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form into line beside our corps; and some of them had actually pike-heads stuck on the ends of sticks; but a sudden alarm took place, and they all began to cock their ears. Something was heard,-and, after a few minutes' listening, one heard distinctly the clatter of horses' feet, and another the trumpets of the dreaded horsemen.

"The cavalry!-the cavalry!' was exclaimed with terror from one to the other; and, although some talked of resistance, and some of marching off in regular order, in five minutes we were all dispersed, and our great army had scampered away in different directions.

"I happened to go on a little farther on the nearest road, and soon found the cause of this panic. I fell in on my way with a man and an ass, coming from a neighbouring fair; the shoes of the poor animal happening to be loose, made a clattering on the stones, very terrific to the assembled radical army, and so as greatly to resemble at a distance the noise of a troop of horse.

"As for the alarming and warlike sounds, I saw at once how they were to be accounted for; this donkey-man happened to be accompanied from the fair by an honest fiddler, who, in order to beguile the tedious journey, was innocently treating his neighbour and the ass to a spring on his instrument; and which, in the distance, by the dexterity of the musician, must greatly have resembled the warlike sound of a trumpet!

"To your tents, O Israel!' cried the radicals in the field at this appalling sound-and every man fled."

We look upon Mr Picken as an author of rising reputation, and will be glad to meet with him again ere long.

Cloudesley: a Tale. By the author of "Caleb Williams."
In three volumes. London. Henry Colburn and
Richard Bentley. 1830.

The Panorama of the Thames, from London to Richmond, exhibiting every object on both banks of the river, with a concise description of the most remarkable places, and a general view of London. London. Samuel Leigh. 1830.

The

THIS is a beautiful and interesting work of art. panoramic view, which is neatly folded up in an elegant cover, extends to we do not know how many yards in length, and is about a foot broad. The scenery on both sides is represented as it would appear to the spectator passing up the centre of the river. Every object is distinctly seen, and the minuteness of detail is most complete. The view of London, which accompanies the Panorama, was sketched from an elevated situation in the Adelphi, and has been ably etched and aqua-tiuted. It commands, we believe, a larger portion of the metropolis, and more interesting objects, than can be seen from any other spot. The distance from London to Richmond is fifteen miles, and the stranger who takes the excursion need only to have this view of the banks of the Thames along with him in order to be made as familiar with every object, as if he had passed up and down every day of his life. We have seen no work of the kind more carefully executed, or more satisfactory.

The Devil's Walk. By Professor Porson. With Illus trations. By R. Cruikshank. London. Marsh and Miller. 1830. 24mo. Pp. 33.

THIS is a clever and well-known jeu d'esprit, cleverly illustrated by a few smart caricatures. The full-length

"And backwards and forwards he switches his tail, As a gentleman switches his cane," is excellent.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

THE ABBEY GARDEN;
OR,

In reading this work, we feel as if we were listening portrait of the devil suggested by the lines,— to a voice from another age. Since the time when "Caleb Williams" and "St Leon" riveted us with their harrowing eloquence, what a variety of schools of novel-writers have, for their day, engrossed the attention of the public! And now, when his peculiar style has been almost forgotten, the green octogenarian again addresses us unchanged in principle or sentiment, where all has changed around him. The author of Caleb Williams has no eye for the beauties of external nature. He has no perception of those traits which stamp individual character. The beings who figure in his pages are compounded out of the abstract elements of thought and feeling, not borrowed from the real world. Yet there is an intensity in Godwin's language, and a profundity in his passion, that invests them with an interest beyond that which attaches to the creations of any other novelist. The charm of his style consists, not in imagination, for he has none, nor in close reasoning, nor clear insight into character, but in a certain fervour which carries us along with him, and bears down all before it. "Cloudesley" is a tale worthy

of Godwin.

THE CONFESSION OF EDWARD WALDEN.
These deaths are such acquainted things with me,
That yet my heart dissolves not.
FLETCHER-The Maid's Tragedy.

