tot Venus, into Lady Bab Slender's pony-chaise. And yet I know I must make the attempt. You are one of those plain every-day matter-of-fact honest fellows, who think that a promise once made ought to be kept; (the Lord help your old-fashioned simplicity !) and I know no excuseat least none that I have wit to make will go down with you. Think of it once more, gentle editor! remember that I am very busy-that I have a world of things to do; that there are all the commissions with which I am loaded by our friends, and which, I hear you say, you know I shall never execute. Remember that I am a Student at Law, and that my duty calls me to study all the intricacies of declarations and pleas, rejoinders and sur-rejoinders, rebutters and sur-rebut ters, demurrers, and all the ingenious fictions which the brains of lawyers have spun for the insnaring of mankind; that I am, at this moment, giving my attention to that abstruse ques

tion

Whether by common law or civil A man goes soonest to the devil? That, in the pursuit of the solution of this problem, I have to attend daily at the chambers of Mr. Finesse, the special pleader, which you suspect I have never yet visited. You are right; but I am going to morrow. Now, prythee, lay these things to heart, and do release me from my promise to write to you. Put this letter into the fire, and insert that of some more worthy and less occupied contributor in its stead.-You won't? -Why, then, for the first, and, I earnestly hope, for the last time, here goes. At least, I will execute my promise to the letter; for the rest I say nothing but that you must blame yourself.

No;

have the dinner at Alderman Corkscrew's, in Bishopsgate-or Madame De Laplume's Soirée, in Lower Brook Street-or the Conversazione, at Professor Humdrum's -or my Lady Lightfoot's rout-or the intellectual breakfast at Chisel's, the sculptoror the pigeon-match with Sir Geoffrey Harebrain, and the interlude of a turn-up between the Baronet's bull bitch and a tyke belonging to a gardener at Battersea?-Here is at least a choice for you: at all of these I have assisted, and, if I were given to flatter myself, I might even say that of some of them pars magna fui. But you know that modesty and insensibility to my own merits is one of my faults, of which my friends often tell me, and of which, perhaps, I shall never be cured. Mind, I say, that I have assisted-not that I have seen. I declare to you, as I hope to see the young lady with the dark tresses, whom I met at Lady Lightfoot's, and who is only the fourth I have fallen in love with desperately here, (a solemn asseveration!) that I have seen nothing since I reached London-a period of nearly three weeks. I might adopt, as a motto to my letter, a couplet of Lord Killeen's, which I saw last summer in the Album at Mont Anvert, and which I must tell you of. He had ascended the mountain, with infinite difficulty, in the hope of seeing the Mer de Glace and the Jardin, and all those things; when, just as he had finished his labours, a thick cloud descended upon the mountain; the rain came on; and, instead of the delightful view which he had anticipated, hẹ saw nothing but drizzle and fog, and a palpable atmosphere, very much in colour like a not over-clean blanket, or like that which I now see, from the windows of my hotel, covering the whole of Leicester Square. He had, however, one consolation—the guide and his servant had taken the precaution to have their wallets well filled:

But what, in the name of all that is serious-(you see I am endeavouring to repress that trifling temper, about which you have given me so many well-meant lectures) what shall I write to you about? It is not that I lack subjects, but that they crowd upon me in too great numbers. It is l'embarras du choix that I labour under; and which topic to select first I protest I don't know, if I were to be hanged for it. I wish you were here to choose for yourself. "Will you

they always do this for English or Irish travellers. My lord sat down, and discussed his cold mutton (delicious little meat it is, that Chamounix mutton!) and with Kirschenwasser and cigars bade defiance to the weather. There was no chance of its clearing up, so he quietly took his way back again to the valley, and revenged

himself upon the weather by inscribing this memorial of his evil luck in the Album:

J'ai beaucoup mangé, beaucoup bu,
Mais helas! je n'ai rien vu.

I think I told you of this once before. Never mind; you can leave it out if you don't like it: what is writ is writ,' and I can't go back even to put my pen through it. Where was I when this story of Lord Killeen and his couplet came into my head? Oh, in the fog! and there I am likely to remain until the weather alters. I have not, as I was telling you, seen the face of day since I came hither; and, if it were not for the gas lamps, this dull vapour which surrounds us would make the night hideous.'

I am exactly in my Lord Killeen's way I have eaten and drank beaucoup, Heaven knows! They do understand dining here, I must say; but, as for seeing, that seems to be wholly out of the question-at least by day-light. I mistake; there was one day on which you might see for the space of two hours. I took advantage of that period, and went to see the gallery of pictures, at the British Institution, in Pall Mall. As you are a cognoscente, and have the good taste to think the progress of the fine arts is a subject of universal interest, I will tell you all about it.

