"In Easter week (says the Palladium) most graves are newly dressed and manured with fresh earth. In Whitsuntide holydays they are again dressed, weeded, and, if necessary, replanted. No person ever breaks or disturbs flowers thus planted; it is considered sacrilege."

Leigh Hunt delicately observes: "Nature likes extern beauty, and man likes it too; it softens the heart, enriches the imagination, and helps to show that there are other goods in th world besides utility."

CROSSES.

"The cross was an emblem of the Egyptians, referring to a future state." BRITTON.

THIS same industrious writer,

"Instructed by the antiquary times,

He must, he is, he cannot but be wise," SHAKSPEARE. informs us our tasteful, pious ancestors had erected, as well for ornament as for edification, "ten descriptions of crosses:" first, preaching crosses; second, market crosses; third, weeping crosses; fourth, street crosses; fifth, memorial crosses; sixth, as landmarks; seventh, sepulchral; eighth, highway; ninth, at entrance to churches; tenth, for attestations of peace. When one considers the objects for which these were erected, the taste which they all more or less displayed, it must most assuredly be a proof of great depravity to destroy them, of want of judgment, and of want of feeling.

"True piety shows itself in the love of divine things for their moral tendency." The market crosses were originally built to put greedy man in mind that in his various dealings he was still in the midst of the divine presence.

There are a few of them now remaining. The one at Malmes→ bury is very beautiful, but the one at Coventry was the most beautiful of them all it stood fifty-seven feet high, very elegant, pyramidical, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less." This was suffered to go to decay by a corrupt electioneering corporation, and finally pulled down in 1771, to avoid the expense of repairing..

There were fifteen crosses erected by King Edward I., in memory of his excellent wife, Queen Eleanor: only three of them are left; one is triangular, one hexagonal, and one octagonal.

Those factious men who decreed the destruction of crosses, were men who knew very little of the real devotional feelings

of their countrymen.* This symbol has been respected with a becoming veneration for twelve centuries.

There is a cross cut into the chalk on the side of Whiteleaf Hill, in Buckinghamshire, daily appealing to the feelings of thousands of people within the distance from which it can be seen. The green sod is cut away 100 feet long, 50 feet broad at base, decreasing upward to 20 feet; the transverse part is about 70 feet long and 12 feet broad; the earth is cut into from two to three feet deep. Every few years there is a gathering of the people, who recut and clear these channels, and have a frolic.

Dr. Blair, sermon 5, vol. i., states: "The cross was to shine on palaces and churches throughout the earth."

There can be but few people in any country who have really a disrelish to these things. "That soul must be low and mean indeed which is insensible to all feelings of pride in the noble edifices of his country. Love of country, that variety of feeling which altogether constitute what we properly call patriotism, consists, in part, of the admiration of, and veneration for, ancient and magnificent proofs of skill and opulence.”—Cobbett.

THE FINE ARTS.

"THESE studies are as food to us in our youth; they delight us in more advanced years; they are ornaments to a prosperous state; they afford us comfort and refuge in adversity; they amuse us at home; they are unembarrassing to us when abroad; they pass our nights with us; they accompany us on our travels and in our retirement."-CICERO.

To those who read poetry merely because it tickles the ear, who fancy pictures because they hide defects in their rooms, or who listen to a drawling tune because it passes away time, the fine arts are ill bestowed; and, I fancy, nothing I can write will cause them to pay more attention to a subject that greatly distinguishes us in the paths of civilization. But while there are numbers that possess a discriminating relish for the works of genius and art, yet some among them do not sufficiently appreciate their utility in a national point of view. Quintillian has said: "Learned men comprehend the ground of the arts; the unlearned partake in the pleasure only." Horace says: "An acute perception is understanding the arts." While I lament a want of proper opinion in the middle class of life, for * Boileau says: "The distance is twice as great between a devotee and a true Christian, in my opinion, as between the Southern Pole and Davis's Straits."

which many apologies may be offered, I cannot help expressing my indignation for others who, from their elevated stations, ought to exert their utmost endeavours to encourage, inste or depressing, the talents of genius.

"

To amass wealth is thought by many to be the height of il human attainments; but this depends oftener on fortunate c cumstances than talents or abilities; and if successful, if not properly applied, is always more a vice than a virtue. Índe, the common occupations of life, although they may display degree of honour and industry, seldom evince anything ext ordinary in talent. Some of the professions that are consider by the generality of mankind to rank above that of mere trade, such as the clergyman and the apothecary, require nothing extraordinary in the mind to proceed through life with credit and respect the physician and surgeon must rank but as secondary in the class of intellect, and, indeed, so must the study and acquirements of forensic knowledge, which requires much application and a good capacity, unless united to that uncommon eloquence with which an Erskine, a Romily, or a Curran adorn the dreary regions of the law.

