the kitten to the finery with which she is loaded, is in the highest degree amusing. "Pussy's Toilet" is the title under which the picture must be looked for. The fruits of Mr. Stanfield's journey into Spain, in 1851, are beginning to be apparent. He has chosen for his largest subject a magnificent pass in the Pyrenees, leading from the Spanish frontier towards the Pic du Midi of the Valley of Ossau, and taken, we fancy, from below the Port d'Anéou, where the path is only practicable for muleteers. Over piles of rocks in the foreground, between the interstices of which glimpses are obtained of streams now frozen, a party of contrabandistas are scrambling, some few of their companions being visible in the distance, slowly making their way in the direction of the Caseta de Broussette. Half-way up the valley, on the left hand, stands a ruined hovel, affording-wretchedly enough-the only possible shelter in this desolate region; to the right, through the clinging mists, a zone of fir-trees is visible, descending half-way down the mountain side; and, in the centre of the picture rises the forked summit of the Pic du Midi, covered with eternal snow, the background being filled by other sharp peaks only dimly discerned in the extreme distance. The colouring and general treatment of this fine subject are admirable. There is no particular locality indicated in Mr. Stanfield's next picture, which he calls "The Last of the Crew," but it stands in need of none, the truthfulness of the subject being universal. The scene is a wild, rocky shore, against which a noble vessel has been driven, and is now a wreck, her masts gone, her spars drifting about, and her hull yielding to the weight of the dashing waves. The morning is gloomy, but gloomier far are the thoughts of the sole survivor, "the last of the crew," who, half-naked, sits in an attitude of deep despair, upon the inhospitable strand. This is the whole of the picture, but it tells a terrible story, in a manner the briefest and the most touching. Mr. Stanfield has two other marine views, one of La Rochelle, looking across the harbour, and the other, Hulks in the Medway; the first is remarkable for its fine sunny effect, the clearness of the sky, and the buoyancy of the water; the last for the life and motion which are thrown into the subject: the crisping waves under the influence of a fresh breeze is rendered with striking fidelity. Mr. George Stanfield, whose vocation lies on land, has two charming pictures: the Bridge of Montreux, that loveliest of the villages on the shores of Lake Leman; and the picturesque town of Sion, in the Vallais, seen from below a gateway close to the Jesuit's church. Careful drawing, pure colouring, and successful management of light and shade distinguish Mr. George Stanfield's productions. Mr. Roberts has returned from Rome, unfortunately without the large view of the interior of the Basilica of St. Peter's, on which we heard he was last autumn engaged. The picture is, we believe, in this country, but did not arrive in time for exhibition. En revanche, as he cannot show us what he has done in Rome, Mr. Roberts once more leads our willing feet to Venice, and presents us (would that the literal sense were understood here) with a fine bright view on the Canal of the Giudecca, and another of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, distinguishable amongst other sacred edifices in Venice by the boldness of its cupola. Sunshine and shadow are the respective characteristics of these two pictures, both of which are painted with wonderful breadth and effect. An anachronism, with which no one will quarrel, raises the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, in Mr. Roberts's third picture, on the shores of the Frith of Forth, with the Musselburgh near and the Bass Rock in the distance. Whoever is familiar with the coast and gazes upon it on a warm summer's day, may easily believe that the Bay of Baie lies before him, so like are the features of this part of the Scottish shores to the scenery looking westward from Posilippo. But the Temple of the Sibyl transplanted to this northern region is merely intended to form a beautiful object on the Frith of Forth, in harmony with its natural objects, and Mr. Roberts's picture shows how effectively this can be accomplished. But we are really in Italy, with sea, earth, and sky, when we look upon Mr. Hering's View of Chiavara, that ancient and picturesque Genoese town, lying on the Mediterranean, where, as Dante tells us, Intra Siestri e Chiavara s'adima which travellers delightedly remember as the Lavagnaro. Partaking, also, of the same delicious effect of climate is a second picture by Mr. Hering of the ruined temple of Jupiter on the island of Egina, looking also seaward; this lovely spot is dedicated to a solitude which the presence of a lonely bird of prey tends more to heighten than destroy. The professional influence of our married artists is beginning to extend itself to their wives, more than one of whom may say, with Mrs. Hering, "Ed anch' io sono pittore!" This lady has painted a most exquisite laudscape, a scene at sunset in the western Highlands, which may worthily take its place in any gallery. From these softer aspects of nature we turn to the rude North Sea, subject again to the genius