mother, she, standing behind a large table, faces her enemies with the hereditary resolution of the Austrian race. This keeps down the manifestation of terror; and she is haughtily self-possessed enough, the inward dread showing itself alone in her sunk features, and eyelids that droop quiveringly. She has assumed the Republican cockade. The Dauphin sits upon the table's edge, clinging to his mother, wearing the red cap of liberty. Leaning by the side is her daughter, whom she clasps. against her breast. Madame is nearer the window, far more terrified than she who is more in danger. Beyond the table is a hot crowd of urgent and shrieking women, and a few men, armed and unarmed. A withered hag vociferates loudly, snapping her lean talons at the Queen. The last has been impressed with the appearance of a younger woman who had been loudest of all. Remonstrating, she demanded what harm she had done the people, that they should hate her: "I was happy when you loved me." The woman addressed, who has a coarse beauty, moved by this, desisted, and now looks half regretfully upon the Queen. A more brutal girl rebukes such tenderness of heart, and urges further violence. The crowd sways, to and fro, jostling about, and, screaming oaths of vengeance, seems bent on destruction. In front of the table lies a gilded chair of state, broken to pieces; the gilded crown shattered upon its back. The whole picture is full of action and commotion, displays great variety of character and expression, and for execution is much superior to anything the artist has yet produced.

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Contrasted to this in all respects is Mr. Dyce's "St. John leading Home his Adopted Mother." After the entombment, it is related that the beloved" "took her to his own home." They move across the front of the picture, St. John leading the Virgin,-no lacrymose beauty, but a worn woman, past the prime of life, by the hand. His face, notwithstanding a certain asceticism of execution that makes it look peevish, is as beautiful as it should

be, his divided hair falling in equal masses on his shoulders, the features calm, pale, and regular; he moves erect and elastically, with a graceful mien, the loose robes flowing about him as he goes, his head bare. The Virgin's head is covered with a wimple; her sorrow-stricken face depressed, and head held sideways; her dress massed about her. Behind is seen the new tomb, two sitting at its entrance: from the gate of the inclosure two more depart; upon the horizon the sun of a summer dawn arises through a mass of purple cloud, throwing golden light upon the sepulchre; while Christ's mother and the "most loved" pace away from its radiance into the chilly shadow of the foreground. This foreground is elaborately and delicately wrought with weeds, grass, and herbage. The adoption of a system of execution like that of the early Italian school is not inapt to the subject.

"The Man of Sorrows," by this painter, shows Christ seated in the wilderness. This is an elaborately executed work, displaying far more power of colour than that above described. The landscape portion is delightfully faithful, and most tenderly treated; but the artist has, probably from a desire to show the universality of the motive he illustrates, chosen an English instead of an Eastern view, for his background. All the herbage is English; the sky, soft grey-blue, like an English sky. It may be that the face of the Redeemer lacks the dignity of resignation; but his action, seated upon a bank, with head downcast and hands strongly clasped upon his lap, is expressive, and admirably apt. Mr. Dyce's "View of Pegwell Bay," notwithstanding its extreme delicacy and careful treatment, from the want of due gradations of tone and breadth of effect, pleases us less than either of the before-named. Bits of nature, seen especially in the foreground rocks, glittering pools of water, and shining, saturated sand, are really delicious.

The scene from "The Taming of the Shrew," Petruchio overthrowing the

table, by Mr. Egg, is admirably full of action and character. The tamer has sprung from his seat, plunged the carving-fork into the joint of meat before him, holds it up so, brandishes the carving-knife, and looks melo-dramatic thunders at the waiting-men. Poor Katherine, bursting with wrath, and yet dismayed at the outrageous conduct of her master, knits, her brows vainly, and would gladly escape. Her face is an admirable study of expression, not at all in the conventional style of character in which she is often represented, but showing a fresh conception of the character altogether. The execution is a little thin in some parts, as in the heads of two servants that are opposed to the light of an open window. This picture exhibits extremely fine qualities of colour, of a deep and vigorous kind; it is rich, without being hot or tawdry.

Mr. John Phillip's "Marriage of the Princess Royal" is a very fine work of its class. More has been made out of the subject than was to be expected from the constraints and inconveniences under which it must have been executed. The portraits are excellently done, and the row of rosy bridesmaids gives a peculiar charm to the work. A flood of rosy soft light seems to come out of them, doubtless indicative of the artist's intense satisfaction in dealing with anything so charming and so natural.

