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classical as that of statesmen in Europe, it may nevertheless be said that there are few men who take even the smallest part in politics in America who cannot speak with fluency and energy, which practice rather than great acquirements has given them. But the subject of this sketch is an orator in every sense of the word. His mind is well stored with the history of ancient and modern times, as well as with a minute and extensive knowledge of the various political questions which have agitated the States from the time of their birth to the present day. Calm and grave is he when the subject requires solemnity and reason; impassioned and energetic when he wishes to appeal to the sympathies of his hearers.

It is not our intention to describe the private life of Mr Davis. His public career is that to which we now call attention; but in all domestic relations as son, husband, and father, his acts will bear the most rigid scrutiny. In conversation he is disposed to be silent, rather than to assume or instruct. In manner he is simple and affable, with a little more stern dignity than is generally found amongst Southern gentlemen.

Such is the statesman and soldier who now presides over the destinies of the Confederate States. The great part assigned to him to play is still full of difficulty and danger. Cut off altogether from free communication with Europe, the South has, from the commencement of the war, been obliged to sustain a most unequal contest; but the master mind which has directed the Confederate Government during this period of trial, has met and overcome difficulties which at first seemed insuperable.

Mr Seward asserts that the North "possess the Mississippi." The President of the Confederate States answers this by despatching a single gunboat into the

midst of the Federal fleet, which swoops down the river upon the Yankee ships, and carries terror and destruction to all who oppose it. Mr Seward tells the diplomatists of Europe that he has "forced the insurgents to battle in the most inaccessible part of the insurrectionary district;" while Stonewall Jackson keeps Washington itself in a state of anxiety bordering on a panic, and the North are unable to boast one single success since the war began, where they have not fought under cover of their gunboats. Mr Seward says that "the forces and the resources of the Government are unexhausted and increasing." Mr Davis replies by defeating an army of eighty thousand men, and forcing the "Government to resort to a conscription. Mr Seward informs the world that "the forces and resources of the insurgents are diminished, and becoming nearly exhausted;" when every mail brings us intelligence of new armies springing up to oppose

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the Government in Missouri, Western Virginia, and Tennessee, and suddenly two "Rebel " ironclad gunboats make their unexpected appearance on the James River. Mr Seward assures us that "the 'Disunionists,' even in their strongest holds, are not a people, but only a faction!" whereas the whole population is in fact like one mind in their determination to support President Davis, and to endure any punishment except a return to the yoke of the hated Yankee.

But we fear some time must yet elapse before peace can be restored. The North is still unconvinced. It has an enormous stake in preserving the Union. question of boundary is a most difficult one. Passions have been aroused which it will take generations to calm; but, be the struggle long or short, history will regard Jefferson Davis as one of the few great men that this war has produced.

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PICTURES BRITISH AND FOREIGN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION.

PICTURES have a speech which the division of tongues has not confounded. The arts still utter a language which the dispersion of races cannot corrupt. A congress of nations may be a Babel; a convocation of international arts must be a brotherhood. Thus happy is it when the earth, grown old in war-blessed is it when peoples have been long divided into hostile camps, that the arts both of beauty and utility can raise themselves on one platform, and proclaim, in words we all can read, the common humanity from whence they spring.

Yet while three thousand works quietly nestle in international galleries, vain were it to suppose that these banners of peace were other than the trophies of war; not indeed won by battle of the sword, but by the clash of contending civilisations, and the contest of conflicting intel- lects. Checkered, must it be admitted, has been the history of the arts, for militant warfare of one thousand years has ushered in this present jubilee. What wide gulfs seething in storm, what wild theories ending in chaos, lie between the art-epochs, when birds came to eat of the grapes which Apelles painted, and maidens sat beneath apple-blossoms in Millais's 'Spring'! Yet fully to enjoy, and surely rightly to understand, the multifarious products brought together in these richest of picture-galleries, it is needful to the student to plunge into an obscure past in order that present works may shine in their true light. Certainly, to attain to any critical discrimination of the extant schools of Europe, something must be known of their derivative roots, and somewhat told of their immediate antecedents. In the history of our English school, for example, we should learn what was the influence of Holbein and Vandyke upon Reynolds; what the sway of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian upon

