Mr. Allan bas painted more lately, and the scenes of which are laid nearer to ourselves. Wide as is the field of the East, and delicious as is the use he has made of that untrodden field -I am glad to find that he does not mean to confine himself to it. The pictures he has painted of oriental subjects, are rich in the expression of feelings, gathered during his wanderings among the regions to which they belong. But there are other feelings, and more powerful ones, too, which ought to fix, and I think it probable they will do so, the matured and once more domesticated mind of such a painter as Mr. Allan.

P. M.

LETTER XLVIII.

TO THE SAME.

THE largest and most finished picture, which Mr. Allan has painted upon any subject not oriental, (or at least not partaking of an oriental character,) is that of the PressGang. The second time that I went to his house, he was in the act of superintending the packing up of this fine piece, for being sent into the country; so that I was lucky in having a view of it at all-for I certainly was not allowed time to contemplate it in so leisurely a manner as I could have wished. It is of about the same dimensions as the Circassian Slaves, and the canvass, as in it, is filled with a very large number of figures; but I am not prepared to say, that I think the same happy effect is produced by this circumstance as in the other.

I question, however, whether any scene of actual British Life could have been selected more happily calculated for such a pencil as Mr. Allan's. The moment one sees the picture, one cannot help being struck with wonder, that such a subject should have been left so long unhandled; but where, after all, was ever the British artist that could have occupied it in such a manner, as to throw any difficulties in Mr. Allan's way, or even to take away the least of the originality which he has displayed in its management? The canvass represents

*The picture belongs to Mr. Horrocks, of Tillihewan Castle, Dumbartonshire.

the house of a fisherman by the sea-side-neat and cleanly, as the houses of respectable fishermen are always found-but more picturesque in its interior than the house of any other poor man can well be, from the mixture of suspended nets and fishing tackle every where diversifying the more usual kinds of peasant plenishing. It is supposed, that the son of the fisherman had just returned from a long voyage in a merchant ship-his parents are preparing to welcome the wanderer with their fatted calf-and his mistress, having heard the news of his arrival, has hurried, half-clothed as she was, in the eagerness of her unsuspecting love, to be folded in his arms. Scarcely are the first warm, tearful greetings over, ere a caitiff neighbour gives notice to the Press-Gang,---and the picture represents the moment when they have rushed into the house, and pinioned their prey. The agony of the Sailor-Boy is speechless, and he stands with his hand upon his face, as if stunned and insensible to the nature of his misery. His other hand, however, has not quitted the hand of his sweetheart, who has swooned away, and is only prevented from lying like a corpse upon the floor, by this his unconscious support. His father looks on in despair; but he has presence of mind enough to know, that resistance would be unavailing. The mother has seized the lieutenant by the hand, and is thrusting upon him all their little household store of guarded guineas, as if she had hoped to purchase her boy's safety by her bribe. In a chair by the fire, meanwhile, which even joy could not have enabled him to leave, the aged and infirm grandfather sits immoveable, and sick at heart---his eyes turned faintly upwards, his feeble hands clasped together, and the big drops coursing each other down the pale and furrowed cheeks of his half-bewildered second childishness. The wife of the old man,--- for she, too, is alive to partake in all this wretchedness,--is not so infirm as her partner, but she has moved from her chair only to give aid to him. Dear as are her children to her, her husband is dearer he is every thing to her, and she thinks of nothing but him. She has a cup of water in her hand, of which she beseeches him to drink, and gazes on his emaciated features with an eye, that tells of the still potency of long years of wedded love-a love that bas survived all the ardours of youthful blood, and acquired only a holier power from the lapse of all their life of hardships. Perhaps this is the most

noble conception in the whole picture-it does not disturb the impression of the parting of the youthful lovers; but reflects back a nobler sanctity upon all their sufferings, by bringing before us a fresh poetic vision of the eternal might of those ties, which that broken-hearted agony is bruising

"Ties that around the heart are spun,

And will not, cannot, be undone."

Even over the groupe of stubborn mariners around the captive boy, the poetical soul of the painter has not disdained to lavish something of its redeeming softness; their hard and savage features are fixed, indeed, and resolute but there is no cruelty, no wantonness, no derision, in their steadfast look. Like the officer who commands them, they do what they conceive to be their duty-and such it is-but they do no more. It was a delightful delicacy of conception, which made the painter dare to part with so much of the vulgar powers of contrast, and to make the rainbow of his tenderness display its gentle radiance, even here in the thickest blackness of his human storm.

The fainting girl is represented in a very difficult attitude, (I mean difficult for the painter,) her collapsed limbs, as I have said, being prevented from falling prostrate on the floor only by the hand of her lover, which, even in the speechless agony of despair, refuses instinctively to let her band go. Her head, however, almost touches the floor, and her long dishevelled tresses of raven black, sweep it already with their disconsolate richness. Her virgin bosom, but a moment before bursting with the sudden swell of misery, is now calm. and pale-all its throbbings over for a time, even as if the finger of death had been there to appease them. Her beautiful lips are tinged with an envious livid stain, and her sunken eye-lids are black with the rush of recoiling blood, amidst the melancholy marble of her cheeks and forehead. One cannot look upon her without remembering the story of Crazy Jane, and thinking that here too is a creature whose widowed heart can never hope for peace-one to whom some poet of love might hereafter breathe such words as those already breathed by one of the truest of poets :

"But oh! when midnight wind careers,
And the gust pelting on the out-house shed,
Makes the cock shrilly in the rain-storm crow,
To hear thee sing some ballad full of wo,

As I am not one of those who walk round a whole gallery of pictures in a single morning, and think themselves entitled to say they have seen them--and even to make criticisms upon their merits and demerits, I by no means thought of perplexing my feeling of the power of the Press-Gang, by looking at any other of Mr. Allan's pictures on the same day; I have often gone back since, however, and am now quite familiar with all the pictures still in his own possession. Those painted on domestic British subjects, are all filled with the same deep and tender tastefulness, which the Press-Gang so eminently discovers; but none of them are so happily conceived in point of arrangement, nor, perhaps, is the colouring of the artist seen to the same advantage in any one of them. Indeed, in comparing the Press-Gang itself with the Circassian Slaves, the Jewish Family, and some of the earliest pieces, I could not help entertaining a suspicion, that in this great department the artist bas rather retrograded than advanced, since his return to Britain. It may be that bis eyes had been so long accustomed to light, shade, and colour, as exhibited in oriental regions, that his mode of painting had become imbued and penetrated with the idea of representing these effects alone and that so the artist may not yet have entirely regained the eyes, without which, it is certain, he cannot possess the hand, of a British painter. It is very obvious, that this is a failing which, considering what master-pieces of colouring some of his older pictures are, cannot possibly continue long to lessen the power and beauty of his performances. I speak of the general colouring of his pieces-I have no doubt they may have lesser and more particular faults offensive to more scientific eyes, and perhaps not quite so likely to be got rid of. Almost all the artists, with whom I have conversed on the subject of his pictures, seem to say, that they consider him somewhat defective in his representation of

the colour of the naked flesh. And I do think, (although I should scarcely have made the discovery for myself,) that he does make it rather dead and opaque, and gives it too little relief. But, perhaps, the small size of his pictures, and the multiplicity of figures which they contain, are circumstances unfavourable to this species of excellence. If his objects were less numerous, and presented larger surfaces, he would find it more easy to make them vivid, transparent, and beautiful, and to give them a stronger relief by finer gradations of shadow. A small canvass, occupied with so many figures, never has a broad and imposing effect at first sight. The first feeling it excites is curiosity about what they are engaged with, and we immediately go forward to pry into the subject, and spell out the story. A piece, with larger and fewer figures, if the subject be well chosen, is understood at once; and nothing tells more strongly on the imagination, or strikes us with a more pleasing astonishment, than a bold effect of light and shadow, seen at a convenient distance.

The execution of a picture, however, is a thing of which I cannot venture to speak, without a great feeling of diffidence. The choice of subjects is a matter more within the reach of one that has never gone through any regular apprenticeship of Gusto; and much as I have been delighted with Mr. Allan's pictures, and much as I have been delighted with the subjects, too, I by no means think, that his subjects are, in general, of a kind much calculated to draw out the highest parts of his genius, or to affect mankind with the same high and enduring measure of admiration and delight, which his genius, otherwise directed, might, I nothing question, enable him to command. In this respect, indeed he only errs (if error there be) along with almost all the great artists, bis contemporaries-nay, it is perhaps but too true, that he and they have alike been compelled to err by the frivolous spirit of the age in which they have been born. I fear, I greatly fear, that, in spite of all the genius which we see every day breaking out in different departments of this delightful art, the day of its loftiest and most lasting triumphs has gone by. However, to despair of the human mind in one of its branches of exertion, is a thing very repugnant to my usual feelings.

P.M.

P. S. Before quitting Mr. Allan's atelier, I must tell you, that I have seen an exquisite sketch of the murder of Arch