Nothing was remembered which occurred | escaped him-but not a kind one either. The between the periods of the infliction of the bright armor of the French monarch could wound which caused the pressure and the re-not have received with more polished coldness moval of the piece of bone which produced it, and rigidity the blandishments of his youthful because nothing during that long time had captor. made any impression on the sensorium. The new governor-general, while apparentThere was a distinct separation of animally bent alone upon soothing his veteran chief, from moral existence. contrived adroitly to pay his court to the Mr. Herbert Mayo has published a case of directors. The skilful and tortuous climax double consciousness with temporary loss of with which he rose from a panegyric on the memory. It is rather complicated in a meta- Indian army, to dilate upon his own ultraphysical point of view, but proves satisfactorily transcendental pacific disposition, was an unthe power of impression. There was no loss speakable relief to the assembled chairs. The of memory where the former had had its due Board was heard to draw a long sigh of unutterinfluence. Some physical impediment in the able relief. Each chair muttered to itself, in uncirculation operated to prevent its manifesta- premeditated concert with its fellows-"Pubtion at will; but it was there, and as soon as lic opinion is right; Sir Henry will be a safe the obstruction was removed memory again governor of India." triumphed.

I believe, therefore, that we are not far from wrong in accusing our friend of that want of perception and of impression which so much limited the number of his facts that he retained but very few; and his complaint against his memory was unjust and ill-founded, inasmuch as the food with which it is nourished must be duly digested and assimilated before it form an integrant part of that intellectual state which seldom complains of want of memory.

BANQUET TO THE NEW GOVERNOR-
GENERAL OF INDIA,

"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

From the Spectator.

THE Duke of Wellington's position at the East India Directors' dinner to Sir Henry Hardinge, on Wednesday, recalls the image of the captive French King in the tent of the Black Prince. The duke was the hero of the evening; Sir Henry, the nominal hero, laid all the honor of the banquet at the duke's feet; the chairman was lavish in his eulogiums of the duke; the great end and aim of the speechification was to soothe the duke. And yet, amid all this homage, the impertinent idea would recur, that the duke was sitting at the hospitable board of the Board that had checkmated him.

Oh the faithlessness of chairs as well as of sitters upon chairs! Three little years have not passed since Lord Ellenborough was feasted with as much empressement as now Sir Henry Hardinge; yet on Wednesday his name was not once named, even by the Duke of Wellington; and, what was worse, words rife with implied charges against him superabounded. Sir Henry Hardinge's vehement protestations of pacific policy, his reiterated professions of deference to the Directors, and Sir Robert Peel's magnanimous declarations against any change in the constitution of our Indian government, all indicated where the shoe pinched under the late Governor-General. No one knew what Lord Ellenborough might take into his head next; and Lord Ellenborough, not contented with setting the fee-farm of his masters the directors constantly on the hazard, was barely civil to them when they remonstrated.

So, as far as ministers and directors can do it, Lord Ellenborough is quietly shelved. Whether he will sit quietly down under this pear to be entertained on that head. Nay, on his return, remains to be seen. Doubts apfrom the unwonted despatch with which his successor proceeds to the scene of action; it might almost seem to be expected that Lord Bombastes Furioso, might "kick up a row” Ellenborough, unlike the "good army" of before he allowed himself to be disbanded.

APPLICATION.-Every man of eminence, who writes his own biography, explicitly avows that he The duke, in return, was grimly civil. In is unconscious of any other reason for having at his speech-returning thanks for the toast of tained proficiency in his pursuits than intense aphimself and the army-there was, to be sure, dowments to be given, an ardent desire to excel plication. Supposing a fair share of natural ennot one word about indiscretion; but, rigidly will certainly overcome many difficulties. In the scrutinized, not one word of decided compliment to his entertainers will be found in it. autobiography of the late Mr. Abraham Raimbach, an eminent engraver in London, just published, No; though he sat at their table-though all we find an additional corroboration of this view. the delicacies of the season, and all the flat-All true excellence in art is, in my humble teries of half-a-dozen seasons, were showered upon him-not one word of his House-of-Lords philippic was even by implication unsaid by him. Not an expression positively unkind

opinion, to be chiefly attributed to an early conviction of the inadequacy of all means of improvement in comparison with that of self-acquired knowledge."