our living painters. In like manner, in the study of French art we should make ourselves acquainted even with the spirit and the results of the great Revolution, the wars of Napoleon, and other political convulsions. which have left their abiding impress upon the genius of the French people. In Italy, again, to the latest of times, painters will continue to take inspiration from Dante and Tasso. In Germany also, art, like literature, still owns the mastery of Goethe and Schiller. Furthermore, the pictures in the International Exhibition are, like flowers and fruits of the earth, in some degree the product of climate and of soil. A Norwegian fiord, with its serrated battlements of pine forests, is not more unlike to the Lake of Nemi or the Bay of Naples, than the frowning landscapes of Scandinavian painters to the serene skies of sunny Claude. In a calm estimate of national schools, then, these circumstances and conditions must be duly balanced. Thus, and thus only, can be determined the positive and the comparative position held by each nation of Europe in this great congress of the arts. Science has long profited from comparative anatomy and comparative physiology: art, in like manner, may now extend the basis of her generalisation by a comparative philosophy of pictures.

An International Exhibition brings the genius of each nation into distinctive relief, and yet into general harmony. The works of an individual are necessarily partial; the products of a nation even are partial, because the domain of art and the infinity of nature are too vast to be comprehended by any one restricted epoch of time, or compassed within the narrow area of a given territory. Yet, perhaps, just in proportion as every people has failed to embrace the universe of art, has it succeeded in working out a smaller specialty to unexampled completion.

Such was, in fact, the restricted triumph reserved for each of the states and cities of Italy, even at a time when the arts seemed omnipresent and omnipotent. Umbria became intense in devotion, Venice was triumphant in colour, Rome unexampled in drawing and expression. And so, in the present day, in modern Europe, some schools aspire to the Christian and Catholic, some peoples are given to the decorative, the romantic, and the sensuous; while others, walking the arduous paths leading to high art, have cast their works into forms classic and academic. But impartial self-knowledge it is proverbially difficult to attain unto. An artist, working in his studio, knows not how his picture may bear the test of public exhibition. A nation, moving along the broad stream which bears the age onward or downward, scarcely can tell how her works may comport themselves in a general congress of the world. And so has it been in the present International Exhibition. Some nations, weighed, have been found wanting; some masters, possessed of local fame, have not been able to extend their reputation. On the other hand, schools hitherto little known-the Norwegian, the Swedish, and the Swiss have appealed to the verdict of Europe, and obtained recognition and renown.

Yet is there still another and a severer test to which we may, and indeed must, put the collective art of this our age. We are bound to compare and contrast it with the works of the past. We are compelled to inquire in what relation Ingres, Delaroche, and Ary Scheffer, of the French school, stand to Michael Angelo, Raphael, Francia, and Angelico, of the Italian. It is our duty to determine how much Gallait and Leys, in the Belgian division, may be indebted to Van Dyke and Rubens, or to Van Eyck and Memling. We must ascertain also in what degree the colour of Reynolds, and the sunshine of our English school, are borrowed from the

lustre of Venice, the sister republic of the sea; for, as we have already said, though art be heaven-inspired, though pictures should be the free outgrowth of nature, even as trees and herbs and flowers, yet have they a pedigree and a history, and hence appeal must be made to the precedent of the past, and judgment must be given accordant with the established experience of mankind. In fine, the vast assemblage of pictures in the International Galleries may be taken as an illuminated chart, whereon are set down the high lands of pictorial genius, rivers of knowledge, seats of learning, the centres of intellectual and æsthetic civilisation.