I HAVE a dark tale to tell-the history of my own unfortunate and perverted mind; which I would trace onwards from its commencing changes to that terrible scene which closed the drama of life for me, and filled, to overflowing, the envenomed cup of my sufferings and my sin.

And it must be told now, if it is ever to be unfolded; for the aberrations by which my intellect is daily more and more fearfully shaken, warn me to expect that dismal blindness of the spirit, compared with which the death of the body is enviable.

PINNOCK'S CATECHISMS.-The Geography of the British Empire. England, Scotland, and Ireland. In three Parts. London. Whittaker, Treacher, and Co. 1830. From my earliest boyhood, I was deeply and silently THE above little works are a continuation of that use- thoughtful-enthusiastic, imaginative, reflective; I showful and praiseworthy series of publications, which goed no outward sign of my internal restlessness; the subunder the general title of " Pinnock's Catechisms." The dued and calm tone of my manners deceived even those who style in which the present volumes are got up, is a de- might have known me better; and I was early considered cided improvement on their predecessors. As we are in- as possessed of a cold heart and a sluggish fancy-as a clined to think that these "Geographies" will be found solitary book-worm, a being who held no fellow-feeling extremely useful in schools and elsewhere, we shall take with ordinary life, and nourished no aspirations after its the trouble to copy the heads of the different chapters enjoyments. They guessed not that my perceptions, actfrom one of them, which will give a tolerable idea of the ing with difficulty on an inanimate frame and inexpreswhole. "Situation-Extent and Boundaries-Divisive features, were yet vivid, even to painfulness, while sions-Surface of the Country-Mountains-Rivers-present, and stored up in a faithful memory as the subLakes Minerals--Shores-Climate and Vegetable Productions--Cities and Towns-Manufactures and Trade -Institutions and Public Works-Islands." Each Part contains a small but neat and correct map, an engraved vignette, and numerous woodcuts of the most remarkable places of each country.

jects of long and intense reflection. And it was in reflection chiefly that, from early youth, I enjoyed life. Slow my ideas of present objects were not; but they were the images of shadows, compared with the pictures which my imagination afterwards formed from them. I have mixed among happy groups, and been asked, with won

der, why I showed so little interest in the general gladness; while they knew not that I retired from it only to call it up before my fancy with added splendour, and to live succeeding hours and days in musings tinged with the spirit of those few hours of rejoicing; they knew not that such moments were fresh in my soul with tenfold radiance, after they had vanished from more thoughtless spirits, without leaving a vestige or an effect.

the same roof,-made sole companions in the retirement of a country mansion-house,and turned loose on each other, with no bar but the observation of a kind, weak uncle, and the censure of a simple book-exhausted tutor, between my hatred and his scorn. The consequences were natural. My cousin was capricious and tyrannical; and I, his junior in age, and his inferior in bodily strength, was the victim of his humours in those hours when we were left to ourselves; while in the family, his frank and showy address gave him an easy advantage over my melancholy and reserve. Those sentiments of mine, which had till now been, at worst, but transient fits of aversion, matured into a stern and settled hatred. And his feelings towards me changed too: he continued to take a malicious pleasure in insolently tormenting that sensitive spirit whose motions his dull heart at once understood not and despised; but he quickly perceived my loathing for him, and began to add a deeper feeling to his contempt; till, by degrees, he entertained an enmity as cordial, though not so bitter, as mine. It could not last; I was rapidly

But, as with the good of my life, so was it with the evil. My moments of happiness were indescribably heightened by my turn of mind; but my hours of misery were so likewise. The young are incapable of struggling with the unhappiness of life, and wisely is it ordered that they should feel it but little; and when in manhood, the conviction of human sorrow springs up along with reflection in the mind, the soul has acquired strength for resistance, and, in the ardour of the mighty conflict, half forgets the misery against which it strives. To me was given the knowledge of manhood with the weakness and incapacity of the boy. I need not say that the gift was fatal. Mental disquietudes, or outward sufferings and in-forgetting every aim and every distress in the one overjuries, which, to others of my age, would have appeared the merest trifles, or been forgotten as quickly as they arose, formed to my mind subjects of meditation, I will not say how long; and of necessity continued, while thus ruminated upon, to increase in apparent magnitude and aggravation.