of Mr. Cooke, who, with many competitors on the canals of Venice, has none, save Stanfield, on the coast of Holland. Two subjects, out of several that will be found on the walls of the Academy, particularly claim attention. The first of these is a view on the low beach near Egmont op Zee, where two large fishing-boats, having just run in to discharge their freight, are standing out to sea, the wind as yet having barely filled their sails. The two opposite effects of trembling waves and still water have been attained by choosing the period of ebb-tide, and the peculiar build of the flat-bottomed Dutch boats has enabled the painter to bring them close to the shore, thus greatly adding to the value of the composition. The figures busy amongst the turbots, plaice, and skate, which are shortly to be borne off to market, give great animation to the scene. The interest of the second of Mr. Cooke's marine pictures is of a higher order, for there is in it the element of danger. A French lugger is driving into Calais harbour in very rough weather, and it needs a strong and a steady hand to guide her into port. She is just lifting over a high running wave, having broken the crest of one which is scattered to leeward, and so truthfully are the troubled waters painted that the apparent motion of the vessel seems quite like reality. All the accessories of the scene are excellent, not the least characteristic being the heavy gear of the lugger itself and the picturesque costumes of the sailors. Before we quit this line of coast we may. mention that Mr. Chambers, trusting no less to his own skill than to the prestige of his name where marine subjects are concerned, has sent in a large picture of Rotterdam; the quaintness of the architecture and the various colours of the old building which stands at the water's edge, are valuable adjuncts of which Mr. Chambers has ably availed himself. Home scenery is the last but not the least attraction in this year's Exhibition of which we have to make mention. Mr. Creswick has a very beautiful landscape; Mr. Goodall one of those charming out-of-door studies of which he is so completely master; and Mr. Faed, deserting those interiors which have almost brought him into contact with Mr. Webster (who, by the way, we hear, has only two small pictures), has ventured amongst smiling meads and sparkling brooks, and with success as great as if his forte had been always there. One of Mr. Faed's pictures is the "Pretty Peggy" of Allan Ramsay, and well she deserves the title. The other, called "Morning," represents a family of haymakers going out to their summer labour; there are two handsome girls in the group, for one of whom a rustic swain is holding a gate open, and looking all the love which at that hour he would not dare to breathe. The subject is treated with great spirit and freshness, and shows that Mr. Faed has a strong feeling for nature which he is well able to develop. With a pleasure which cannot abate, again we look upon the living landscapes of Mr. Lee. Two of these are upon his favourite stream, the river Awe, above the point which formed the subject of one of his last year's pictures. "The Silver Pool" shining in the bright, clear daylight, gives its name to the first of this pair; the second, dark, glassy, and transparent, is appropriately called "The Fisherman's Haunt." In both these pictures it is impossible for Art more admirably to counterfeit Nature. Mr. Lee has a third Scottish subject, "The Shepherd's Glen," where a mountain-torrent issuing from a woody ravine sweeps past a broad hill side. His fourth picture, painted in conjunction with Mr. Sidney Cooper, bring us nearer home, to a broad, placid English river, with cattle and trees. His fifth and crowning work of art, is an avenue of oak and Scotch fir in Devonshire, with a flock of sheep (exquisitely painted by Mr. S. Cooper) scattered about the road. We know not if such an avenue as "The Chequered Shade" is really to be seen as it is here represented, but if Mr. Lee has not heightened the natural beauty of the scene, to visit it would alone repay the toil of a long summer day's journey. LITERARY LEAFLETS. BY SIR NATHANIEL. No. XIX.-JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. SAD and sweeping, of late, have been the ravages of Time among our men of letters. Now by the hand of death, now of decay (which is nigh unto death, for that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away), and now of changes and chances in this uncertain life. A long list, and as mournful as long, might be drawn up, of setting suns and falling stars, missed, with more or less of regret, from this visible diurnal sphere, in whose greater light to rule our day we rejoiced, or in their lesser, to govern our night. (Happily, this figure is faulty; for the light of such luminaries remains, and often brightens more and more continually, after their earthly orbit has fulfilled its course.) Brief is the space within which we have had to sorrow for the decease of a Wordsworth, though full of years and honours,-of a Moore (and already how "lightly they speak of the spirit that's gone, and o'er his cold ashes upbraid him "), -and, not to name others that might be named, of a Talfourd, the judge upon the judgment-seat, cited before another tribunal, so strangely, solemnly, suddenly, 'ev 'aroμw, 'ev 'pinn 'opeaλuov! And, again, the breaking up of old literary alliances, the evanishing of familiar systems, the scattering of time-honoured but time-dissolving galaxies, is mournfully instanced in the case of two of Scott's "young men," "wild young bloods," who are now compassed with infirmities that require seclusion, as well as stricken with years that yearn for it, John Wilson, and John Gibson Lockhart. To each may the influences of retirement be healing and restorative—to each may there come a soothing experience of what is a sacred promise, "At evening-time it shall be light"-light with a mellow radiance, fit precursor of the gloaming, and not unfit conclusion of the noonday heat and sunny splendours of their fervid prime.