stream that reflects a mouldering English heads of the best_class.ruin on one side of the picture; and The large picture of the Pembroke so precise is the touch, so true, so Family by Vandyke is unrivalled in firm the pencilling, so classical the its kind. It is a history of the time. outline, that they give one the idea It throws us nearly two centuries of sculptured cattle, biting the short, back to men and manners that no green turf, and seem an enchanted longer exist. The members of a herd! They appear stamped on the Noble House ('tis a hundred and canvas to remain there for ever, or as sixty years since) are brought togeif nothing could root them from the ther in propriâ per sonâ, and appear in spot. Truth with beauty suggests the all the varieties of age, character, feeling of immortality. No Dutch and costume. There are the old picture ever suggests this feeling. Lord and Lady Pembroke who The objects are real, it is true ; but “keep their state” somewhat above not being beautiful or impressive, the the other groups—the one a lively mind feels no wish to mould them old gentleman, who seems as if he into a permanent reality, to bind them could once have whispered a flatterfondly on the heart, or lock them in ing tale in a fair lady's ear, his helpthe imagination as in a sacred recess, mate looking a little fat and sulky safe from the envious canker of time. by his side, probably calculating the No one ever felt a longing, a sickness expence of the picture, and not well of the heart, to see a Dutch land- understanding the event of it—there scape twice; but those of Claude, are the daughters, pretty, wellafter an absence of years, have this dressed, elegant girls, but someeffect, and produce a kind of calen- what insipid, sentimental, and vature. The reason of the difference cant—then there are the two eldest is, that in mere literal copies from sons, that might be said to have nature, where the objects are not in- walked out of Mr. Burke's descripteresting in themselves, the only at- tion of the age of chivalry, the one traction is to see the felicity of the a perfect courtier, a carpet knight, execution; and having once witnessed smooth-faced, handsome, almost efthis, we are satisfied. But there is feminate, that seems to have moved nothing to stir the fancy, to keep all his life to “the mood of lutes alive the yearnings of passion. We and soft recorders," decked in silks remember one other picture (and but and embroidery, like the tender one) in Lord Radnor's Collection, flower issuing from its glossy folds ; that was of an ideal character. It the other the gallant soldier, shrewd, was a female head by Guido, with bold, hardy, with spurred heel, and streaming hair, and streaming eyes tawny buskins, ready to “mount on looking upwards-full of sentiment barbed steeds, and 'witch the world and beauty. with noble horsemanship”-down to There is but one fine picture at the untutored, carroty-headed boy, Wilton-house, the Family Vandyke, the Goose-Gióbie of the piece, who and a noble Gallery of antique maré appears to have been just dragged bles, which we should pronounce to from the farm-yard to sit for his picbe invaluable to the lover of art or the ture, and stares about him in as student of history or human nature. great a heat and fright as if he had Roman Emperors or Proconsuls, the dropped from the clouds all in this poets, orators, and almost all the admirable, living composition is in great men of antiquity, are here its place, in keeping, and bears the ranged in a row," and palpably em- stamp of the age, and of the master's bodied either in genuine or tradi- hand. Even the oak-pannels have tional busts. Some of these indicate an elaborate, antiquated look, and the an almost preternatural capacity and furniture has an aspect of cumbrous, inspired awfulness of look, particu- conscious dignity. It should not be larly some of the earlier sages and omitted that it was here (in the house fabulists of Greece, which we ap- or the adjoining magnificent grounds) prehend to be ideal representations; that Sir Philip Sidney wrote his Arwhile other more modern and better CADJA; and the story of Musidorus authenticated ones of celebrated and Philoclea, of Mopsa and Dorcas, Romans are distinguished by the is quaintly traced on oval pannels in "rength and simplicity of common the principal drawing-room. It is on this account that we found fault with Fonthill last year, and must still do so, because it exhibits no picture of remarkable eminence, that can be ranked as an heir-loom of the imagination,-which