girlishness are perceivable in all its limbs and motions. It is a padded, starched-collared, man-stayed, French-dancing, Italian-squalling, sight-seeing, splendour-loving, over-excited, and sated age. And it is with nations, as with individuals, who are intense in their love of pleasure: they at last grow over-exquisite, effeminate, and careless of everything that is not momentary and pleasurable.

To do our modern portrait-painters justice, they have not the fine originals to paint which their fortunate precursors had; and this they are either conscious of, and make up in affectation what is deficient in nature, or the originals themselves make it up for them, by assuming what is not theirs, and running into all sorts of extravagances of body and feature, making a youth of age, and passing flattery current for sterling truth. When we look at the fine unadultered Saxon faces of Gower, Lydgate, Occleve, Chaucer, and their contemporaries; at the noble native heads of the Elizabethan age; or at those of the Cromwell period, (the Sidneys, Miltons, Hampdens, Fairfaxes, Vanes,) our modern men may hide "their diminished heads." The untawdry splendour, or the plain elegance of their costume, the unstudied expressiveness of their high-minded faces, their native ease, grace, and unaffected attitude, look our living faces clean out of countenance. The first shew like men of intellect and greatness caught unconsciously and by chance glancing out of their open windows; and the latter, like beaux, literary and finical, doating on themselves in their looking-glasses.

To say, however, that there are no modern fine heads would be like denying that the heavens have no superior stars sprinkled about them; but how few there are! These it would be invidious to enumerate; but we still think that the present age does not abound in fine subjects for portraiture. If we look back to Shakspeare's time, or the nearer day of Mil

ton, we shall find that there was a decided superiority in the men and heads of that time. They were such as we shall not find in the ride on Sundays; nor at the levee at St. James's; nor on one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's canvasses. Female beauty we I have in as great perfection as ever; but intellectual, and expressive faces, among the male sex, are rare. It is a great absurdity, is introducing anything which gives pain in a portrait. There is an amusing anecEdote of Dr. Johnson on this subject. Reynolds, in = his celebrated portrait, had painted him closely applying his eyes to a book, as was his manner in reading; but the surly Doctor remonstrated against having his personal defects exposed in so public a manner. To soothe him, he was told that Sir Joshua, in a portrait of himself, had introduced the ear-trumpet which he was from another infirmity in the habit of using; but even this would not satisfy the fretted Colossus of learning: "He might, if he liked it, be called Deaf Reynolds, but no one should call him Blinking Sam." The Doctor was in the right.

We have thus laid down some crude principles of taste, and have attempted to shew what is affected in portraiture: these may be of a very flimsy structure, but they are our own; for we confess that we have never read Mr. Alison's celebrated Essay on Taste, nor do we intend it: we have preferred to fabricate a new code of our own, however, coarse and rude the materials, to using that gentleman's at second hand. And now we cannot take leave of the subject better than by remarking, in the manner of Lord Chesterfield-that it is much easier to pick a hole in a man's coat than to sew a button on it.

N*

THE GENTLEWOMAN..

GALLANTRY-or the homage paid by Man to Woman, for her own sweet sake-is not dead in the world: it lives at least here, in England. By gallantry, I do not mean that homage which consists almost wholly of deferential attitudes of attention-of waiting upon her wants, and flying to meet her slightest wishes-of polite bows and graceful genu-flexions-of handingsin and leadings-out-of setting a chair, or seeing down to a carriage and all the other shallow, superficial signsof worship, without any real devotion to the sex:-1 mean that gallantry which is the only gallantry-the unshowy, reverential respect; the quiet, unpretending homage paid by good and true men to women as women, for their virtues' and their sex's sake; the gallantry of the heart and the honest thoughts-not that of the head, and hands, and legs, and hat. The English-rough, rude, unpolished, and uncourteous. as they are said to be-have always rendered that proper reverence to the sex, plainly, bluntly, heartily, and honestly. The French were always great professors of the external forms of this gentle worship. No men could flutter about Woman more assiduously, and pay her handsomer attentions-none flatter her more-throw themselves more gracefully at her feet -"talk of love the whole day long"-protest, swear "lovers' oaths," and "lie like truth"-their love's truth-in her presence: but the true reverence and real religion of the heart were wanting all the while, and were not seen either in the bended knee, or in the

clasped hands, or in the beseeching prayer, or in any one outward sign or demonstration of their worship. The sentiment of love was heard breathing honied syllables about her ear, like the warbling of music; but the heart was not heard beating in the centre of the instrument, amid all that concord of sweet sounds, like the pulsation that should accompany the air— without which it was but

"Aerial music in the warbling wind."

and sound, signifying nothing." The soul and spirit of love and gallantry were wanting, and a selfish passion only was heard and seen making itself companionable, worshipful, and amiable, for its own sake, and its own selfish ends. Gallantry was a gay fop to look at: fashionable, frivolous, airy, witty, sparkling, sentimental-giving himself a thousand agreeable airs-saying a thousand agreeable things, and saying and doing all without one atom of heart. A preux chevalier was gallant because gallantry was the mode at court: homage aux dames was as essential to his outward man as his diamond-hilted sword, his ena melled snuff-box, set with brilliants, his laced ruffles, and his gold or silver garnished court-suit. The nice conduct of "an amour," so called, was as carefully looked to as "the nice conduct of his clouded cane;" and the true chevalier took up the one or laid down the other with about an equal quantity of sentiment: one was quite as important as the other, and just as much a matter of soul. If the one ended in a walk, or the other in a wife, the heart was equally unconcerned. To the chevalier, if of a certain age, a wife was as convenient, as much an article of form, as showy an appendage, perhaps, as the cane which was sometimes handed along with a graceful air, as an ornament and an addition to the trappings of the man; and was sometimes dangled at the elbow, as an incumbrance and no ornament, as it happened. The

gold-headed cane testified to his rank in life, or his wealth without rank; and the eyes of the Parisian world took him on trust, upon his own personal responsibility. The gold-headed wife restored his reputation as a gentleman, when over head and ears in debt; and, with her handsome dowry, set his pride on its legs again, to "strut and fret its hour upon the stage." e." The stage, however, where the chevalier had so long "played his part," was cleared for a tragedy, and the frivolous actor in the comedy of life was rudely driven from the scene.

That order of gallants, and their notions of gallantry, are dead and gone among the French of modern times; and according to the observation of all alien visitors to the self-styled "capital of the world," the changeable Parisians are now more remarkable for their want of gallantry-even their own-invented, conventional sort of-than the well-bred men of any other less-conceited city in the world: the inevitable ending and natural termination of a pretension founded on falsehood-a superficiality without heart and soul. Having forsaken the outward form of their old false worship of Women, they will perhaps, in time, learn how to treat them with the proper, manly gallantry. The Parisians show no signs of this "consummation, devoutly to be wished," at present, if one may judge of their respect for women by what we see of the spirit of modern pictorial art: for there are no artists in the world who degrade women so utterly, by making them objects of mere sensuality in print and picture: all is grossness and ingenious impudence, however attempted to be wrapt up and disguised. Depravity of taste stares you in the face, imperfectly concealed with a thin drapery of sentiment. If these perverters of the fine arts are capable of a moral lesson, French women themselves must teach them better manners, and "standing up for the dignity of their order," repel, as they can,