The collection is not, upon the whole, very striking, nor do I think it can be called an improvement upon those of several of the latter years. There are some pictures of merit, but a prodigious number which are only fit to be transferred to tea trays-real Brummagem manufacture. The directors of this institution are greatly to blame for this. They do nothing to encourage the painters, who are a most jealous and irritable race. Talk of the quarrels of actors; the envy of pretty women; the backbiting of scribblers: they are all harmless and insignificant-mere ladies' boardingschool battles when compared with the crowd of little, but violent, passions which rage in the bosom of a second or third-rate painter. Upon

such men the neglect which they too often experience-the caprice even of enlightened patrons-the vulgar taste of the rich idiots, who buy their pictures only as they buy chairs and tables, because they look well in their rooms the indecent partiality of hanging committees and the corrupt practices of their agents-act with an almost paralysing effect. They paint no more than they are obliged to paint; they seek, in pursuits sometimes not very refined, and never such as tend to keep up that intellectual tone without which they cannot hope to attain the summit of their art, to relieve the tediousness of hope delayed, and ill-rewarded talents; and the consequences are, that they remain floundering about in discontent and obscurity all the days of their lives. There are men, and of our own acquaintance, who have pursued a different and more dignified course, and who find that their fame in the art and their stations in society are exalted by it. But, Heaven help me! whither am I running?—I am betrayed into a dissertation when I meant only to make a sketch! The truth is I met a German philosopher at a party last night, and I fear I have contracted a little of the prosing disorder from him. By way of awakening myself, then, I here take a plunge into the midst of the pictures.

You know, my dear Editor, there is, in every exhibition, a sort of crack picture-the picture of the collection -that about which you find all the young ladies and gentlemen standing, and where you may hear as much vapid ignorance spouted in ten minutes as will make you sick for a fortnight-where the would-be connoisseurs stand like flies round a honey-jar, and make a buzzing and a dirt. Such a picture is Mr. Danby's Enchanted Island. It is one of the most fanciful, and, at the first sight, one of the prettiest, things you ever saw in your life. I say at first sight, because, after the minute's gaze, it becomes absolutely tiresome. The scene is a rocky island, crowned with trees, standing in the midst of a still lake: a glowing sun-light is shed all over the back of the picture, and reaches every part of it excepting the rock, which casts a deep cool shadow

as

upon the water before it. This contrast is, in my opinion, not only the best, but the single good point in the picture. As far as this goes there is feeling and excellence; but then poor Mr. Danby-who knows that his feeling and his excellence, although they will make him deserve and appreciate a good dinner, will never help him to get one-finds it necessary to go a little further; and, having shown the judicious' what are the characters of his mind, is obliged to descend to the servile task of tricking out his picture with fancies that shall make the ignorant wonder; for he knows they are caught as easily with such tricks sparrows with birdlime. Even this, however, he has done well, if not wisely. He has introduced a fine flaming red flamingo, pluming itself on the borders of the silent lake; and has scattered some uncommonly pretty shells and weeds, and flowers, on the strand. Then he has introduced a large sunbeam-as palpable as a beam of oak-through the branches of a thick tree on the island, and has put two stout ablebodied Zephyrs to gambol and dip their wings in its light. He has hewed out a cavern in his island, and placed a small greenish lamp within it, which casts a cool gleam upon the dark water, and which is as beautifuland as much like nature-as the moonlight scene in 'Don Giovanni' at the Italian Opera House. Then he has had a car made of a shell, and harnessed two swans to it, for the purpose of drawing along the water a wax-work Venus; while mermaids comb their hair, and sing their songs, in a very snug corner of the isle. All these accessories very ingeniously spoil-and are, therefore,sure to sell--the picture. You remember we went together to a fête which was given by old Mamraon, the Jew stock-broker. Well; you cannot have forgotten that pastrycook device of an island, stuck all about with barley-sugar nymphs and comfit deities, which was floating about in a bowl filled with rose-water. -Mr. Danby's picture is exactly like that and thus it is that a picture which might have been, in every way, a first-rate one, has become a very, very, peacock.' Bad as it is, though, it is the best painting by far in the

