No 461. "Neapolitan Fisher-girls surprised Bathing by Moonlight." J. M. W. Turner, R. A.—If Mr Turner means discovered by the word surprised, we cannot agree with him, for it puzzles one to find any fishergirls at all; but we will suppose the indistinct creatures we dimly see in no dim colour, are really the "maids who love the moon.' We at first thought the red images in the red blaze had been "ignes fatui," knowing that Mr Turner has so often allowed his genius to be led astray by them. This is another of the absurd school which Mr Turner endeavours to establish-a return, perhaps, to the "infant school of art, versus the manly school of nature." No. 482. "Prince Charles Edward and the Highlanders entering Edinburgh after the Battle of Preston." T. Duncan. We are sorry that the description of this picture in the catalogue is too long to be admitted here. It tells its story admirably: the prince is just sufficiently conspicuous, and no more-there is ample room, therefore, for the other characters, -those who rejoice in the event, and the opponents to the cause. It is full of character, but is painted too much after Sir D. Wilkie's wet manner. Is there not a peculiarity in making the eyes of most of the figures too small? No. 508. "Portrait of Mrs Bate man." F. Grant.-We admire this portrait much for its unaffected truth and simplicity-its unforced yet very pleasing tone of colour. We hail this absence of all violence of effect of colour in an artist so likely to promote a better taste in portraits than we commonly see on the Exhibition walls. We may here, too, speak of the unobtrusive power of 507, "Portrait of Sir W. Follett," C. Stonehouse; and No. 448, " Portrait of a Lady," J. Watson Gordon-which we like for its truth, and disclaiming all adventitious aid of superfluous ornament. Indeed the love of ornament-of the gorgeous-is doing us much mischief: robes, jewels, and plate, are too often the evident intention of pictures, and the story the adjunct. Why have the Academicians in the Octagon Room begun again with No. 1? It may puzzle many who first open their catalogues in it, of which we will give proof. Two gentlemen NO. CCXCIX, VOL. XLVIII, behind us, had been looking at No. 14, "Thetis and Achilles," H. Corbould-in which Achilles is, as usual, in half armour, half nudity; and Thetis entire nudity, rising out of the water. These gentlemen referred to the catalogue. One reads " No. 14. Portrait of his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, K.G., Hereditary Earl-Marshal of England." "Well," says the other, "that now must be one of the early dukes." "Yes," saith the first, "they wore those odd dresses in former days.' " "Ay," saith the other, "it must have been a long time back." Doubtless they thought Achilles's, or rather his Grace's, armour was a compliment to the corporation of cutlers of Sheffield, for whom the portrait was painted; and Thetis rising from the water was most probably Britannia, that " rules the waves." No. 12. "Ruins, Egypt, Sunset." W. Müller. — Here the gigantic statucs, with folded arms, look over the sandy plain solemnly grand. The deep red of the sunset towards the horizon purpling the distance, contrasted with the calm serenity above-a serenity that denotes the coming night-gives a poetical loneliness to the scene. We the more ad. mire, because we are sure it is true. We have seen Mr Müller's sketches in Greece and Egypt, drawn and coloured upon the spot, and have never seen any more fine. They are very numerous, and admirably executed; indeed, a most valuable portfolio. No. 34, "Do you bite your thumb at us, Sir?" Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Scene 1. R. S. Lauder.- We were much struck last year with Mr Lauder's picture from Ravenswood, nor shall we soon forget it. His strong power of delineating character is shown in this picture; but it is hung too high to see it satisfactorily. Where the works of art exceed a thousand, it must be that many of great merit will remain unnoticed. We fear that our observations upon pictures, so totally unconnected with each other, may have already been of too great extent for the reader's patience. We do not profess to criticise sculpture, but there is one statue so beautiful, (and we have not spoken to one person that has not equally admired it,) that we must notice it, 2 B No. 1076. "Statue of a Girl going to Bathe." P. Macdowell.-It is so perfectly unaffected, so delicate, and expresses such innocent beauty, that it is quite fascinating. Those who are enamoured of certain antique rules and proportions may consider the arms too slender; for ourselves, we think it the more beautiful for this lifelike truth: whoever may possess it, we envy him. We were very much pleased, like wise, with No. 1099, Ino and the infant Bacchus." J. H. Foley.Bacchus is the infant god. There is great grace and beauty in every part; but we venture no more on sculp ture, not being critics but admirers. To this account of works of art in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, a notice of Mr Danby's picture of the Deluge may be very properly added. Why it was not exhibited at the Academy, we know not. It certainly would have made a very great sensation. The design is very simple. A mass of rock, on which are crowding a dense mass of human