A long warm tract of moonlight in the sea, that goes rippling and gently heaving to afar off, where it is lost in the vapours of the mysterious horizon, over which the soft luminary's light casts a radiant veil,-the sky calm and still, and slow clouds travelling athwart it! A mild gentle wind like a sleeping pulse lifts the sail of an open boat, filling it in irregular puffs, but to collapse again, letting the cordage rattle softly. Three are seated in the boat. A young man, with large gaunt eyes fixed in thought, leans forward in his place, the long robes of a Greek of the later time folded about him, and his whole attitude bespeaking the feelings of one who had just seen a great horror, so great that he contem

plates the impression on his brain again and yet again, as that of a spectacle that should never leave his sight. Beside him, and all at length upon the vessel's thwart, a woman leans back, her face upturned, regarding the sky vaguely and dreamily as that of one whose great dread was over, and now, exhausted with the suffering, yet feels a great happiness nigh within her grasp. Nearer to us, and facing them, so that her back is towards ourselves, sits a second woman, also young, holding a Greek lyre upon her knee, over whose strings from time to time her fingers go, bringing out a melancholy wail, like that of one who, saved in person, had yet lost that which was more than all. The lighted gloom of night above and around,-stillness, the lisping of the sea chattering by the keel! A few low notes of music, and the night-wind rustling in the sail! This is Mr. Poole's picture of "Glaucus, Nydia, and Ione escaping from Pompeii.” It is like a vision or a dream, the ecstatic fancy of an opium-eater in his narcotic sleep, just when the fervour of the drug is slaked and the procession of imagery takes pathetic and mournful phases. The wide and moonlit sea, and three escaping from a lava-burnt city; the darkness of preternatural night that had been instead of day. Thus they had left crowds, earthquake, fire, and falling rocks, the ashes that made night, the crashing palaces, and the roaring, shrieking people,-to find themselves upon the open, secret sea, alone and silent under the weight of awe. Such is the impression excited by this singularly poetical work. Its sole intention has been to create an impression of something vaguely beautiful, undefined, vast, and dreamy. The figures are almost formless; the heads, technically speaking, are ill-drawn; the hands disproporcolour itself, upon tionate; the very which the whole impression is founded, will not bear examination or comparison with the simple prosaic truths of nature. Despite all this, the intense feeling of the artist has not failed to arouse a reciprocating sympathy in our own minds, and there is no painter, not even Land

seer himself, whom we should miss more from his place on the wall than Paul Falconer Poole.

There is a great contrast to be found in the manner of treating a poetic subject, on comparison of this picture of the flight from Pompeii, by Poole, with that by the painter of the "Evening Sun," Mr. F. G. Danby. "Phoebus rising from the Sea," by the lustre of his first vivifying rays, through the drifting forms of a rolling wave, calls into worldly existence "The Queen of Beauty," which wordy title is in itself against the picture. The work is an attempt to express the antique classic feeling upon a representation of nature poetically conceived. It is dawn over the Greek sea,-a mass of golden clouds on the horizon are modelled into the shape of Phoebus and his car, and those attendants of the morning that ever dance before it. Farther off, and just lighted by the warm ray, is a cloudy Olympus, the gods sitting in council or banquet, for their whole forms are so vague and undetermined that it is difficult to determine which. It is a mere cloud-phantasm, such as the fancy feigns when idly gazing at the summer sky. The calm sea of the morning flows softly to the shore, and breaks in the gentlest waves upon a shell-strewn beach. Overhead is the argentine azure of day's new birth. Venus seated in a shell and a group of nymphs are on the shallows of the shore. But Mr. Danby has ruined the motive of his subject by treating it prosaically. The cloudy Olympus looks a sham beside the solid sand and multitude of sea-shells. Apollo and his horses affect us not, because they come in contact with the truthful and natural painting of the sea. The contrast jars between the realm of fact and that of imagination. The artist must convey the intended impression by means of one or the other alone; they are not to be mixed with impunity-hence the total failure of all pictures of dreams, except when ideally treated, as Rembrandt did that of Jacob. We cannot tolerate the figure of a sleeping man and a picture of his dream stuck in the sky either