THE PROGRESS OF ART.

From the Westminster Review.

1. The Hand-Book of Taste, or how to observe Works of Art, especially Cartoons, Pictures, and Statues. By Fabius Pictor. Longman.

2.

The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England. By A. Welby Pugin. C. Dolman, 61 New Bond street.

DAVID HUME'S CORRESPONDENCE. The late Baron Hume, the nephew of the philosopher, was generally known to be in possession of a pretty large collection of letters, forming the correspondence between his uncle and a circle of distinguished contemporaries. Many applications were made for access to this collection; but it was the opinion of the Baron, at least until a comparatively late period, that the time had not yet come when a use of these MSS., sufficiently ample and free to be of service to literature, could expediently be made. On his death in 1833, as we then announced, he left the collection at the disposal THERE are few subjects which are just of the Council of the Royal Society of Edin- now exciting more attention in England burgh; and it has now been for some time than the present state of the Fine Arts, and preserved in the archives of that body, access- few on which more has been said and writible only through the special permission of the ten; but still it does not appear that any Council. After some deliberation regarding satisfactory conclusion has been arrived at the proper use to which this peculiar bequest should be applied, the Council resolved that on the subject, or that either the public or the collection should be placed at the disposal the artists themselves understand better of any editor on whom they might have reli what is wanted, or what would be the best ance, who should either publish such parts of means of improving their condition or enthe correspondence as have reference to lit- abling Englishmen to do something more erature, politics, and the personal life of Hume, creditable to the nation than has hitherto or employ them as illustrative of a memoir of been produced. In the meanwhile the dethe philosopher. We understand that with this view the MSS. have been put at the dis- mand for art is as universal as the interest posal of Mr. J. H. Burton, advocate, who is at it excites, and whether it be for the statue present employing them, together with original or painting with which the rich man ornamaterials collected in other quarters, in the ments his dwelling, or for the 'Penny Magpreparation of a Life of Hume, with sketches azine' or 'Illustrated News,' which find of his contemporaries. The MSS. in the pos- their way into the poorest cottage, every session of the Royal Society contain, besides class are enjoying the luxury; and it is of an ample correspondence with those eminent fellow-countrymen with whom it is well known an importance not easily overrated that a that Hume enjoyed unreserved intimacy, let-right direction should be given to this newters from D'Alembert, Carnot, Reynal, Mon- born taste in the nation, working for good tesquieu, and the other leaders of contempo- or evil to an extent which defies the calcurary foreign literature. These, with the let-lation of the boldest intellect. ters of Mad. de Boufflers, Mad. Geoffrin, It is not however, we fear, in this point Mlle. de l'Espinasse, and other female orna- of view that the government at present rements of the literary circles of Paris, will serve

to throw light on a curious, but little known episode in Hume's life-his enthusiastic reception by the wits and the fine women of the reign of Louis XV. We understand, too, that these papers throw considerable light on the strange quarrel between Hume and Rousseau. -Athenæum.

PARISH PRIZES.-Some readers will scarcely believe us when we mention that a practice has been begun in certain districts in England of giv. ing annual "rewards to laborers for bringing up their families independently of parochial relief." He who seeks little or nothing from the parish gets a prize. The reward, however, is proportioned to the number of children he has had the merit of providing for by his own exertions. At a distribution of this kind at Aylesbury, on the 14th of September, we find that one of these miracles of independence got £4 for having had nine children born to him in lawful wedlock, seven of whom he has brought up without parochial relief Another got thirty shillings for having reared four children without any assistance from the parish. AUGUST, 1844.