beings escaping from the rush of waters. Some who have reached the summit are precipitated thence; some are trampled upon by those who urge their upward way; some assist others in ascending the rugged rocks, rent asunder by an earthquake, which is supposed to have happened in the breaking up the foundations of the great deep. In the foreground is a tree rooted in a fragment overwhelm ed; the tree has been the refuge of many wretched beings still clinging to it for life: a part is broken off, and on that too are strugglers for life. A serpent is coiled round one agonized figure; a lion is clinging to a branch; figures, in every attitude, as wildly cast by the overthrow, and in every effort to obtain safety, are mingled to gether, exhibiting human distress in every shape. On the right is a giant, killed by a mass of fallen rock, and a child over these an angel of light is seen weeping. We do not, however, like the conception of this episode, nor its execution. The faint tone of the angel and wings of prismatic colouring, are too little for so grand a subject, which should, as much as possible, be confined to the one idea of the coming universal desolation. The Ark on the horizon is likewise too small; it would have been better partially obscured: as it is, the eye too suddenly perceives it, and its smallness offends. The deluge from above and from below well unite. On the left is the sun, red and obscured, seen near the tops of the buildings of an overwhelmed city. This part of the picture, too, we do not quite like; it is too distinct. The waters are very fine in their swell and in-rushing. Their transparency, with the bodies seen in part beneath them, is finely managed. The scene is supposed to be lighted by a comet, which is indeed seen, but not with sufficiently awful effect. Excepting to the right, where the dark deluge of rain is very fine, we think Mr Danby has failed in the sky; it wants awful colour and depth. The light too is generally too white-wonderfully managed in its effects, so that the separation of the rocks shown by it, and their wet surfaces, are perfect in illusion. The picture is certainly a work of very high character; it is of a daring hand, and shows a most powerful genius. We well remember the effect produced by the "Opening of the Sixth Seal," by Mr Danby, some years ago. This picture, though differing much from that, is of the same powerful hand, and a conception of the same poetical mind. In illusion of effect we can only compare Mr Danby's picture to the Diorama; we think not of the picture, but of the scene. It is awfully grand. We look forward to great things from Mr Danby's easel. His aim is high, his conceptions poetical, and his manner original; it seeks truth of effect, and to bring it out with the utmost strength. We understand the picture will be exhibited in the provincial towns, as was the " Opening of the Sixth Seal." STYLE. No. II. Ir is a natural resource, that what soever we find it difficult to investigate as a result, we endeavour to follow as a growth; failing analytically to probe its nature, historically we seek relief to our perplexities by tracing its origin. Not able to assign the elements of its theory, we endeavour to detect them in the stages of its development. Thus, for instance, when any feudal institution (be it Gothic, Norman, or Anglo-Saxon) eludes our deciphering faculty, from the imperfect records of its use and operation, then we endeavour conjecturally to amend our knowledge, by watching the circumstances in which that institution arose ; and from the necessities of the age, as indicated by facts which have survived, we are sometimes able to trace, through all their corresponding stages of growth, the natural succession of arrangements which such necessities would be likely to pre scribe. This mode of oblique research, where a more direct one is denied, we find to be the only one in our power. And, with respect to the liberal arts, it is even more true than with respect to laws or institutions; because remote ages, widely separated, differ much more in their pleasures than they can ever do in their social necessities. To make property safe and life sacred-that is every where a primary purpose of law. But the intellectual amusements of men are so different, that the very purposes and elementary functions of these amusements are different. They point to different ends as well as different means. The drama, for instance, in Greece, connects itself with religion; in other ages, religion is the power most in resistance to the drama. Hence, and because the elder and ruder ages are most favourable to a ceremonial and mythological religion, we find the tragedy of Greece defunct before the literary age arose. Aristotle's era may be taken as the earliest era of refinement and literary development. But Aristotle wrote his Essay on the Greek Tragedy just a century after the chefs d'œuvre of that tragedy had been published. If, therefore, it is sometimes requisite for the proper explanation even of a law or legal usage, that we should go to its history, not looking for a sufficient key to its meaning in the mere analogies of our own social necessities, much more will that be requisite in explaining an art or a mode of intellectual pleasure. Why it was that the ancients had no