Thy mouldy coverlid and wander soon,
But not, alas!-to the Chinese Saloon!

IV.

Corpse! Spectre! Grisly shape!

What bleak bare arms thou hast,-and slender legs
Like cribbage-pegs!

What spare gaunt ribs! and what a bony nape!
Like poor old Tantalus, thou seemest, march'd,
Hungry from Pluto's Barmecidal treats!—
Or wast thou dug, thus parch'd,
Out of dry Herculaneum's oven streets?
Wert thou at great Napoleon's cold defeats
In Russia-an incorporate Corporal then,
Of some lean skeleton regiment—of picked men?
Picked as the vulture picks. Or worn thus thin
By some Sangrado's merciless phlebotomies,
Or hast thou filch'd a skin

And quitted Surgeons' Hall, and brother "Otamies?"
Methinks some German Frankenstein compiled thee
Of charnel spoils-but could not give thee fresh
Wholesome good fat and flesh!

Or hath old Pluto horribly exil'd thee,
Thou melancholy ghost,

A shape so lean, so wither'd, and so sorry,
Like Care in a Spenserian allegory,

A "wretch's Outline "—though no kin to Faust!

V.

In sooth I wonder what

"Sharp misery has worn thee to the bone!"
Has some stern Shylock with his devilish plot
Stripp'd all thy forfeit flesh for some hard loan,
Or, age-like art thou grown

"Into this lean and slipper'd" sans-culotte!
Thou art spare, and bare-God wot!

'Tis in most strange and Otaheitan taste,

That meagre cloth about thy waspish waist,-
Verily thou art clad,

As if the charity called Scottish, had

On thee its parsimonious bounty spilt
A pair of shoes-and a most scanty kilt!

VI.

Aye, speak! and tell me who

Tempted thee from thy clothes-what sordid Jew Eats of thy show-bread-what new Guinea swindler Claims thee, unhappy dwindler!

from the peculiar state of a society where an imperfect education is widely diffused, where all must read something, without a knowledge of what to read, and without that cultivation which would enable them to read any thing that required previous information or power of thought. It is also connected with that system by which the publication of books has become a leading monopoly, which necessarily finds its interest in catering for the general or depraved taste, in supplying with trash, the great demand of those who can read nothing else.

We would recommend to those who find nothing but bad pictures in our public exhibitions, to adopt a rule which may serve them in many other situations in the business of life, and which, if it were more widely adopted, would save much unhappiness, and, we may safely add, much evil of many other kinds. Dr. Franklin has well illustrated it in the history of the good and the bad leg; a tale which ought to be known to all our readers, and which, therefore, we will not repeat. There is a bad propensity in human nature, a propensity unquestionably derived from the great parent of all evil, to look on the wrong side of things, on the seamy side of the world; to seek for faults and deformities, and to overlook merits and beauties. As if the cultivation of unhappiness was our duty and our pleasure. This is not the Christian spirit; and as that is an argument of marvellously little avail, we may add, it is not good policy. Who seeks for virtues, even in his friend, when he can find faults? or looks at beauty, except to say that its nose is too long or too short. He who seeks for merit and virtue will find it; he who looks for beauty only, will find all women beautiful. And he who goes to an Exhibition of Pictures that he may see beautiful pictures, will not fail to see them, even at Somerset House. If indeed, as is usual, he finds more delight in faults than beauties, if all his pleasures are of this diabolical stamp, he must enjoy himself as he best can; but it is not for him that we are writing.

Now if we have given the real reasons why a large proportion of bad pictures must necessarily be produced in a society constituted as Britain is at present, we also conjecture, that hence has in some measure arisen the difference between our own and the ancient schools of painting. We cannot very easily prove this, or rather we cannot prove it at all, because we know not what has perished from the productions of ancient art.

It is a reasonable supposition however, that among many good pictures which have descended to us, the bad have disappeared, as unworthy of preservation; since no artist can have become a Raphael or a Titian at once; and since it is probable that ambition had induced many to attempt that in which they were incapable of succeeding. But besides this, the state of society was then different. Wealth was less widely and generally diffused, education and literature were still more limited. Books were rare, and engraving was either not common, or little known. There were no misses and boarding schools, learning and teaching cardracks and fire-screens; and probably therefore no Burgesses, no Cor

boulds, no Burneys, no Dightons, none of all "hoc genus omne," including Ormes and Ackermans, to whom we guess that we are mainly indebted for that senseless obloquy which forgets that we have also Láwrences, Turners, Wilkies, and Hiltons. The purchasers of pictures were Popes and Cardinals and Abbots, and their places were Cathedrals, Churches, and Convents. They were the prince merchants of Venice and of Genoa, and the nobles of the fair land of Italy; and with pictures these men adorned their spacious halls and lengthened galleries. There was no reason for painting bad pictures, and bad pictures were not painted.

Hence then we cannot fairly institute a comparison between our own schools and those of ancient Italy, or even of Flanders, unless we are allowed to apply an analysis and to form a selection. And that we are not unreasonable in demanding this privilege, we can prove by the state of the Dutch school, even as it now stands, purified by the expurgations of nearly a century, from a very large portion, doubtless, of the trash with which it was originally encumbered. Those who know Dutch pictures, not as we possess them in our own country, selected at high prices, hundreds out of thousands, but as they exist in the town's of Holland and Flanders, scattered through the houses of proprietors without end, know full well the infinite quantity of bad or of abominable productions which they comprise. We possess a few paintings of Teniers, Douw, Ostade, Potter, Jan Steen, Vandervelde, Mieris, Brawer, and so on; selections of the best artists, and selections of the best works of these, and then are idle enough to imagine that we are acquainted with the Dutch school; and that this is the Dutch school. It is the Dutch school, indeed, we admit; but then we also will select the best pictures of Wilkie, and Mulready, of Turner and Fielding, of Hilton, and Etty, and Lawrence, and Howard, and Shee, and Martin, and Danby, and Reinagle, and that shall be our British school. We will not ask our readers to make themselves hoarse or crack their jaws with pronouncing a long list of low Dutch names; but if they will please to look into Pilkington first, and go to Holland afterwards, they will not be long in discovering that there have been bad artists, and bad pictures, at other places and in other days, than at Somerset House, and in the reign of George the Fourth. We say nothing of the forgotten; forgotten artists, forgotten pictures; men and works which have had the fame which now attends Suffolk street and its labourers.

