HAVEL ALL OVER.

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-who really painted with some spirit and splendour. He was all an' all with an amateur friend of mine; and I remember once contemplating a glorious sunset among mountains with the said amateur friend, when after a syncope and solemn pause," he exclaimed to himself in soliloquy, "Havel all over! Havel all over!" He complimented the sunset, James, Nature's own midsummer-sunset, at the close of a thunderous day, James, by likening it to, or rather identifying it with, a bit of oiled canvass run over by the brush of a clever Cockney! Shepherd. That beats a', and is a capital illustration o' my meaning. Sketchers 'll often no alloo the sun to set in his ain way, nor a mountain to haud up his head as he chooses, without takin baith the ane and the ither to task for their clumsiness or awkward demeanour. The sea wide-rolling in his verdant lustre, or a' a-foam wi' fury, that daunts not, however, the wing-tips o' the bonny creturs the sea-maws, that think naething o' floating on and awa, Willie, on waves that seem big and fierce aneuch to dash a veshel again' the rocks— Sketchers, I was gaun to say, 'll criticise the old sea, without ony o' that reverential awe o' which Wudsworth so finely speaks-fin' faut wi' him for no being black aneuch here, and white aneuch there, and purple aneuch yonner, and green aneuch ower ayont, and yellow aneuch where the sunlight smites, and red aneuch whare the lightning shivers the mast o' the ship skuddin under bare poles, wi' ten thousand million o' white-maned waves pursuing her, as if gaping and roaring for their prey.

North. You poets are just as bad as painters.

Shepherd. That's a lee, sir; for we poets deal in general sketches o' Nature—and alloo her great latitude in a' her conduct wi' the elements. We do not tie her down, like the painters, to ony set rules o' behaviour, sae that she but behave like hersel; and we defy her to come wrang ony hour, or in ony mood, before our spirits, provided only she binna wrapt up a'thegither in a vile, cauld, nizzling, mizzling, drizzling Scotch mist, that utterly obliterates the creation, and reduces it to warse than Naething.

North. Have you been at the Exhibition, James, this season? Shepherd. The Directors didna open't, till they knew I had come to town, and they presented me wi' a perpetual ticket, that'll answer for a' this century. Let's hear your opinion,

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WATSON GORDON'S PORTRAIT OF WILSON.

Mr North. Speak out, man, and dinna be feared for me, fr I'll mak allooance for your never having studied the airts o paintin and poetry, as I hae done; and you'll be keepit in ganging verra far wrang in your judgment by your ain natura taste and genius.

North. Landscape or Portrait?

Shepherd. Portrait-for I canna let you think o' takin the landscapes out o' my ain haun-Wha's best in the line c portraits?

North. Need you ask?-John Watson Gordon. In three years more-if he goes on thus-he will be equal to Raebum Indeed, Raeburn himself, although the greatest portrait-painter Scotland ever produced, never painted, at John Watson's age, a better picture than that artist's "Dr Hunter." Shepherd. It's no in this Exhibition, is't?

North. No-but Lady

Shepherd. Ay-that is a maist beautiful wark o' airt. Sae composed and dignified that leddy sits-yet without ony tine ture o' pride; for what's rank to them that hae rank? They never think about it. It's only your upstart madams that haud their heads heich and haughty.

North. I have not seen any portrait of you, James, in any late Exhibition ?

Shepherd. Nor me o' you, sir. What for doesna Watson Gordon immortaleeze himsel by paintin a Portrait o' Christopher North ? But oh, sir! but you hae gotten a kittle faceyour een's sae changefu' in their gleg expression, and that mouth o' yours takes fifty shapes and hues every minute, while, as for your broos, they're noo as smooth as those o'a lassie, and noo as frownin as the broos o' a Saracen's head.

North. There is nothing uncommon in my face, James? Shepherd. Oh, sir, you hae indeed a kittle kittle face, and te do it justice it should be painted in a Series. Ane micht ken something o' your physiognomy in the coorse o' a Gallery.

North. "The Stirrup-Cup," painted by James Stewart the engraver, is exceedingly clever and characteristic. I have not seen an old gentleman enjoy a caulker more intensely since the peep I had a few minutes ago of myself in that glass, 1 See ante, p. 143, note 2.

The best portrait extant of Professor Wilson was painted by Sir John Watson Gordon, in 1850, for Mr John Blackwood, in whose possession it now is

when turning up my little finger to Ambrose's incomparable Glenlivet.

Shepherd. The powney, too, seems unwilling to start-no that he's sorry to return hame ony mair than his maister; but somehow or ither the ribs o' the rack fitted the nose o' him unco snugly, and the aits' were o' a peculiarly fine flavour. The laird's man, too, looks as if he wad fain hae anither hour's conversation wi' that yellow-haired lassie, that's geein him a partin keek frae ahint the door-cheek; "but fare thee well, and if for ever, still for ever fare thee well!" sighs out Jock, till the bubbles floatin o'er the brimmin quaich disappear like a vapour.

North. Now, James, that you have permitted me at such great length, and without any interruption, to describe to you the merits of many of the best portraits, let us have your opinion of the landscapes.

Shepherd. That young chiel Gibb2 hits aff a simple scene o' nature to the nines. a bit dub o' water, aiblins-a foot-path -a tree—a knowe—a coo, and a bairn; yet out o' sic slender materials, the chiel contrives to gie a character to the place

in a way that proves him to hae the gift o' genius.