landscape painting, is a question deep almost as the mystery of life, and harder of solution than all the problems of jurisprudence combined. What causes moulded the tragedy of the ancients could hardly be guessed, if we did not happen to know its history and mythologic origin. And with respect to what is called Style, not so much as a sketch -as an outline-as a hint could be furnished towards the earliest speculations upon this subject, if we should overlook the historical facts connected with its earliest development. What was it that first produced into this world that celebrated thing called Prose? It was the bar, it was the hustings, it was the Bema (To Buμce.) What Gibbon and most historians of the Mussulmans have rather absurdly called the pulpit of the Caliphs, should rather be called the rostrum, the Roman military suggestus, or Athenian bema. The fierce and generally illiterate Mahometan harangued his troops; preach he could not; he had no subject for preaching. Now this *"No subject."—If he had a subject, what was it? As to the great and sole doctrines of Islam-the unity of God, and the mission of Mahomet as his chief prophet, (i. e. not vaticinator, but interpreter)-that must be presumed known to every man in a Mussulman army, since otherwise he could not have been admitted into the army. But these doctrines might require expansion, or at least evidence? Not at all; the Mussulman believes them incapable of either. But at least the Caliph might mount the pulpit, in order to urge the primary duty of propagating the true faith? No; it was not the primary duty; it was a secondary duty; else there would have been no option function of man, in almost all states. of society, the function of public haranguing was for the Pagan man, who had no printing-press, more of a mere necessity, through every mode of public life, than it is for the modern man of Christian light: for as to the modern man of Mahometan twilight, his perfect bigotry denies him this characteristic resource of Christian energies. Just four centuries have we of the Cross propagated our light by this memorable invention; just four centuries have the slaves of the Crescent clung to their darkness by rejecting it, Christianity signs her name; Is lamism makes her mark. And the great doctors of the Mussulmans, take their stand precisely where Jack Cade took his a few years after printing had been discovered. Jack and they both make it felony to be found with a spelling-book, and sorcery to deal with syntax. Yet with these differences, all of us alike, Pagan, Mussulman, Christian, have practised the arts of public speaking as the most indispensable resource of public administration and of private intrigue. Whether the purpose were to pursue the interests of legislation, or to conduct the business of jurisprudence, or to bring the merits of great citizens pathetically before their countrymen; or (if the state were democratic enough) oftentimes to explain the conduct of the executive government-oftentimes, also, to pro secute a scheme of personal ambition; whether the audience were a mob, a senate, a judicial tribunal, or an army; equally (though not in equal degrees) for the Pagan of twenty-five hundred years back, and for us moderns, the arts of public speaking, and consequently of prose as opposed to metrical composition, have been the capital engine the one great intellectual machine-of civil life. This, to some people, may seem a matter of course; "would you have men speak in rhyme?" We answer, that when society comes into a state of refinement, the total uses of language are developed in common with other arts; but originally, and whilst man was in his primitive condition of simplicity, it must have seemed an unnatural, nay an absurd, thing to speak in prose. For in those elder days, the sole justifying or exciting cases for a public harangue, would be cases connected with impassioned motives. Rare they would be, as they had need to be, where both the "hon. gentleman" who moves, and his "hon. friend" who seconds, are required to speak in Trimeter Iambic. Hence the neces sity that the oracles should be delivered in verse. Who ever heard of a prose oracle? And hence, as Grecian taste expanded, the disagreeable criticisms whispered about in Athens as to the coarse quality of the verses that proceeded from Delphi. It was like bad Latin from Oxford. Apollo him. allowed-tribute, death, or conversion. Well, then, the Caliph might ascend the pulpit, for the purpose of enforcing a secondary duty? No, he could not; because that was no duty of time or place; it was a postulate of the conscience at all times alike; and needed no argument or illustration. Why, then, what was it that the Caliph talked about? It was this:- He praised the man who had cut most throats; he pronounced the funeral panegyric of him who had had his own throat cut under the banners of the Prophet; he explained the prudential merits of the next movement or of the next campaign. In fact, he did precisely what Pericles did-what Scipio did-what Cæsar did; what it was a regular part of the Roman Imperator's commission to do, both before a battle and after a battle, and, generally, under any circumstances which made an explanation necessary. What is now done in "general orders," was then committed to a vivâ voce communication. Trifling communications probably devolved on the six centurions of each cohort (or regiment;) graver communications were reserved to the Imperator, surrounded by his staff. Why we should mislead the student by calling this solemnity of addressing an army from a tribunal, or suggestus, by the irrelevant name of preaching from a pulpit, can only be understood by those who perceive the false view taken of the Mahometan faith and its relation to the human mind. It was certainly a poor plagiarism from the Judaic and the Christian creeds; but it did not rise so high as to conceive of any truth that needed or that admitted intellectual development, or that was susceptible of exposition and argument. However, if we will have it that the Caliph preached, then did his lieutenant say Amen. If Omar was a parson, then certainly Caled was his clerk. some self, to turn out of his own temple, in the very age of Sophocles, such Birmingham hexameters as times astonished Greece, was like our English court keeping a Stephen Duck, the thresher, for the national poet-laureate, at a time when Pope was fixing an era in the literature. Metre fell to a discount in such learned times. But, in itself, metre must always have been the earliest vehicle for public enunciations of truth among men, for these obvious reasons:1. That, if metre rises above the standard of ordinary household life, so must any truth of importance and singularity enough to challenge a public utterance. 2. That, because religious communications will always have taken a metrical form, by a natural association of feeling, whatsoever is invested with a privileged character will seek something of a religious sanction, by assuming the same external shape; and 3. That expressions, or emphatic verbal forms, which are naturally courted for the sake of pointed effect, receive a justification from metre, as being already a departure from common usage to begin with, whereas, in plain prose, they would appear so many affectations. Metre is naturally and necessarily adopted in cases of impassioned themes, for the very obvious reason, that rhythmus is both a cause of impassioned feeling, an ally of such feeling, and a natural effect of it; but upon other subjects not impassioned, metre is also a subtle ally, because it serves to introduce, and to reconcile with our sense of propriety, various arts of condensation, of antithesis, and other rhetorical effects, which, without the metre (as a key for harmonizing them) would strike the feelings as unnatural, or as full of affectation. Interrogations, for example, passionate ejaculations, &c., seem no more than natural, when metre (acting as a key) has attuned and prepared the mind for such effects. The metre raises the tone of colouring, so as to introduce richer tints, without shocking or harshly jarring upon the presid ing key, when without this semiconscious pitching of the expectations, the sensibility would have been revolted. Hence, for the very earliest stages of society, it will be mere nature that prompts men to metre: it is a mode of inspiration-it is a pro mise of something preternatural; and less than preternatural cannot be any possible emergency that should call for a public address. Only great truths could require a man to come forward as a spokesman: he is then a sort of interpreter between God and man, his creature. At first, therefore, it is mere nature which prompts metre. Afterwards, as truth begins to enlarge itself as truth loses something of its sanctity by descending amongst human details that mode of exalting it, and of courting attention, is dictated by artifice, which originally was a mere necessity of nature raised above herself. For these reasons, it is certain that men, challenging high authentic character, will continue to speak by metre for many generations after it has ceased to be a mere voice of habitual impulse. Whatsoever claims an oracular authority, will take the ordinary external form of an oracle. And after it has ceased to be a badge of inspiration, metre will be retained as a badge of professional distinction ;-Pythagoras, for instance, within five centuries of Christ, Thales or Theognis, will adopt metre out of a secondary prudence; Orpheus and the elder Sibyl out of an original necessity. Those people are, therefore, mistaken who imagine that prose is either a natural or a possible form of composition in early states of society. It is such truth only as ascends from the earth, not such as descends from heaven, which can ever assume an unmetrical form. Now, in the earliest states of society, all truth that has any interest or importance for man will connect itself with heaven. If it does not originally come forward in that sacred character, if it does not borrow its importance from its sanctity; then, by an inverse order, it will borrow a sanctity from its importance. Even agricultural truth, even the homeliest truths of rural industry, brought into connexion with religious inspiration, will be exalted (like the common culinary utensils in the great vision of the Jewish prophet,) and transfigured into vessels of glorious consecration. All things in this early stage of social man are meant mysteriously, have allegoric values; and week day man moves amongst glorified objects. So that if any |