32

gard the question, and the parliamentary committees that have been appointed, and the royal commissions that have been issued, seemed to have conceived that it was only the wounded vanity of the nation at seeing herself surpassed in art by Bavaria and other continental states, that made her now demand rescue from the disgrace; and the consequence is, that having ascertained that art was at a singularly low ebb in this country (which all the world knew before they were appointed), they have determined to follow in the steps of the Germans, and try and rival what they conceive to be the splendid school of art that has recently arisen there. The experiment is now being proceeded with, and though it would be presumption to prophesy that it cannot be successful, we have very strong doubts of its realizing the expectations of its sanguine promoters.

At the recent exhibition of cartoons that [tised by Englishmen, could scarcely be said took place in Westminster Hall in conse- to exist in England; and it is now little quence of this resolution, the nation were more than eighty years since the first public astonished and delighted to find that Eng- exhibition of paintings took place. At that lish artists could produce as good designs period the attention of the public (if the as either the French or Germans, and all small body of men who then interested have been willing to hail with joy the new themselves in art may be so called) was era thus opened to art. They have not paused more strongly directed to the subject than to consider that what could so easily be at any subsequent period till the present, done by some dozens of artists who never and with strong grounds for hope; for that before thought on the subject, or never at-age produced Reynolds, West, Gainsbotempted that style of art, must indeed be a rough and Wilson, and Hogarth, and Flaxvery small and very easy exercise of intel- man,-men who raised British art from lect. They, indeed, who agree with the nothing to a palmy state it has not again committee, that, after rewarding the origi- reached, much less surpassed. The pronal eleven, there were still ten more so duce of all the excitement of that time was nearly equal to them that it would be un- the establishment of the Royal Academy; just if they too were not rewarded, may re- and the public satisfied that in this creation joice in the nation possessing such a band they had done all that was required to insure of Raphaels, and thank the commissioners the prosperity of the arts, forgot the subfor having been instrumental in bringing to ject, and relapsed into their former indifferlight such a mass of hidden talent, which ence; while the academy, feeling secure in God knows, no man in England ever before its monopoly, and its members discouraged dreamt of our possessing, and which certain- by their inability to rival the great Italian ly never showed itself in the annual exhibi- masters, or even the contemporary continentions, or in any paintings these artists had tal schools, sunk into a corporation of porhitherto produced. For ourselves the experi- trait painters, and left British art to seek ment goes far to prove that it is as easy for an its inspiration where it could; and as long educated artist to produce cleverly group- as their own pencils were fully employed, ed pictures of this sort as it would be for the academicians seem never to have sought any educated man to produce as good to direct or guide the taste or patronage of verses as ever Pope or Dryden wrote, provided it be understood that knowledge of the subject, and sense, and wit, are not required to form a necessary ingredient in the composition. He knows little of the long thought, and toil, and pain, with which great works are produced by even the greatest geniuses, who fancies that the stuff of immortality may be found in what is done so easily and by so many.

the nation to a better and higher style of art than what each individual found most profitable. Both artists and patrons seem to have tacitly acknowledged the impossibility of rivalling their great prototypes, and have even been content to allow that in all that concerned art the French were our superiors, and that we could never hope (for some good reason or other unexplained) to possess a gallery like the Louvre or to create one like that of the Luxembourg or Versailles. The French with all their loud boastings of pre-eminence have not been able to excite in us a spirit of rivalry, nor their sneers at the "Nation boutiquiére" to rouse us to an energetic attempt to prove that the epithet was unmerited. But when Bavaria, a kingdom which stood lower than ourselves in the scale of artistic eminence, roused itself from its lethargy, and in a few short years, under the patronage of an enlightened prince, and without any greater advantages of climate (to which we are so fond of ascribing our deficiencies), produced a school of art which, whether it be really great or not, has at least led to most brilliant results and given employment to hunA century ago, painting, as an art prac-dreds of artists in every corner of Germany,

What appears to us, in the present state of matters, to be more wanted than cartoons, is a correcter knowledge of what true art really is what are its purposes and objects -and by what means these are to be reached. Till a clearer knowledge is obtained on these points than at present seems to exist, we fear that nothing that is really great or good will be done, and it is to this object that we propose to dedicate the following pages; and though we cannot hope within the narrow limits of an article to examine any one of these objects as we should wish, we still hope to be able to place some parts of the subject in a clear light, and to turn attention to others that are often overlooked entirely.