North. Mr Thomson of Duddingston* is the best landscapepainter in Scotland. The man's a poet.

Shepherd. I dinna like that picture o' his at a' o' Loch Catrine frae the Gobblin's Cave. The foreground is too broken, spotty, confused, and huddled-and what is worst of all, it wants character. The chasm doun yonner, too, is no half profound aneuch, and inspires neither awe nor wonder. The lake itself is lost in its insignificance, and the distant mountains are fairly beaten by the foreground, and hardly able to haud up their heads.

North. There is truth in much of what you say, Jamesbut still the picture is a magnificent one.

Shepherd. I wadna gie the Bass Rock for a dizzen o't. You may weel ca't a magnificent ane-and I wad wish, in sic weather, to be ane o' the mony thousan' sea-l a-birds that keep wheeling unwearied in the wind, and ever and anon cast anchor in the clifts. Still, solitary, and sublime-a

1 Aits-oats.

2 This promising artist died young.

3 To the nines must mean "to the purpose;" but what authority there is for the expression I know not. 4 See ante, p. 69, note 1.

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THOMSON.-WILLIAMS.

sea-piece, indeed, worthy of being hung up in the Temple o Neptune.

North. Kinbane Castle is just as good-and Torthorwald Castle, Dumfriesshire, is the best illustration I ever saw of Gray's two fine lines

"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds."

Shepherd. Mr Thomson gives me the notion o' a man that had loved natur afore he had studied art-loved her and kent her weel, and been let intil her secrets, when nane were by but their twa sels, in neuks where the wimplin burnie plays, in open spats within the woods where you see naething but stems o' trees-stems o' trees-and a flicker o' broken light interspersing itsel among the shadowy branches, or without ony concealment, in the middle o' some wide black mosslike the moor o' Rannoch-as still as the shipless sea, when the winds are weary-and at nightfall in the weather-gleam o' the settin sun, a dim object like a ghost, stannin alane by its single solitary sel-aiblins an auld tower, aiblins a rock, aiblins a tree stump, aiblins a clud, aiblins a vapour, a dream, a naething.

North. Yes, he worships nature, and does not paint with the fear of the public before his eyes. It is a miserable mistake to paint purposely for an Exhibition. He and his friend Hugh Williams1 are the glory of the Scottish landscape school.

Shepherd. It's impossible to excel Williams-in his ain style-but he should leave the iles and keep to water-colours. In his water-colours, so saft and hazy-sae like the aerial scenery that shifts afore the half-closed een when a midsummer dream has thrown its glamour ower a body sinkin down to slumber in noonday, within a fairy-ring on the hillsideno a man in Britain will get the heels o' Hugh Williams; as for the man himsel, I like to look on him, for he's gotten a gran' bald phrenological head, the face o' him's at ance good-natured and intelligent; and o' a' the painters I ken, his mainners seems to me to be the maist the mainners o' a gentleman and a man o' the world—if he wad but gie up

and

1 Hugh Williams was celebrated for his water-coloured landscapes generally, and for his Views in Greece in particular. He published Travels in Italy, Greece, and the Ionian Islands, with Engravings from original Drawings. 2 vols. 1820.

makin auld puns, and be rather less o' the Whig and a wee mair o' the Tory. But here's his health

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North. With perfect satisfaction. Hugh Williams " Not Greek Williams-not Grecian Williams-for I suppose he was somewhere about fifty years of age before he ever saw Greece;-but Welsh Williams-Scotch Williams-for in Wales was he born, and in Scotland was he bred, and neither country need be ashamed of him.

Shepherd. As weel ca' me Greek Hogg-or Grecian Hogg, because I write, as ye tell me, in the Doric dialect. But forgettin sic folly, what think you o' the Death o' the Buck, by that Southron, Edwin Landseer? Never saw I bloodthirsty fierceness better depicted than in the muzzles o' thae ferocious Jowlers. Lord preserve us, was that the way, think ye, that the Spanish bloodhounds used to rug doun the Maroons in the West Indies?

North. There is a leetle, and but a leetle something, resembling affectation, in the manner of the Huntsmen.

Shepherd. Come, sir, nane o' your captious criticism. That black dog, wi' the red legs, and chafts and eebrees, is equal to onything that ever was painted in this world; and that white deevil—a bick,1 I'se warrant, for bicks are aye the fleetest and the fiercest, hinging to the Buck's lug, with teeth inextricable as arsenic to the coat of the stomach, is a canine leech, that if no chocked aff frae the bite, would soon let out the animal's life, and stretch him with his spreading antlers on the heather.

North. Heather, James-there is no heather in the picture. The scene is not peculiarly Highland—and therefore I do not feel the bonnet and tartan of the Hunter.

Shepherd. I saw naething to fin' fault wi'-you see it's no a red deer-but a fallow deer-frae the spots;—and the Park, as they ca't it, 'll be somewhere perhaps on the borders o' the mountainous pairts o' Perthshire or Argyllshire;-or wha kens that the scene's no English-and that the painter has gien the hunter something o' the dress o' a Highlander, frae an imaginative feeling but half-understood by his ain mind, as maist imaginative feelings are, but nane the waur on that account either for paintin or poetry.—But what say ye to the statutes, sir?

1 Bick-bitch.