cannot be spoken of but our thoughts take wing and stretch themselves towards it, the very name of which is music to the instructed ear. We would not give a rush to see any Collection that does not contain some single picture at least, that haunts us with an uneasy sense of joy for twenty miles of road, that may cheer us at intervals for twenty years of life to come. Without some such thoughts as these riveted in the brain, the lover and disciple of art would truly be "of all men the most miserable:" but with them hovering round him, and ever and anon shining with their glad lustre into his sleepless soul, he has nothing to fear from fate, or fortune. We look, and lo! here is one at our side, facing us, though far-distant. It is the Young Man's Head, in the Louvre, by Titian, that is not unlike Jeronymo della Porretta in Sir Charles Grandison. What a look is there of calm, unalterable self-pos session Above all pain, all passion, and all pride; that draws the evil out of human nature, that as we look at it transfers the same sentiments to our own breasts, and makes us feel as if nothing mean or little could ever disturb us again! This is high art, the rest is mechanical. But there is nothing like this at Fonthill (oh no), but every thing which is the very reverse. As this, however, is an old opinion of ours, and may be a prejudice, we shall endeavour to support it by facts. There is not then a single Titian in all this boasted and expensive collection there is not a Raphael-there is not a Rubens (except one small sketch)-there is not a Guido nor a Vandyke-there is not a Rembrandt, there is not a Nicolo Poussin, nor a fine Claude. The two Altieri Claudes, which might have redeemed Fonthill, Mr. Beckford sold. What shall we say to a collection, which uniformly and deliberately rejects every great work and every great name in art, to make room for rarities and curiosities of mechanical skill? It was hardly necessary to build a cathedral to set up a toy-shop! Who would paint a miniature-picture to hang it at the top of the Monument? This huge pile (capable of better things) is cut up into a parcel of little rooms, and those little rooms are stuck full of little pictures, and bijouterie. Mr. Beckford may talk of his diamond Berchem, and so on: this is but the language of a petit-maître in art; but the author of VATHEK (with his leave) is not a petit-maître. His genius, as a writer, "hath a devil: " his taste in pictures is the quintessence and rectified spirit of stilllife. He seems not to be susceptible of the poetry of painting, or else to set himself against it. It is obviously a first principle with him to exclude whatever has feeling or imagination-to polish the surface, and suppress the soul of art-to proscribe, by a sweeping clause, or at one fell swoop, every thing approaching to grace, or beauty, or grandeur-to crush the sense of pleasure or of power in embryo-and to reduce all nature and all art, as far as possible, to the texture and level of a china dish-smooth, glittering, cold, and unfeeling! We do not object so much to the predilection for Teniers, Gerard Douw, or Ostade-we like to see natural objects naturally painted but we unequivocally hate the af fectedly mean, the elaborately little, the ostentatiously perverse and distorted, Polemberg's walls of amber, Mieris's groups of steel, Vanderneer's ivory flesh; yet these are the chief delights of the late proprietor of Fonthill-abbey! Is it that his soul is "a volcano burnt out," and that he likes his senses to repose and be gratified with Persian carpets and enamelled pictures? Or are there not traces of the same infirmity of feeling even in the high-souled Vathek, who compliments the complexion of the two pages of Fakreddin as being equal to "the porcelain of Franguestan?" Alas! Who would have thought that the Caliph Vathek would have dwindled down into an Emperor of China and King of Japan? But so it is. Stourhead, the seat of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, did not answer our expectations. But Stourton, the village where it stands, made up for our disappointment. After passing the park-gate, which is a beautiful and venerable relic, you descendinto either Italian pictures painted in the Stourton by a sharp winding decli- beginning of the last century, or vity, almost like going under-ground, English ones in the beginning of this. between high hedges of laurel trees, It gave us pain to see some of the and with an expanse of woods and latter; and we willingly draw a veil water spread beneath. It is a sort over