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powering passion of hate,the one diabolical pursuit of revenge; he was the poison-tree of my life, which blasted my every hope and affection ;-would it have been wonderful if I had tried to tear the fatal plant up by the very roots? I beheld the precipice over which I hung, and, with moody resolution, I forced myself from its brink. In my sixteenth year, I abandoned my home, and cast myself into the vast arena of the world, helpless, friendless-almost hopeless.

And my intercourse with my youthful companions was exposed to one cause of mischief, which gave the finishing stroke to the tottering fabric of my peace. The body was in league with the spirit-an enfeebled body with a dis- And yet, for the first time, I was not altogether untempered mind. And it is superfluous to tell with what happy. A weight was taken from my breast; I was painful frequency I felt my bodily inferiority in the bois- thrown among new associates who saw not all my weakterous sports and constant contentions of boyhood. Un-nesses, and therefore more readily pardoned those which popular from my retired habits, despised for my miserable were visible; and even Colville I for a time forgot, exand puny frame, and insulted and triumphed over on ac- cept to hope that his blighting influence might never count of both, I was too proud to stoop beneath oppression. more shed desolation on my path. And fortune gradually I resisted it to the last, with a bitter consciousness that favoured me in a worldly view; a line of life was opened resistance was wholly in vain. The effect produced on to me to which I could never have dreamed of aspiring. me by years so marked was melancholy indeed. They My life for some years was indeed wild, eccentric, and did not break my spirit; they could not!-but they adventurous, but I rose in rank and estimation; and, at clouded it with a sad mixture of stubbornness and dejec- length, proudly felt myself not useless nor alone. My tion. I would not be misunderstood; I was no misan- body improved along with my mind; and when, seven thrope. I early saw the difference between the characters years after my flight, I returned to my country, with of others and my own; and that those injuries and slights nerves strung by war and travel, and a countenance emwhich appeared to me so heavy, were received by them browned by the winterless heats of the East, few could with the same indifference with which they inflicted them. have traced in the robust man of three-and-twenty, the From the heart I pardoned their thoughtlessness, while weakly shrinking boy who had been so shunned and so I felt that it rendered me most unhappy; and, had the despised. I had now acquired a character of decision and evil stopped here, the progress of advancing years might hardihood, while my habits of rumination and loneliness have worn away those dark traces from my heart. had been mellowed down into a calm and gentle thoughtthis was not to be. fulness, which I found was considered both excusable and I have said I was no misanthrope; it is the truth. pleasing. On this part of my story I must be brief. Į felt dislike to no human being; to none-save one; and met and loved one, of whom I will not speak. Alas! I him I found that I could not but hate. He had crossed, dare not! and I had reason to hope for her favour, when he had baffled me, he had insulted me from the earliest a rival appeared and was quickly successful. It was Colperiod, when I was sensible to love or hatred ;-and heville and to this day I believe that he presented himhad his reward. Heaven is my witness, that, even yet, self solely with the malignant design of thwarting and I strove long and anxiously not to hate him. I brooded, triumphing over me. There succeeded a period fearful it is true, over my injuries, for it was not in my nature to my recollection,—a chaos of fierce regrets and gloomy not to do so; but while my blood boiled to think on them, apathy. I was again thrown back from that placidity it was my ardent wish to persuade myself that he him- which I had through so much labour attained, into a self never viewed them under the aspect which they pre- state of mind black and joyless as that from which I had sented to me; that they partook of the levity which per- formerly extricated myself. After a few more years of vaded his whole character; and were nothing more than wandering, aimless and uncheered, my mind again bethe wantonness of youthful excitation, eager to exercise came more quiet; and, home-sick, I turned my steps power, and unscrupulous as to the objects on which it once more to the cold island regions of the north, now infell. And I could assuredly have so warded off the deed a melancholy man, but still with much of the good gloomy emotions which infested me, if I had been exposed of my character unextinguished, and, as I too fondly to my enemy only at intervals; if I had enjoyed but mo- hoped, even purified and strengthened. I knew not how ments of repose from his persecutions, to which I could irretrievably my moral system had been shattered, till the have looked forward for comfort, and which might have injury was shown by that fatal event, which formed the been employed in endeavours to subdue my heart. But catastrophe of my struggle against guilt and destiny, and this I had not long. Colville was my cousin; and we to the recital of which I now summon up all my remainwere still boys when we were placed, both orphans, undering vigour of resolution.

