historical pictures. There is more originality,more knowledge of nature in this branch of art, more beau idéal,-more poetry, here than in France. The exquisite perfection of English engravings had given me a corresponding idea of the art of painting; but this elder branch is much inferior to the other. Landscapes, especially, are engraved here with a degree of finish,-a softness,—a richness of colouring, if I might be allowed the expression, which it seems impossible to surpass. This art having become a great article of trade, furnishes an early reward to talents; bread first, and fame afterwards. The little proficiency made in the arts, the sciences, and all that requires much study, great labour, and sacrifices, by most of those who are born to an independent fortune, shews sufficiently that the first step in the career is urged by hard necessity. There is a species of composition, which has been brought here to a high degree of excellence,subjects taken in common and modern life. The personages are not always boors, sailors, or soldiers, in camps and taverns, as in the Flemish school;-or shepherds and shepherdesses à la Virgile, but real peasants or tradesmen, with their proper appendages, and placed in natural situations, interesting and characteristic, without caricature, and often with much dramatic effect. The British Institution has several good pictures in this style. I shall notice one which pleased me particularly. You see a room occupied by a shoemaker and his family. He is at work, seated on a bench in the front of the picture; shirt sleeves tucked up,squared elbows, a shoe in one hand, on his closed knees, a heavy hammer in the other, hard at LONDON-PICTURES-DOMESTIC SUBJECTS. 41 work; his son by him, his back turned, works at the same trade. Behind them, at a table, the mother shells beans; the daughter, seated at the same table, is binding shoes. A child on a low chair, a bowl in his hand, eating carelessly, as if he had had enough, and playing with the cat. In the middle of all this the door opens; a young man in his holiday dress, with a nosegay at his button-hole, hat off, and scratching his head, with an awkward embarrassed air, advances a few steps, and is about to tell the object of his visit. The father stops short in the middle of his work, and half raising his head, shews a wrinkled forehead,-care-worn-a sharp and impatient eye,-and, altogether, a countenance ill-calculated to encourage the gallant. The girl, without interrupting her work, but deeply blushing, uneasy, and anxious, casts a side-glance at what is going on. The mother looks complacently, and the young brother laughs in his sleeve with suppressed archness, while the child continues playing with the cat, without taking any concern in the scene, which is called, as may be imagined, "The Asking in Marriage." The drawing and composition are perfect; the colouring rather dull, but true; the expression is nature itself, and neither too high nor too low. All the details of furniture, utensils, and ornaments, are finished with the greatest care, and with the greatest minuteness; and, although perfectly distinct, not obtrusive, nor distracting the attention from the principal figures. The artist is a Mr. Cossé of Dusseldorf, who has been fifteen years in London without much reputation, but I should think has now secured one. Another artist, Mr. Wilkie, has reached in a few years the highest honours of this kind. I have not seen any thing of his yet. He is from Scotland, very young, and in bad health, but extremely well-informed and respectable. I have noticed some other pictures of considerable merit at the British Institution, but descriptions of pictures are generally tiresome and insufficient. I have described Mr. Cossé's, merely to give an idea of that style which appears to be, compared to historical painting, what memoirs are to history. I prefer memoirs, as giving the moral or human history, instead of the history of diplomacy and wars, which has no interest nor variety, and contains only that sort of information, of which one volume affords as much as an hundred. There is a false lustre attached to rank and power, which lends an imaginary importance to characters and actions insignificant in themselves. They are not always great men who effect great things ;-much is due to the means which chance has placed in their hands. With the same effort you may throw a stone farther than a feather; and it may not perhaps be much more difficult to manage an empire than a shop. At any rate, I prefer Mr. Cossé's or Mr. Wilkie's humble subjects, to most of those with which history or fable might have furnished them. An English dinner is very different from a French one; less so, however, than formerly, the art of cookery being in fact now half French. England was always under great obligations to its neighbours in that respect; and most of the culinary terms are French, as well as those of tactics. It is singular, that the same animal which, when living, has an English name, has a French one when slaughtered. A sheep becomes mutton; an ox, beef; and a hog, pork. I overheard, the other day, an old Frenchman, who has lived thirty years among the English, tell one of his children who LONDON-ENGLISH DINNER. 43 happened to have dirty hands, to go and wash them, adding, by way of reproof, "Go, you are a little pork." Such misapplications of words shock like discords in music, or ill-assorted colours, the more as they come nearer without being right, and are extremely ludicrous. The master and mistress of the house sit at each end of the table,-narrower and longer than the French tables,-the mistress at the upper end ;and the places near her are the places of honour. There are commonly two courses and a dessert. I shall venture to give a sketch of a moderate dinner for ten or twelve persons. Although contemporary readers may laugh, I flatter myself it may prove interesting in future ages,-for "This work, which ne'er will die, shall be The soup is always a consommé, succulent, and high-seasoned. Vegetables, on the contrary, are exhibited in all the simplicity of nature, like hay to horses, only a little boiled instead of dried. Such a dinner as I have described is now perhaps a little antiquated. Among people of fashion the master and mistress generally abandon the ends of the table, which indeed has often no end, being round; there are more made-dishes, or French ragouts; they are served in succession, hot and hot, and vegetables do not appear quite in naturalibus, Good old English families have frequently no soup at all, and the dishes are only roast and boiled. "Selon leurs goûts, leurs mœurs, et leurs besoins, Un Des plum-puddings, des vins de la Garonne," This plum-pudding, celebrated by Voltaire, is quite a national dish, and my French readers will thank me for the receipt of it, which they will find in a note.* The German mineralogists have given the name of pudding-stein to a ponderous and hard stone, composed of fragments bound together by a common cement. I do not know whether the pud *Plum-pudding is a mass of paste, formed of equal quantities of crumb of bread, of firm fat from the kidneys of beef, of dried raisins properly stoned, and of corinths, a little dry fruit which comes from the Mediterranean. A small quantity of milk is also added; and, to improve the whole, a little citron comfit, spices, and brandy. All this, well mixed, is tied in a piece of linen cloth, and boiled for five or six hours in a pot full of water, but suspended so as not to touch the bottom, which might burn it. The longer it is boiled the better; and this precious faculty of not losing any thing from waiting, has made it be named emphatically Hunter's Pudding,--Pudding de Chasseur. The cloth is taken from it before serving. The pudding forms a large ball, which is cut into slices, upon which each pours a sauce composed of butter, sugar, and wine, |
