as to see it out of its due proportions; in deeming that free trade would inevitably entail all other political blessings; in judging men and sovereigns according to their faith in his own creed. His intellect was a clear and powerful, but not a wide or philosophic one. He saw one side of human nature so vividly that he forgot it was only one side. He would have sacrificed, or risked sacrificing, every other public aim to freedom of commerce, believing, we doubt not, in his heart, that all other things would inevitably follow in its train. In his exclusive devotion to one object he has endangered many blessings and outraged many cherished sentiments. He has been blinded by the very concentration of his vision. He has forgotten, too, that there are national objects nobler and dearer than peace, richer and more prolific than commercial wealth, more essential even at times than cheap food or light taxation for the poor. Hence, though about the most acute, vigorous, and honest intellect among our public men, he is perhaps the least statesmanlike of them all; because width and mellowness of mind, as well as consistency and force, are needed to consti tute a statesman. The fact is undeniable: whether we look to other countries or to other times, whether we compare France with England, ancient with modern days, the reign of Victoria with the reign of Elizabeth, the race of statesmen seems to have died out among us, and we have seldom been more painfully reminded of it than of late. "There were giants in those days," there are none now. Not only can we find no Pericles in this age; not only do we see no one like Ximenes or Alberoni, who governed Spain so long, or like Richelieu or Sully, who ruled France for half a lifetime, and through her ruled Europe, or like Barnevelt or De Witt, who for years contrived to govern and make great even their turbulent republic; but we see no analogies to Cecil and Walsingham, who held power through a whole reign, under a most capricious and unworthy mistress. Our modern history can offer no rivals to such men as Napoleon I. or Frederick the Great, scarcely even to such men as Metternich or Nesselrode or Cavour or Napoleon III. The only ministers who could pretend to the name of statesmen in recent days in England, were Walpole, Pitt, and Canning, and the last, the feeblest of the three, died upwards of a generation since. Granted, however, the fact, two questions at once suggest themselves for consideration : why we have now no such statesmen as those of other countries and of former days; and how far their absence is to be deplored. Now, in reference to the first point, a little reflection will serve to show that the current ideas on the subject are of a nature to render us habitually, though unconsciously, unjust to the public men of England: not that we under-estimate their actual capacity and merits, but that, in mentally measuring them with the Richelieus, Cecils, De Witts, and Napoleons, we are trying them by a standard which it is simply impossible they should ever reach. We complain, and with perfect truth, that their political ability never attains, and seldom approaches, to the height of statesmanship, without pausing to inquire whether, under a parliamentary system of government, there is any scope or field for the development of statesmanship, properly so-called. In comparing the ministers and politicians of constitutional England with those of despotic France, Austria, and Russia-as in comparing the ministers and politicians of the England of Queen Victoria with those of the England of Queen Elizabeth-we lose sight of the consideration that the conditions, and therefore the possibilities, of the several ages and countries are altogether dissimilar. We lament over the fancied dwarfing and degeneracy of our statesmen-the fact being, not perhaps that the dwarfing and degeneracy alleged are not in a measure true, but that they are the natural growth, the inevitable outcome of that constitutional régime, of the reality of that self-government, of that increase of the popular ingredient in our complicated system, for which we have been constantly contending, and on which we especially felicitate and pride ourselves. It is true, and may readily be conceded, that we no longer produce statesmen like those feared and venerated names we have enumerated a page or two since; but it is because we should not know what to do with them if we had them, because they would find no fitting place among us, because they would disturb our polity, and we should hamper their action and paralyze their genius. The position of a statesman in a free country is altogether different from that which he occupies in a despotic one; the conditions of his tenure and the character of his functions are not the same; the ability required from him is of a different order; the power which he wields is different, the means he must make use of for gaining his influence and obtaining his ends are different. Under a despot he has to govern the nation; he has sometimes to govern the despot: he may sometimes be the despot. He has to think and act for a whole people; he is therefore under an awful obligation to think and act soundly; and we all know how rapidly and enormous |