I

:

On reaching the quarter of the country where lay the place of my nativity, I pressed on with eager longing to visit the habitation of my youth. I knew that my cousin had succeeded to the inheritance which might have been mine; but I had been informed, that he had, with his wife, now delicate and consumptive, left the island for some time in search of the more genial influence of continental climates. I understood that my youthful home, the Abbey, dear to me in despite of all the sufferings which it had witnessed, was solitary and deserted :ruinous and decaying it had ever been, and fading like the setting star of the fortunes of our race; and with sorrowful pleasure I anticipated the prospect of spending a few hours among its silvan retirements.

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every nerve in my body to hear. I could not mistake it-it was my cousin's; and it was replied to by another, whose sweet low accents I knew likewise only too well. In the few sentences which passed between Colville and his wife, I learned enough to sting me into irrepressible indignation. She complained of neglect, of desertion, of cruel treatment; she spoke patiently of her own life as waning to its close; and she begged, with mild solemnity, that her few remaining hours might be spent in peace. And it was with boiling blood that I heard him answer her with a bitter sarcasm, which proved that his naturally unfeeling temper had been hardened by time into inhuman insensibility; and when, in the course of tossing over the articles in the room, I could see him throw a couple of swords on a table, I could hardly refrain from bursting forth and calling him to a deadly account for his wrongs to me and to her.

It was a glorious summer's evening when I reached it, and as I passed westward up the straight avenue, the broad plane-trees threw down rich masses of shadow, now veiling, and now contrasting with the bright hues He came out ; and my breathing ceased while I gazed of the green carpet beneath them, and of the low, mosson him. Even I was shocked at the change I beheldgrown broken walls with which they were on each side dissipation, debauchery, sensual and brutal, had done its shut in. My heart beat as I approached the mean hoary work; for him I was incapable of pity; but had my own range of buildings which excluded the view of the man- wrongs been all, I could now have sternly despised him. sion-house, where the avenue separated into two walks, His unhappy wife followed him, and urged some request passing on each side of the tree-skirted lawn, and meet--I know not what it was-I heard not a word, for my ing at the ends of the house. I passed round the corner of the buildings, and scarcely knew for some moments whether the picture before my mind was produced by ac tual vision, or was held up to Imagination by Love and Memory, the eldest and most powerful of her slaves! The two flanking arcades of majestic patriarchal trees retired and darkened before me, enclosing in their grasp, like some sequestered forest-glade, the large half natu ral green whose soft and hillock-broken turf was illuminated by the countless tints of the departing day. And wandering on along that gorgeous surface, the eye rested on a dark shadow falling forward on its further extremity. I blessed that shadow even with tears as it met my view; for it was the shadow of my father's house,-of those old walls which in foreign solitudes I had seen with closed and brimful eyes,-those beloved walls whose memory shall be the last to leave the fading tablet of my soul! I looked up, and the house was there, unchanged as if I had but left it yesterday, closing the prospect to the west before me, with its three antique gables side by side facing the lawn, and standing up sombre and distinct in the red and spirit-like streaming of the sky. There was much too that I did not behold, and which rose swiftly into my fancy as I musingly advanced up the centre of the lawn. Behind the house, and stretching to the right, lay those spots which had been my favourite haunts when thoughtfulness or hardship drove me into solitude;-the scattered and devious wood with its beautiful mounds and rocks clothed with the rustling fern and the bushy tangles of the blaeberry ;-and the deserted and romantic quarries, where I had so often roamed to pluck the graceful fox-glove from their granite cliffs, or to plunge into the black tarns which lay numerous among the profound reTo the left of the mansion was the garden, and towards it I turned.

cesses.