* It is of the latter we have now, and in our desultory way, to make mention;-of the son-in-law of Sir Walter, the ready writer of " Peter's Letters," the reckless, dashing attaché to Old Ebony's gay staff, the classical author of "Valerius," the morbid anatomist of "Adam Blair," the manly biographer of Scotland's two chiefest names in song and story, the animated translator of "Spanish Ballads," and the long-reigning editor of the Quarterly Review. The present generation is little versed in the pages of Mr. Lockhart's first work of note, "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk "—of which he has, in his riper experience, said, that nobody but a very young and a very thoughtless person could have dreamt of putting forth such a book,while he protests against denouncing these epistles of the imaginary Welsh Doctor, Peter Morris, "with his spectacles-his Welsh accenthis Toryism-his inordinate thirst for draught porter-and his everlasting shandry-dan," as a mere string of libels on the big-wigs therein por Alas, since this was penned, the poet of the "Isle of Palms" hath "fallen on sleep." trayed. Among these were Scott, happy and happy-making at Abbotsford, Jeffrey, the "wee reekit deil o' criticism" and laird of Craigcrook, -Playfair, always considered fair game by good haters of the Edinburgh,-James Hogg, the "inspired sheep's-head,"-Chalmers, with his sublimely-developed mathematical frontispiece, &c. Allan Cunningham calls the work all life and character, and admires its freshness and variety, treating as it does of courts of law and Glasgow punch, of craniology and criticism,-telling us how to woo a bride or cut up a haggis,—and giving us "the pictures, mental and bodily, of some of the leading men of Scotland, with great truth and effect." Scott himself was much interested in this last-mentioned feature of the book. "What an acquisition," he says, "it would have been to our general information to have had such a work written, I do not say fifty, but even five-and-twenty years ago;* and how much of grave and gay might then have been preserved, as it were, in amber, which have [sic] now mouldered away. When I think that at an age not much younger than yours I knew Black, Ferguson, Robertson, Erskine, Adam Smith, John Home, &c., &c., and at least saw Burns, I can appreciate better than any one the value of a work which, like this, would have handed them down to posterity in their living colours." And Sir Walter goes on to say that Dr. Morris ought, like Nourjahad, to revive every half century, to record the fleeting manners of the age, and the interesting features of those who will be only known to posterity by their works. Could Sir Walter have foreseen the host of third-rate and thirtieth-rate Doctor Morrises, who, between then and now, have infested the face of the earth, on the plea of being chields amang us takin' notes, and faith! wull prent 'em-notes of our res domi (never mind how angusta), of our dressing-gowns and slippers, of our obiter allusions and by-the-way interjections, of how we clear our throats, and whether we wear straps, and so forth, he would probably have put in a qualifying clause, to modify his panegyric of the Morrisian tactics. And this reminds us of a passage to the purpose in one of the lively letters of the author's countrywoman, Mrs. Grant of Laggan. "You ask me," she writes, "what I think of Peter's Letters? I answer in a very low whisper-not much. The broad personality is coarse, even where it is laudatory; no one very deserving of praise cares to be held up to the public eye like a picture on sale by an auctioneer:‡ it is not the style of our country, and it is a bad style in itself. So much for its tendency. Then, if you speak of it as a composition, it has no keeping, no chastity of style, and is in a high degree florid and verbose. Some depth of thought and acuteness appears now and then, like the weights at the tail of a paper kite, but not enough to balance the levity of the whole. With all this, the genius which the writers possess, in no common degree, is obvious through the whole book: but it is genius misapplied, and run * Sir Walter wrote this (in a letter to his son-in-law presumptive) in July, 1819. † Lockhart's Life of Scott. Chap. xlv. Even Scott, it may be observed, considered the general turn of the book too favourable, both to the state of public society, and of individual character, in Scotland-quoting Goldsmith's couplet, "His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud." |