:

whole collection. That very promising man, Eastlake, whose pictures you so much admired, has only two pictures here: one is the everlasting Banditti; the same eternal velveteen jacket and breeches, the brown coat, the buttons, and the firelock, and the hanging countenance, of all of which I am heartily tired. The other is a better picture, and, to my thinking, the first attempt he has made to do any thing of importance. It represents a knight about to quit his castle to meet a challenger, who is waiting for him in the plain below. His lady-love has tied a scarf about his neck, and is drooping under her fears and grief at parting with him. A monk be stowing upon the Paladin his parting benediction-and an African, the herald of his foe-fill up the picture.. There is something stiff in the outline; but, upon the whole, the painting is a very respectable effort in the historical department, which has at present so few votaries. The landscapes are numerous: some of them are good; Reinagle's, Hofland's, and Nasmyth's, in particular; but there is also an immense quantity of trash, too bad for boarding-school specimens. Ferrier has a clever picture of Village-boys playing at Soldiers.' Fradelle, who paints heroes and gentlemen to look like ladies, and ladies to look like nothing but dolls-and not good dolls-has the scene between the Earl of Leicesterand Amy Robsart at Cumnor, where the former is in his court dress. His other picture is 'Othello relating his Adventures to Desdemona and her Father.' There is no feeling nor painting in either of them; but they will become popular, because the subjects are well known, and the artist is what is called a pretty painter-that is, as your friend Doubikins would say, a pretty-particular-con-siderable bad painter. If he would do by his Othello as a wag did by the picture of the smoking Lord Mayor, Staines, and his coach-horses-that is, put a pipe in the mouth of every figure in it, including Desdemona-it would make a delightful sign for a tobacconist's or an Estaminet: I protest I don't know what else it is fit for. I had nearly forgotten to mention to you that there is a very promising painting by a Mr. Severn: if I re

member rightly, he is a young man who has been sent to Rome by the Royal Academy. The subject is 'Greek Shepherds rescuing a Lamb from a Vulture.' The drawing is excellent; the whole expression of the picture spirited and original; and, although it is of little pretension, it seems to me to contain much promise. I shall look for the future productions of this gentleman.

The directors of this institution have made such a mistake as no body ever hit on before themselves. They have offered premiums for the best paintings that should be sent to them on the subject of the Battle of the Nile. Perhaps their sagacities calculated that, as we are a nautical people, we could therefore produce marine painters as of necessity:

'Who slays fat oxen should himself be

fat.'

The consequence is that they have as many paintings of ships as the crippled sailor used to scrawl on Kew Wall; and, for the greater part, of about the same rank in the scale of art. Some of the paintings are pretty good, and are executed with such scrupulous fidelity that you cannot see a rope or a brace out of its proper order: but what has this to do with the Artsexcept the art of ship-building? The excellence of such pictures can only be appreciated by sailors; who, although they may be judges of the effect of colours, know nothing about painting. In the present collection. the specimens by W. Daniell and Cartwright are the best. There is one by Dighton, which can hardly be compared with any of the others: he seems to have been convinced that there was nothing availably picturesque in the outside of ships in action, and he has painted a deck, It is a vigorous and faithful representation of an action at sea; and that vulgarity which distinguishes all that this painter does, and which is in almost every other instance a blemish, is here an excellence, because it suits so well the subject. The directors of the institution intended, if any of the pictures painted for the premiums should please them, to employ the favoured artist in painting two pictures, of a thousand guineas each, to be presented to Greenwich Hospital: at present the veterans there are in

no danger of being outraged in this way. The rest of the collection may be dismissed without a word.

Have you read the new series of Sayings and Doings?' Of course you have. It is very clever and amusing, and will become highly popular. Hook is as skilful in one way as Sir Walter Scott in the other. I don't mean to compare them any more than I would Ariosto with Peter Pindar, or Raphael with Teniers; but they each of them do that which they try to do in the best possible way. The only fault I find with Hook is, that his knowledge of the manners of high life (which, after all, is not very extensive) makes him too proud. He quizzes the manners of the vulgarrich with a bitterness which savours of revenge, and which really weakens its effect. No people in the world deserve quizzing more than the parvenus, and no country abounds in them more than England; but then nous autres should only laugh at, not make war upon, them; flog them lightly, not cut them deeply; show them up, but not denounce them al cuchillo. I wonder that a fellow of Hook's tact does not see this: if he does, and thinks still that the love which people have of seeing their friends and enemies made ridiculous will cause them to relish his sketches, I think he is wrong. His books are still very pleasant: they make one laugh. There is nothing new in them; he tells us only what we have seen, and do see, daily: he even resuscitates a Joe Miller now and then; but he slips it so adroitly between jokes of his own coining, that no one ean take exceptions at him. He seems to have left writing for the stage, as indeed every man of real talent must do; and we suspect that many of his tales are altered from some of his intended farces: in fact they are farces, and only require to be broken into dialogues to act excellently well. what a length has my letter extended! Thank Heaven, the frank will carry no more than the sheets I have filled! God bless you! I am going to dress for the little French Theatre, which I will tell you all about, cum multis aliis, in my next.

To

crack of doom,' Yours, my dear editor, 'till the TERENCE ('Toole.