I entered, and had one wing of the house close on the right; and before me the cumbrous but delightful features of the place, those antique arrangements which find perfection in ruin and decay; the grassy walks, the mossy seats, the artificial arbours, and the old clumps of verdant box and holly; while the surrounding walls were richly mantled with the gloomy foliage of the ivy, or the more cheerful flowers and tendrils of the jessamine and woodbine.

I was standing behind some tall leafy shrubs, when I suddenly heard voices from the building, and looking from between the branches, I saw, through the two open windows of our old parlour, evident signs of inhabitants, or of preparations for their reception. I had scarcely time for consideration, when footsteps in the house struck my ear, and immediately afterwards a voice, which it shook

head swam with agony, and I could hardly bear to look
upon that face and figure, and think on the history of
approaching dissolution which they so surely told. Feebly
she followed him, and as she stopped to lean for support
on the sun-dial before the door, I could hear the hollow
panting of her breast, and see the tears falling silently
down her thin and death-like cheeks. She raised herself
with effort, and approached her husband who stood
within arm's-length of my covert. She clung to him;
for she tottered, and must have fallen without support;
and the wretch shook her from her hold! He did more
he struck her! By my remorse, he did!-savagely
and violently struck her, and the unfortunate fell on the
ground beside him, senseless as a three-days' corpse. He
bent down alarmed over her, and in the same instant I
had sprung out and was gazing on her too. One look
only was necessary; the glimmering taper of her life
even a gentler hand might have extinguished.
She was
dead; he had murdered her, as he had ruined me. We
raised our heads at the same moment, our eyes met, and
he started as he recognised me. He cowered before my
look, with a mixture of compunction and sudden fear,
and I triumphed at the sight even in that crisis of un-
utterable horror; it was the first time, and I felt that I
had vindicated my place. For one moment I did not
hate him. His confusion was short, and he was the first
to speak, in the voice and words which I had, years be-
fore, gnashed my teeth to hear, careless, contemptuous,
and taunting :-" To what circumstance, Mr Walden,
do I owe your presence?"-" To that Providence," I re-
plied, "which avenges guilt;" and I said the words as
firmly as he spoke himself. I had not hated him for
twenty years, to give vent to my passion now by cursing
like a drunken boy. "I come to demand vengeance for
acts long since past; and for that." I pointed to the body
at his feet, for I could not name her death nor her. He
was unmoved by the taunt, and addressed me again,—
"Ever the same, my most cool and inveterate of haters;
you are true to yourself, my amiable cousin, and to your
early fame. Another man now would have been at the
sword's point with me by this time; but you," (he bent
forward and spoke into my ear,) " you stand quietly by,
and talk of outrage and revenge; as if it pleased your
malice to view your vengeance and your enemy before
you grappled with them." My veins swelled with a
fever like madness, for my conscience told me that my
enemy spoke the truth. I looked in his face, and met
there the identical sneer with which, nineteen years
before, he had brutally spat on me, and insultingly
grasped my hands, and mocked my impotent endeavours
to revenge the affront.