we are with the dreamer and unconscious of ourselves and the dream; or we see the dream alone, and our imagination must be content with the dream no presentiment of both can exist together, but is repulsive to the feelings and the taste. Thus Mr. Danby has failed. His poetic Venus and cloud-realms above go down before the hard sand of the shore and dash of the sea-waves, and we are brought to see the bad drawing of the goddess herself, and distortions of the nymphs. We actually rejoice, so prosaic is the impression, that these queer females are near the shore, and not like to be drowned. Mr. Poole gives us nothing whatever of nature, but the brain-impression of a poetic instinct we do not come in contact with substantial angles of fact, but drift with him into the region of fancy.

It

Placed upon the line, in a conspicuous position, is a picture by Mr. Solomon Hart, R.A., entitled "Sacred Music," No. 176, showing three vulgar women, all of whose faces are out of drawing; one singing, and two playing on mandolins. If such a picture as this is hung, what must have been those thousands that are annually rejected. Or, turn to another of Mr. Hart's pictures. is considered imperative upon an artist, before he commences a picture, if it contains architecture, to acquaint himself with at least the leading principles of the construction and ornamen-. tation of any style to be employed. If he paints from a particular locality, he must present us with something like a portrait of that place if existing; if not so, he must reconstruct it from authorities as well as he can. There is hardly any building of the middle ages that could be more easily reconstructed than old St. Paul's Cathedral; there are oceans of prints of it; descriptions and plans abound. Its history could be traced from decade to decade,-from completion to ruin in the Great Fire of London. Mr. Hart chooses a subject showing the interior of this building, "Archbishop Langton, after a Mass in old St. Paul's, conjuring the Earl of Pembroke and the Barons to extort from John

the Ratification of the Charter of Henry the First." Here is the primate and the barons, here the most beautiful of English cathedrals. Alas, Mr. Hart! is that the glorious rose-window men raved about; are these the piers of old St. Paul's? Indeed there is hardly one of them upright. Has the artist no more eye for beauty than to "do" them thus, devoid of carving, or of ornament, of proportion even? Are those the arches and that the groined roof above? The figures may be better, let us hope; so, look. Indeed, they are not quite so bad, and might stand, which the columns will hardly do; we see what the dresses are meant for in every quality but texture; and, although there is bad drawing in every one of them, yet nothing like so palpable an offence to the observer's taste as showing a cathedral without carvings and without colours, and in the state to which the iconoclasts, and the white-wash brushes of centuries of Deans and Chapters, have reduced the other glories of English architecture. Not less extraordinary and not less false is the flesh painting, or the surface of tinted chalk, for it is as dry as that, and as crude as a coarse system of handling can make it. Few of the faces are in better drawing in this picture than in the last. Mr. Hart is Professor of Painting to the Royal Academy, a post at one time held, or rather we should say filled, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose mantle must be too small for his successor. If this gentleman had never painted better pictures than these pretentiously placed works, we should, notwithstanding his eminent position, have passed him over in silence. But Mr. Hart has done much better things than those he has exhibited of late years. A time was when he did not offend the public with ill-drawn and vulgar faces, and when at least he aimed at colour.

In the picture to which we have referred, the archbishop points eagerly to the roll of the Charter held by an attendant. Some of the barons attest their devotion to the cause by pledging themselves to Heaven; one kneels kissing his naked sword. Behind the arch

bishop is a group of acolytes and several military vassals of the Church; one of the last is upon his knees, ardently kissing a reliquary containing bones. If the neglect of the most ordinary rules of art shown in the treatment of the architecture be not sufficient to convict this painter of the utmost indifference to public opinion, let the spectators examine the mail worn by the knights and barons. Any one who knows the peculiarly beautiful and delicate construction of this fabric will see at a glance that it is not the genuine mail, but rather a coarse imitation of it, probably obtained at a costumier's, and rendered with a careless hand in the picture. This is but a type of the treatment throughout.