For the first time, therefore, we have done for our artists and our school what we ought to have done long since, or which, while we did not perform it, we were bound to wait for, and to suspend our criticisms. The British Institution has done a duty which it should have performed much sooner; for the attempt of Sir John Leycester, however meritorious, was too limited, and that of Mr. Fawkes too partial. It has performed the work of time, as well as of taste and justice; and we have at length a gallery by which we can judge of the British school. We stand now

on a fair level with ancient and foreign schools; and now that we can make a fair comparison, we are not afraid to provoke one.

But in making that comparison, it is essential that the spectator should divest himself of all the prejudices of connoisseurship, and that he should recur to those principles of judgment which are the only just ones. It is not that he must not have studied ancient pictures; for without that, it is certain that he can never know what art is, or may be, or ought to be. But his study of those should refer to their principles, and to the principles by which they were produced; it should extend to nature, and it should teach him to divest himself of styles, and manners, and names, and antiquity, and of all else that belongs to prejudice and fallacy. Thus only can he judge fairly; and if to this he adds literature, reflection, and a study of the very principles of art, still better if he add practice, he will be the judge whom the British school need not fear. But let him also divest himself of the feeling, that the man whose works he is contemplating is now living and breathing before him; that his name is Hilton or Wilkie; and that his picture is fresh from the easel. We are strangely unwilling to grant to our contemporaries the merit and praise which we readily surrender to the dead; and there is a mystery, too, enveloping the name of him who has long been but a name, which tends to magnify it and all its actions in our estimation, as mountains are increased by mist and uncertainty. We contemplate Cæsar and Alexander far otherwise than we look at Nelson and Wellington; and there is a magnificence even in the crimes of a Verres which we cannot discover in those of we must not give the name.

But we must terminate these general remarks. And as we have already introduced, and shall hereafter have occasion to notice, much of what might have been excited by the contemplation of specific pictures in this collection, our observations on those which we shall select may be proportionably brief. We have yet some general remarks on this art in reserve for future communications; and if their order shall appear sometimes inverted, it is because we were desirous of pointing out individual pictures while they were yet open to public inspection.

In examining this collection, we shall not enter on detailed descriptions of the pictures, being sensible that this practice, however general, conveys no distinct ideas, and merely fatigues the reader. Hence it is that we turn over, unread, the wearisome annual criticismas on our exhibitions. No ideas of the composition or expression of a picture can be conveyed by words; and it is equally vain to describe colours. With respect to our remarks, where they may notice faults, we can only say, that to praise all is to praise none; to lavish the same commendation on the good and the bad, is to censure the good; and to deal in approbation alone, is to lead to the suspicion of want of discri mination, or want of truth. We are sorry to offend any, where we esteem all; but we cannot esteem all equally, and if the exceptions which we may make should prove offensive, we can only say, that they arise from

a sincere desire to turn the attention of those whom we may criticise back on themselves, that so they may attain to that distinction of which all must be ambitious.

Although the Directors have stated that the several contributors consider the pictures which they have respectively selected for exhibition here, as among the most successful efforts of their pencils, we cannot be of opinion that this is true respecting the portrait of His Majesty by Lawrence, nor that of Lady Louisa Lambton by the same able artist. We think that we should have found no difficulty ourselves in choosing better from his works; but whatever scope they may afford for detailed observations, it is unnecessary to enter on these.

Mr. Shee's picture, which he has thought fit to call Lavinia, deserves all the commendation that we could give it, and yet, perhaps, it is somewhat too strict an imitation of Gainsborough. It at least provokes comparison, and makes us imagine that he must have painted the portrait, which it evidently is, with a picture of that master in his eye. We do not, we confess, consider the name as peculiarly appropriate, as it does not convey to us the character of Lavinia as we apprehend it from Thomson. A more general name would have escaped this criticism.

Of Stothard's Pilgrims so much has been said, for so many years, and the engraving has been so long before the public, that criticism is nearly exhausted. All that has been praised in it meets our hearty concurrence; but we shall probably be considered as hypercritical, or rather as trifling, when we say that we wish it had been executed with more care and finish. We do think that a picture on so small a scale ought to be that jewel, (to use a cant phrase) in execution, which it is in design, and purpose. It is impossible to see it without a close inspection; and we are not only offended by the roughness and carelessness of the workmanship, but this neglect injures the drawing and expression, by interfering with those minute touches which are essential to these qualities. It is idle to say that the character of such a picture would be lost by a more finished execution, when we see what has been done by the Dutch painters. Nor can we see any reason why the landscape should be thus neglected, nor why two lumps of white rocks on a dark blue ground should be substituted for atmosphere.

We formerly took occasion to notice Mr. Howard's Venetian portrait of his daughter, and have nothing left but to praise it, however we may have objected to this fashion of translating ancient pictures. But that we may balance this censure, such as it is, we must take leave to notice his picture at the Royal Academy of Mrs. Henderson and her family, which, to our seeming, is the only family picture in modern times that has ever gained all its ends-that of being a collection of portraits, and of being also a picture that will be valued, and more valued, when it is forgotten who Mrs. Henderson was. If this is not