England could no longer remain apathetic, | that the evil may be remedied, and satisfy but began to shake off her lethargy and to the other that it is no use troubling himdream of the possibility of doing so like- self about the matter. wise.

This at least has been the proximate cause; but, if we are not much mistaken, there is a deeper and more home-felt feeling, which, though not so apparent, is the real cause of the present working in men's minds on this subject. If this feeling does exist, we may hope for something great and good, which will scarcely result from rivalling the Germans, or copying the Italians or the Greeks.

The first expression of this new-born feeling was one of wrath against the poor old academy, on whom many were inclined to lay the whole blame of the depressed state of art in this country, and to demand that it should rescue us from the opprobrium; since then, however, the feeling has become stronger and more general, and it being admitted that the academy is incapable of doing any thing, the subject has been taken up by the nation at large, and something will be done, and, if we are not mistaken, done successfully-for, looking at what we have accomplished in literature, and the success that has ultimately attended every undertaking to which the energies of the nation have been fairly directed, there is strong ground for hope; but it is almost equally certain, that, before the right path is hit upon, many errors will be committed, and much money and talent be wasted; for, like a man suddenly startled in the dark from a sound sleep, we are yet rubbing our eyes, and trying to collect our scattered but the chances are we take a wrong direction, and break our shins more than once before we find a light, or are thoroughly awake

senses;

Yet it can scarcely be the former, for no class of artists of any kind were ever more employed or more liberally rewarded and made such fortunes, as our architects, and yet architecture is at a lower ebb in this country than either painting or sculpture; and it is a question that has often been mooted, whether more money is not annually spent in this country on pictures than in the highest days of Italian art? Certainly more paintings are now produced and purchased than at any preceding period, and it is scarcely assumed that any great painter is among us creating great works of art which the public cannot understand, and which will only be appreciated when too late to benefit the artist; such things have happened in this country, but could scarcely occur now when the demand for art is so great and universal.

Of course no artist thinks his merits suf

ficiently acknowledged or rewarded; but there is a wide difference of opinion on this subject between them and the public, and one, we fear, that will not be easily reconciled.

The artist in the present day has an advantage with regard to patronage that scarcely ever existed before; he is not subject to the taste and caprice of one great patron, but, in whatever style of art he feels himself most at home, he is, if successful, sure to find admirers among the public; as the literary men of the present day are sure of finding readers, and, not like their predecessors, forced to flatter and fawn on some great man who would kindly condescend to patronize their works. The absence of this system has produced a far healthier In all inquiries of this sort, one of the tone in literature, and its re-adoption now principal difficulties is to ascertain what is would be as prejudicial to artists as it was the real cause of the evil once the seat to poets in former days. What our artists, and cause of the disease ascertained, the however, demand is not this, but governphysician has little difficulty in prescribing ment paironage; and in this, we fear, they a remedy. But, in the present instance, no will be much disappointed; the governtwo persons scarcely are agreed as to what ment of this free country have too much to is the real cause of our ill success in art. occupy their minds in the struggle for place If an artist is asked the question, his inva- or party ever to give that attention to the riable reply is, "want of patronage," and subject that is requisite; and the continual his partisans re-echo the sentiment. If a change of persons in power, and the consegentleman, not particularly interested in quent continual change of tastes and opinthe subject, is asked, he answers, "the ions, render it singularly unfit, by its very climate is unfavorable;" and these two constitution, for the steady following out of causes, under various names, and with such any great system of encouragement of modifications as the idiosyncrasy of the re- art. spondent may suggest, fill the one with hope