The evil feelings of my youth

burst back upon me in one appalling sweep, and my better angel was not near to save. I looked round, and saw the swords lying in the open room. I dashed in, snatched them up, and, throwing one of them to Colville, motioned him to defend himself. He retreated a step or two, and called anxiously to me, "Hold, Walden! what means this? Madman that you are, stand back!""Coward!" I shouted; and I could not have uttered another syllable though it had been to purchase the salvation of my soul. His eyes flashed fire, and we closed together in the resolute conflict of deadly and unquenchable hate. A few passes were enough to show that he was the better swordsman; and the conviction braced my nerves to something like desperation. One furious thrust had almost reached him, and in parrying it his sword broke across. Frantic with rage, I heeded not his quick and terrified cry for forbearance. In the next moment he lay, mortally wounded, at my feet; and, leaning on my bloody weapon, I watched with a steady eye the convulsive workings of his face, and smiled as I marked the last agonizing shudder which contracted his body as the spirit left it. What passed during the remainder of that terrible night, I remember but indistinctly; the recollection comes only in my most horrible moments, and I dare not invite them.

With that night my concern with life terminated. My existence since has been a breathing agony. To some men my act might be as nothing; to me the memory of it has been an iron hand that crushes my very heart. There is blood upon my head,-blood which deserved to be spilt, but, oh! not by my hand! It cries up against me from the earth, and I hear it always. I have no rest; for there has not passed a single night since that dreadful one, in which I have not, in my perturbed sleep, acted over again that unnatural scene. The two who died that evening in my presence have a heavier slumber --would that it were mine! my punishment is greater than I can bear.

The Abbey has been converted, fitly, into a mad-house; and it may be that my life will end there, where it began. AN ARTIST.

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And if high thoughts and feelings deep dwell not within your soul,

The seraph lip, the sunbeam pen, the eye that seeth all, The fairy charms of vision's realms, your meed ye may not call.

One autumn night, the stars, the moon, the far-extending sky, Brought o'er my brain and mind a trance of blissful ecstasy; And dreams like shadowy noonday clouds that flit before Came, spell-like, o'er my wandering thoughts—my vision had begun!

the sun,

And now methought that I did dwell in the halls of the virgin moon,

And traversed o'er its emerald paths unfettered and alone. The light which there was shed around was the dazzling light of star,

But it was not the cold, cold gleam they give to the earth from the heavens afar.

Each one had the mild and gentle flush of the sun when he sinks to rest,

Of the golden sun when he cools his brow on the ocean's soothing breast.

And methought a thousand lands were held within her green embrace,

Bright beauteous lands of fruit and flower extending o'er

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When the golden moon, so loved by all, walks forth in All dwelt and slept in heaven's bright gaze, in heaven's joy and mirth,

And pours o'er hill, and dale, and rock, and heath, and gloomy moor,

And garden gay, and woods of green, and hall, and lady's bower,

And peasant's hut, the flood of love and light which is her dower.

Oh, ye of the poet's glancing eye! oh, ye of the poet's fire!

Go out to the woods on an autumn night with your passion-breathing lyre,

eternal day.

What sought they more than couch of moss, or beds of flowerets bright,

For o'er their sky was never cast the mourning garb of night;

They needed not the taper's gleam, for the glow of stars came down,

Ever and ever to light their path, like the proudest sun of June;

For theirs was one unvarying clime of brightness and of heat,

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Or the shadowy cloud which veils the sun, on an evening calm of May,

When all the fainting earth is fill'd with its dim and melting ray.

I look'd where oft on the summer morn I had gazed on the gold green sea,

And watch'd bright wave chase after wave in wild and playful glee;

Where oft like stars I had beheld the ships glide calmly on, Mocking the surge that lash'd their sides, with song, and sigh, and moan;

But the sea was gone as an infant's tear, and its voice was hush'd and still,

And each strong river now was dry, and each melodious

rill.

I look'd unto the mountains, whose proud heights I oft had trode,

And gazing down on the valleys far, had wept unto my God;

But the mountains with their golden heath that kiss'd the sunny clouds,

And breathed soft scent to the sunbeams, were all hid in pierceless shrouds.

I look'd to the woods, where at evening fall, I had often walk'd alone,

And listen'd to all the birds might say, and watch'd the sun go down ;

But the woods were like a little stain on the snow-drop's virgin bell,

And the bright, bright birds had fled away from the trees they loved so well.