The

A first-rate work of art requires a display of talent and a toil of study as rare as that for which a judge or a commander receives thousands from the pockets of the public. To those who consider the fine arts in their least favourable point of view, will find they have changed advantageously the mode by which the powerful and opulent expended their superfluity. chieftain who had armour and horses for a hundred combatants, whom he occasionally employed to make incursions into the territories of the helpless, or to swell the ranks of civil war, is now employed in building a palace, and adorning it with works of genius and art.

Those who really look at their utility as displayed in the actions of mankind, will find, as Ovid had found before them, that

"Learning, if deep, if useful, and refined,
Communicates its polish to the mind;"

and thus softens and improves our rude, uncultivated nature. These will consider the poet to rank highest in the scale of intellect next to him the painter and sculptor demand a similar and exalted distinction, and which have received a like homage with hers from the respect and admiration of mankind, by being honoured with the title of sister to that glorious art.

* The writer of "The Last Days of Pompeii" says of the statuary ::
"Their looks with the reach of past ages were wise,
And the soul of eternity thought in their eyes."

Painting is not only capable of delighting the fancy, but of instructing the mind; it is as poetry to the eye: an historical painting is the drama of a scene; and the portrait of a friend or an eminent man is as a living epitome of his feelings, his fame, or his virtues. And next to the moral and personal beauty and dignity of man, there are no subjects more interesting to a cultivated taste than the representation of the symmetry and power of animals, because there is a grace and power of muscular action-a power in many respects superior to "the lords of the creation." Next comes the vivid landscape, (in the language of Bloomfield, "the field was his study, nature his book,") which teaches man scientifically to estimate the scenes of nature, and, by such impressions, to acknowledge the power which produced them; they lead us to feel and appreciate the wisdom of an Almighty from a survey of his works. Respectable as the talents of many individuals are that now receive the applause and homage of the admiring multitude, such talents history proves may be had in all ages. But such luminaries as a Shakspeare, a Milton, a West, a Titian, and a Raffaele are proved by biography to appear but now and then, like beautiful meteors, to enliven and delight mankind, and to adorn and instruct the ages in which they lived.

To those, therefore, who do not properly appreciate the utility of such talents, let them be told that the works of a Titian, a Raffaele, or a West demand and exhibit a variety of science, a knowledge of anatomy, of colours, light, and shade, of perspective, of history, of the various costumes, and customs, and the manners of nations; and, what is above all, of the human heart.

Many people little suspect how much of estimation they lose in unwary assertions on this subject, because they little consider the importance of a well-cultivated taste, simply as an innocent and delightful amusement to individuals; thus some will cast an unintentional reflection on their Creator for blessing them with ears to receive and an imagination to delight in the "concord of sweet and harmonious sounds:" how few there are who know that tones, mere "tones, tell more than words; folly is prone to babble, and passion to rave, craftiness to gloze, and affectation to mince or swell; but true eloquence pours forth the living energies of the soul in the convincing language of sense and the moving tones of nature;" in truth, there are in tones "thoughts that glow and words that burn."

Others conceive the time thrown away that is occupied in composing an elegy or an ode. But let them be told that the arts are the liberal and enlightened means which equalize or connect all ranks of society; they humanize the passions,

while they refine the heart. Besides these important ger effects, they invariably afford us individually a delightful sc of amusement under all difficulties and situations, insomuc as to confer upon us another species of existence: they source of commercial improvement and wealth to nations; enlarge the boundaries of intellect, and, consequently, th physical boundaries of states; and above all, as being, as states, "favourable to many virtues." "To be entirely,'

y

that popular writer, "devoid of relish for eloquence, poet any of the fine arts, is justly considered to be an unpromising symptom of youth, and raises suspicion of their being prone to low gratifications."

Let us, therefore, do honour to those mighty geniuses and beneficent beings who occupy their time and talents for us; who write for us, or who enrich us by their discoveries : let us do them that justice their merits have a right to expect while they are living; and while their wives, their children, or their friends may be occupied by the melancholy care of closing their eyes, let us at least pay to their ashes a tribute of recollection for the pleasure and benefits they have procured Let us sprinkle with our tears the urns of Socrates, of Alfred, and Washington. Let us strew flowers over the tombs of a Justinian, of a Bacon, of a Locke; and let us revere the immortal shades of those happy geniuses whose songs and sentiments yet excite in our hearts the most tender sentiments.*

us.

Compassion proper to mankind appears,

Which nature witness'd when she gave us tears." JUVENAL.

This excellent essay appears to me proper to introduce the following remarks on

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE,

"Possessing more than vocal power,

Possessing more than poet's tongue." CAMPBELL.

"THAT love of art which was so violently suppressed at the reformation, was scarcely revived before the time of Charles I., 1625." Of this unfortunate monarch it has been said, “The art of reigning was the only art of which he was ignorant." The amusements of his court were a model of excellence to all Europe, and his cabinets were the choice receptacles of what was exquisite in painting and sculpture; none but men of first-rate merit found encouragement from him. Jones was

* I copy this from my common-place book for the year 1813.