countenance, gradually abates downward, with exquisite transition, re-brightening on his cord-bound hands and arms, and on the forehead, brow, and cheek, of the Holy Mary.

The rest of the figure of the Madonna-whose soul is for the moment absorbed in maternal sorrowhooded and attired in dark blue drapery, is deeply overshadowed; which is not only in good poetic analogy with her profound grief; but, opposed as it is to the brilliant carnations, imparts a gratifying degree of clearness to the shadowed flesh tints, and gives a lucid and vigorous effect to the whole work. The Mother of Christ, who beholds her celestial Son brought forth in bondage, and hears the vociferating rabble, is in the very extremity of mental and maternal suffering. No sorrow can exceed her sorrow. She is completely exhausted and overcome by the magnitude of her distress. In fact, she appears as if she had just expired, or was on the point of expiring, from the intensity of her sufferings: and this apparent departure of vitality, and the extreme lassitude it occasions, is seen through her whole figure, even to her fingers' ends: her hands have as completely swooned away, as the rest of her person. There is no more of nervous agency, or obedience to volition, in her finely painted fingers, than of speculation in her dying eyes; volition itself being in fact (and of course) suspended, with animation.

It is scarcely worth mentioning-being a mere speck on snow-that the hand which Pilate holds forth as he renders up his prisoner, is rather effeminate in its form and dimensions: -too much that of a petit maitre, or a Sybarite, to have properly belonged to a Roman prefect, or proconsul. Its action, how

ever, when taken with the bland look by which it is accompanied, persuades us that he must have risen from his examination of Christ, as nearly a convert to the Christian faith as was the Felix who trembled before the truths uttered by St. Paul. In the countenance of Pilate, there is not the faintest shade of severity on the contrary, it is all suavity, emanating from a fair-complexioned and gentle-minded man. He wears an oriental head-dress-a jewel-fronted turban of blue-and a yellow robe; and appears in all respects mild and candid. The architecture of the pretorium-inconspicuous in its features and forming, excepting where a small portion of light wall connects the lights which fall on Pilate and the Saviour a breadth of middle-tint-constitutes a bond of union between the lights and shadows, which keeps the whole together in excellent unison.

This fine picture, recently purchased for the public, together with that of the Academy of Cupid (at the price of £.11,500), of the Marquess of Londonderry, if we are rightly informed, has for fourteen or fifteen years been a much admired ornament of the collection at Holderness House. It came from the Colonna palace at Rome; and as it was always held in the highest esteem there, we cannot but indulge in the anticipation that it will be equally so in the National Gallery of England; nor are we without hope that the exhibition of such a picture will have some considerable influence in removing the prejudice that has long existed here against the admission of works of art into protestant churches. During the life-time of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. West, the then Bishop of London, and his ecclesiastical chapter, refused to them and four other academicians, the

opportunity of painting pictures for the cathedral of St. Paul; and the prevalence of this deplorable prejudice has greatly retarded the progress of historical painting in Britain. Probably the only true way of propagating the gospel, is by convincing the unconvinced of its divinity; and Coreggio's Ecce Homo, while it pathetically and powerfully calls forth our best sympathies, should thoroughly satisfy the sceptical, that he who could look and suffer THUS, must have been commissioned from above.

In the three pictures from the pencil of this justly admired artist, with which our National Gallery is now enriched, we behold profoundly interesting approximations toward the perfection of unsophisticated painting; such as we might elsewhere seek in vain. They are at once a valuable lesson and legacy, left by Coreggio to future generations of artists, in exemplary proof of the utter worthlessness and folly of resorting to meretricious means. Such examples as these should teach, though precepts fail..

THE RESTORATION OF THE ARK OF THE COVENANT.

SEBASTIAN BOURDON.

THE Restoration of the Ark is remarkable, not only for its air of originality, but for a certain primitive physiognomy. Without following precisely in the track of Titian, or Poussin, or that of any other painter, Sebastian here successfully carries back the mind of the scriptural scholar to the times of the Israelitish patriarchs and prophets; and his works stand contrasted in this respect to the contempora

neous productions of Claude of Lorraine. Claude, Poussin, and Sebastian, were all great artists; were fellow countrymen; and their names will descend, with honour to France and themselves, to a remote posterity: but while the first of these is all ignorance, except concerning what is present, Poussin, and the latter, abound with erudite intelligence of the past; and if Bourdon's reputation depended (which it does not) on this picture alone, of the return of the Ark, his name would float buoyantly, and with triumphal honour, "adown the stream of Time."

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Prophets and poets have been occasionally rapt into future times." It proclaims scarcely less of inspiration when a painter is able to retrospect through the dim obscurity of three thousand years of the times that are past, and transport us to the debatable land of Kirjath-jearim and Beth-shemesh, so successfully as in the present production from the pencil of Sebastian Bourdon; or as Niccolo Poussin has to Ashdod, or Ekron, in his Plague of the Philistines; or as in his Finding of Moses, to the banks of the Nile and the more ancient metropolis of Egypt.

Sebastian Bourdon, one of the founders, and the first rector, of the French Academy of Arts, was a man of extensive knowledge, profound habits of thought, and of that rare disinterested virtue, which, if not the constant concomitant of these, seldom exists without them. The rich results of all are before us in our National Gallery. We shall presently adduce his "Return of the Ark," in proof of his deep thinking and the reach of his antiquarian knowledge; and a single anecdote, which we shall here relate, will serve to evince his self-denying virtue.

In the year 1652, Bourdon became principal painter

to Queen Christina of Sweden, when certain pictures brought by her father, Gustavus Adolphus, from the pillage of Prague, having in that barbarous military age remained more than five years in their packages, her majesty desired Sebastian to see them unpacked, and examine them. The artist, with manifest pleasure, made a most favourable report of their merits. The queen was in a gracious mood, and replied"They pray, Bourdon, accept them for yourself.""I am duly sensible of the honour, madam; but beg to decline the gift, (rejoined the painter.) They are some of the very first pieces in Europe. Most fitting it is that they should be in your majesty's possession; and you ought never to part with them."

Christina courtesied lower than regal etiquette, and as low as royal condescension, would permit ; and we may hope found other means of rewarding the rare virtue of her servant. She sat to him at about this youthful period of her life, for her portrait, and the picture, which is now [May 20, 1834] exhibiting among those of the late Duke of Berri, attests the extraordinary reach as well as variety of the powers of Sebastian, and proves that his pencil could as faithfully record a present truth, as it could portray, under the retrospective eye and mind of its master, the poetry of antiquity.

But it may perhaps not prove unworthy of passing remark, that to the above-mentioned casualty of the artist's nobly declining the proffered gift of the queen, we owe those subsequent pictorial decapitations which we have elsewhere in our Catalogue regretted; but to this, we also owe, that when Christina afterward abdicated the crown of Sweden, she was enabled to take the pictures with her to Rome, and that they