And I look'd for the village calm in which my boyhood's days were past,

Those days whose pleasures, hopes, and fears, have flitted by so fast;

But the village with its church and bells was no where to be seen,

And its stately abbey, too, was gone, as if it ne'er had been.

My dream doth hold a moral, but my words are weak and vain,

Oh, that I could but lift my voice in a purer, loftier strain! It tells of the glories of the sky, of the bliss and gladness there,

Of the love they feel in passion's calm, of the hopes undimm'd by fear;

Of the lofty thoughts and feelings warm, and innocence divine,

Which like the lights of a gemmy cave in each fair bosom shine;

It tells that our earth is a blacken'd ball, suspended in the air,

That we and all we boast are dark corruption everywhere; That our beauty is as nothing, and our genius but a thought;

That our land with all its towers and spires, and valleys rich and gay,

And cities proud, are but as dew, in the sun's all-searching ray,

Which brightly shines for a little space, and then dies all away!

And it tells us that beyond the hills, and beyond their heathy shrouds,

And beyond the line of the mountain-sea, and beyond the mantling clouds,

And beyond the stars,—in majesty, and glory, dwells our God,

Who holds the earth in his monarch hand, and sways it by his nod.

FINE ARTS.

FOURTH EXHIBITION OF ANCIENT PAINTINGS AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.

(Concluding Notice.)

OTHER matters have somewhat interfered with the regularity of our notices of the Ancient Exhibition; but we return to the subject once more, though at a period when its first gloss of novelty is over.

The

There was

Having in former articles wound up the story of the mighty masters of Italy, we now turn to a less dazzling clime. We have already intimated our belief that the Dutch school of painting was merely an integral portion of the German, the earliest and finest specimens of which were produced by the artists resident at Cologne. At the time painting principally flourished in the Netherlands, religious enthusiasm, if it was encouraged at all, had taken a direction totally different from the imaginative, and occasionally fantastic, bent of Italy. struggles of the infant commonwealth had stamped upon men's minds a sedate practical character. neither in their tempers, nor in the forms of nature and art which surrounded them, any such source of high poetical feeling as gave birth to the works of Rafaelle. The subjects which the artist loved to represent were those which were most germane to his fancy-the rich tints of fruits and flowers-the tranquil landscape-the sturdy expression of character in domestic life. painting of a Madonna, or of some mythological subject, by an Italian artist, a single happy touch gives interest, by recalling the whole story to our remembrance ;-a Dutch interior, on the other hand, can interest us only by the mastery of art displayed in its representation, but can derive no additional charm from any feelings awakened by its commonplace subject. Perhaps the triumph of mere art is, on this very account, more decided in the works of the Dutch school.

In a

To convince ourselves how much has been accomplished in this way, we need only consult the walls of the Exhibition, through which we now walk, prattling with the reader. Take Nos. 2, "Temptation of St Anthony;" 12, "Visit to the Nurse;" 21, "An old man and wcman;" 31,"An Interior, by De Hooge ;" 41, "A Seapiece, by Backhuysen;" 55, "Three Men Drinking;" 64, "A Winter Scene, by Berghen;" 70, "A Land. scape," attributed to Hobbema, (more probably by Dekker;) 77, " A Landscape, with portraits of Teniers, his Wife, and Child;" 88, " A Landscape," (attributed to Hobbema ;) 103, "Interior of a Stable, by Wouvermans ;" 127, "A Stag-hunt, by the Same ;" and last, and best, 25, " A Cattle Piece, by Cuyp"-the gem of the Exhibition. In not one of these is there any thing poetical, or (with the exception, perhaps, of the Stag-hunt) even exciting; yet, what a charm in the beauty and harmony And there of their colours! It is like music to the eye. Teniers's is a soul in them, vital, though not elevated. Temptation of the Holy Anthony is a nightmare seen

And that all our wealth, and power, and strength, and by daylight. boastings, are as nought;

There is, however, a school of Dutch artists, in which

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