Let us turn from these to the works of an artist who loves and understands nature, and renders for us all her beauties that the brush can render. We refer to those of Mr. Hook, four in number. Take, first, “Stand clear!"-a fisherman's boat coming ashore, leaping to the beach, as it were, the clear green sea's last wave curving out under her stem in a long bright arch that comes gently hissing from the shingle to fling itself impatiently forward. "Stand clear!" is the order to us on shore to avoid the rope that one of her crew casts to his mates that they may make her fast by it. It springs out of his hands in bold curves, and leaps before the boat. The fisherman himself, an old salt, stands up furling the sail; a boy sits upon the gunwale, just ready to drop into the water the instant she touches; another sits within, looking out for some one amongst the bystanders. There is a perfectly delightful expression on this lad's face. No painter understands more entirely the colour of a sea-bronzed face than Mr. Hook, or can give so well the salted briny look of an old sailor's skin, or the tawny gold seen in that of a smooth-faced lad which has been subjected to the same influences. "Whose Bread is on the Waters" is the title of another picture by this artist. A fisherman and a boy are in an open boat,

sturdily hauling in a net that comes up loaded with fish, whose glittering silver scales, fresh from the sea, sparkle on the brown cordage of the net like lustrous jewels. The boy pulls with a will, setting his foot against the boat's thwart; the man, stronger and more deliberate, gives a "dead haul." The sea is of deep fresh green, very different from the sea of painters generally, but sparkling and full of motion, intensely varied in colour, and displaying an amount of knowledge of nature that is delightful to contemplate, and one that all who love her will recognize with ever-increasing satisfaction. The way the waves rise and dash over, shows it is wind against tide, for their foamy little crests fall back into their own hollows; the turbulent tops of these waves, pettish as they seem to be, and hasty without force, and too small to be the cause of awe to us, shows a fine reticence of the artist's power. He does not care to bully our admiration out of us, but takes it captive with fidelity to nature. sea, not angry now, is yet working up, and the sky above shows signs of a gale in its long-drawn clouds, purplish and deep grey. The brassy colour of the firmament, where the sun has just gone down, and a veil of shifting vapour above that melts the edges of the clouds into the luminous ether these last, drawn to streaks-are signs of wind to

come.

The

The waters dash crisply and freshly in the last-named pictures, but the artist's illustration to Tennyson's "Break, Break, Break,""O, well for the sailor lad That he sings in his boat on the bay!"shows the calmest of calm seas, a silver sea, filled with subdued light, and seeming asleep in light, the long low billows that roll, not like waves that break and dash, but the heaving of a vast sheet of glittering waters, in shallow trenches, flat for miles, yet creeping and sweeping along in a restless heave, as the chest of one deep asleep moves gently to his breathing. Such the sea that is overhung with a misty veil; not lifting, be

cause universal, and still, because there is not a breath of wind to find itself in this deep bay, whose air itself dozes over the waters at rest. The silent sleepy heat that holds the whole scene to this quiet, has drawn that dreaming misty veil from the sea, to overhang a hill; it wraps also the high, deep-verdured cliffs in the same delicate shade. All is asleep, and a silvery silence reigns. By some piles in the front floats a boat and a boy in it singing, his sister leaning backwards upon the gunwale, paddling her arm over the side in the water, that burns beneath the little craft with a deep vivid green, of the sunlight contrasted and concentrated through the translucent waters. The reflections of the piles tremble upon the water that stealthily creeps about them, making ring within ring at every slow heave, as it ascends the solid timber. So silent seems it all, that one might hear the boy's voice (he pours it out in a low monotonous sea song) even far off on the mistveiled cliff. The bay is broken in two by a jutting point, telling of an estuary beyond, round which go the white glimmering sails of a barque, as she is borne in, not by the wind, for the canvas hangs useless from the yards, but by the tide alone that is setting inwards. The reader will see that our admiration for this picture is unbounded; indeed the poetic feeling needed to express the theme supplied by the Laureate's verses, is exquisitely rendered, and that moreover in the most loyal way the task could be executed-which is, representing natural thoughts, however refined, pathetic, and subtle they may be,-by subtle-meaning nature herself alone. A the aid of most refined, pathetic, and delightful pastoral, "The Valley in the Moor," is the remaining picture by this artist. It seems to us a little crude in green colour; but, notwithstanding, is very faithful as a portrait of nature.

Excepting these, which from their class we may rank with the landscapes, the best representation of nature is Mr. Anthony's "Hesperus," a large picture, showing a piece of open land under an evening sky, when the star named