A king or prince might do more; but,

in this country, he can only do it as an individual, and not as the absolute monarchs of other countries, who have the resources of their nations more at command. It is to the public that our artists must learn to look for support (as our literary men have learned some time ago). The public are willing to purchase and patronize whatever they can understand, or whatever speaks to their tastes or to their feelings. But they will not buy imitations of other schools when originals are to be had, nor will they buy paintings which nobody understands the meaning of but the painter, if indeed he does, which is not always clear.

which are dwelt upon by those who look more hopefully on the state of British art, there is none that is more continually referred to, or insisted on more strongly, than the advantages we possess in our knowledge of the great works of antiquity and of what was done that was great and worthy of imitation in the middle ages; and while we possess on the one hand the Elgin marbles, and on the other such noble collections of pictures by the old masters as exist in this, and other countries to which we have access, no reasoning, at first sight, appears more specious than to suppose that, with all this knowledge, we have only to start from the culminating point which the arts of Greece just reached at their highest period of perfection, and, starting from this, to surpass all that has been done. And, as a corollary to this, artists fancy that, by copying the statues and reproducing the porticos of Greece, we are reviving Grecian art, and may, by persevering in this course, at least produce as beautiful things as the ancients; and some even hope that, by adding our knowledge to theirs, and the power of our civilization to the then less refined polity, we may surpass them. Those, however, who reason in this way, appear to us to have only glanced at the surface of the question, and to know but little of Grecian art, or of what in fact it really consisted. It was not with Grecian artists a thing borrowed from others, or something apart from their feelings or polity, but really and wholly the expression of the faith, the feeling, and the poetry of the nation.

The "climate" may be dismissed in a very few words. We acknowledge that Germany and France have done something in art, yet their climate is scarcely more favorable than ours, and the Dutch have produced a school of paintings which, in the estimation of our amateurs, rivals (if indeed its productions are not more valuable than) that of the Italians; and yet the climate of Holland is certainly worse than our own. But it is absurd to talk of climate, or of the chilling effects of modern habits and tastes to a people who have produced such a literature as ours. It is absurd to say that the countrymen of Spenser, or Shakspeare, or Milton, or the contemporaries of Scott, Byron, or Coleridge, or Wordsworth, are crushed by climate; or that there is any thing to prevent our painting as well as those men wrote. If we cannot yet boast of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo, we may rest satisfied with the comfortable assurance that there is nothing to prevent our having Favored by the most genial climate, and painters as great as Shakspeare or Milton inhabiting the most romantic region on the were as poets; and if we have no Camuc- face of the globe, it was almost impossible cini, or Cornelius, or De la Roche, we may that a young and healthful nation like the at least have painters of equal merit with Dorians could struggle on to independence modern authors. It is true, however, that and civilization without accumulating those the climate is not favorable for the produc- images of beauty and of glory, which aftertion of naked statutes or for the employ- wards shone forth in such splendor; yet ment of Doric porticos; nor is our religion they struggled on for centuries before these favorable to the revival of saints and Ma- assumed a fixed or real form that could be donnas; and were there no other sources embodied for the future. Hesiod first preof the Kalon but these, we might well de- luded with a glorious drama, and gathering spair. But our literati, after long wander- together some of the floating images of beauing in the same paths in which our artists ty with which the minds of his compatriots have now lost themselves, have at last dis- were teeming, wove them into his early covered other sources of inspiration than song. But it was Homer who first embodthe mere reproduction of classic models, ied the poetry of his race, in that immortal and have restored our literature to the rank song which has been the glory of his nation it holds. Till our artists have done some- and the delight of all succeeding generathing of the same sort, there is, we fear, tions. It has been disputed whether such but little hope of progress or improvement. an individual as Homer ever lived, and Among the causes of encouragement whether this be true or not, the doubt,