the humiliation of the art, in the of rural Herculaneum, a subter- age and country that we live in. We ranean retreat. The inn is like a ought, however, to mention a pormodernized guard-house; the village- trait of a youth (the present propriechurch stands on a lawn without any tor of Stourhead) by Sir Joshua inclosure; a row of cottages facing it, Reynolds, which is elegant, brilliant, with their white-washed walls and « though in ruins ;" and a spirited flaunting honey-suckles, are neatness portrait by Northcote, of a lady talkitself. Every thing has an air of ing on her fingers, may perhaps, elegance, and yet tells a tale of other challenge an exception for itself to times. It is a place that might be the above general remarks. held sacred to stilluess and solitary We wish our readers to go to musing !—The adjoining mansion of Petworth, the seat of Lord EgreStourhead commands an extensive mont, where they will find the coolview of Salisbury Plain, whose undus est grottos and the finest Vandykes lating swells show the earth in its in the world. There are eight or primeval simplicity, bare, with naked ten of the latter that are not to be breasts, and varied in its appearance surpassed by the art of man, and that only by the shadows of the clouds we have no power either to admire that pass across it. The view with- or praise as they deserve. For simout is pleasing and singular : there plicity, for richness, for truth of nais little within-doors to beguile at- ture, for airiness of execution, notention. There is one master-piece thing ever was or can be finer. We of colouring by Paul Veronese, a will only mention those of the Earl naked child with a dog. The tone of and Countess of Northumberland, the flesh is perfection itself. On Lord Newport, and Lord Goring, praising this picture (which we al- Lord Strafford, and Lady Carr, and ways do, when we like a thing) we the Duchess of Devonshire. He were told it had been criticized by a who possesses these portraits is rich great judge, Mr. Beckford of Font- indeed, if he has an eye to see and a hill, who had found fault with the heart to feel them. The one of Lord execution as too coarse and muscular. Northumberland in the Tower is not We do not wonder—it is not like his so good, though it is thought better own turnery-ware! We should also by the mob. That is, there is a submention an exquisite Holbein, the ject, something to talk about, but in Head of a Child, and a very pleasing fact, the expression is not that of little landscape by Wilson. Besides grief, or thought, or of dignified rethese, there are some capital pen and signation, but of a man in ill-health. ink drawings (views in Venice), by Vandyke was a mere portrait-painter, Canaletti, and three large copies but he was a perfect one. His forte after Guido of the Venus attired by the was not the romantic or pathetic; he Graces, the Andromeda, and Hero- “ of the court, courtly." He dias's Daughter. They breathe the bad a patent from the hand of nasoul of softness and grace, and re- ture to paint lords and ladies in prosmind one of those fair, sylph-like perity and quite at their ease. There forms that sometimes descend upon are some portraits by Sir Joshua the earth with fatal, fascinating Reynolds in this collection, and there looks; and that “tempt but to be are people who persist in naming tray.” But after the cabinet-pictures him and Vandyke in the same day. of Fonthill, even a good copy of a The rest of the collection consists Guido is a luxury and a relief to the (for the most part) of stair-case and mind: it is something to inhale the family pictures. But there are some divine airs that play round his figures, admirable statues to be seen here, and we are satisfied if we can but that it would ask a morning's leisure "trace his footsteps, and his skirts to study properly. W. H. far-off behold.” The rest of this col- [Blenheim in our next, which will lection is, for the most part, trash : conclude this series of articles.] a was A CHIT CHAT LETTER ON MEN AND OTHER THINGS. a Fellow at Oxford. I, slipper footed, sit and send Oh Anthony,--as Brutus said, His time with a perpetual schooling ? One of the old dramatists says, “ If there is any thing damned on earth, it is twelve o'clock at night.” Some of our modern Farce writers think the same. the goose. For parting with all kith and kind ? sage, Awake !-thou art awake in eyes,- Oxford I know is dear to thee, and pen, Come up to town Scome up to me A platter, and a crumb of bread, * The great oculist. Alexander the Great, in the eyes of men. a |