From the British division of this pictorial chart we decipher without difficulty the landmarks of our English school. The names of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, West, Loutherbourg, Lawrence, Danby, Hilton, Bonington, Collins, Constable, Wilkie, Etty, Leslie, and Turner, would suffice to make any land or epoch illustrious. In the Exposition of Paris, our English school seized Europe by surprise; in the present Exhibition of London, the increased force of the British collection would take the world by storm. We now make, indeed, both for quality and extent, a grand display. Other nations, such as France and Germany, are not at home; they are in the land of strangers, and accordingly their wardrobe is scanty as that of travellers. But England is in her own house, and hence we find her full riches are around her. All but impossible would it indeed be for our English school to be seen to greater advantage. Never can we hope to enjoy a better opportunity of estimating our positive merits, or of adjudicating on our comparative position. Let us therefore descend into minuter details. What, we would ask, are the characteristics of our English school!

The British pictures, then, in the International Exhibition, once more show the English hol to

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strong in incident, effect, and colour, but proportionately weak in drawing and deficient in learning. High art is not our vocation. Nothing, indeed, can be more painful than some of the abortions of which the more ambitious among the painters of last century were guilty. The grand sonorous periods in Fuseli's Lectures;' his description of a beggar rising from the hands of Michael Angelo, the patriarch of poverty; the teachings of Barry, tending to lofty conception and design; the ambition of poor Haydon, finding its last reproof in the success of the Tom Thumb exhibition, are known to all. But the pictures executed in the English school under these inspirations may not have been seen by our own generation till the opening of the present Exhibition. Such works as Fuseli's 'Nightmare' and 'The Expulsion of Satan from Paradise,' Northcote's Last Sleep of Argyll,' West's 'Oath of Hannibal,' and Haydon's 'Mock Election,' serve now but to point a melancholy moral. They confess, with blushing confusion, that at the time our English Academy was founded, there were artists eager to walk in the steps of Raphael, only they wanted the knowledge and the training, not to say the genius. In the face of such failures, the like of which we know not in the whole area of Europe, with the disheartening fact that painters of this cast starved during life, and died wanting even the recompense of posthumous fame, it is, we think, not without good cause that English artists have forsaken high art altogether. Neither proficiency nor profit seems to prompt to this line.

Yet perhaps it were unfair to dismiss this branch of the subject without some mitigation to the sweeping severity of our censure. Hilton, of course, cannot for one moment compare with the great masters of Italy, who were indeed the bright originals from whence he caught a borrowed light. Yet 'The Crucifixion' and 'The Angel

delivering St Peter' do not err through any positive defect; they want only the animating fire; they lack nothing but physical energy and divine unction. As careful compilations, they are admirable. Opie's 'David Rizzio' is a good picture for a bad time. West's Death of General Wolfe' is perhaps his best work, skilful in concentration of subject, laudable in the bold adoption of contemporaneous costume. Copley, father of the venerable Lord Lyndhurst-like West, an American naturalised in England-is represented by 'The Death of Major Pierson,' a picture specially to be commended for its power, unaffected truth, and simplicity. Etty, though primarily a colourist, yet by his grand composition, 'Woman pleading for the Vanquished,' makes triumphal entry into the region of high art. But after full credit and all just praise are bestowed upon like works as these, a moment's inquiry will prove that our English school held at this period a position far beneath the contemporary art of continental Europe. In the year 1784, the French David painted 'Les Horaces,' now hanging in the Louvre, the most illustrious trophy of the French classic school. In 1819 was painted, by the famed Gericault, The Shipwreck of the Medusa,' often quoted as the signal victory of the school romantic over its rival the classic. And towards the close of last century, in Italy, Benvenuti was finishing his great work, ‘Judith with the Head of Holofernes,' still in the Cathedral of Arezzo. Yet in the same century, in our own country, Thornhill was vapouring in the dome of St Paul, Wright blotching at Derby, and Barry daubing in the Adelphi. Since these days, however, we are happy to know, even on the reassuring evidence of the International Galleries, that English art has found progression. Our native school was late in its rise, has been recent in its growth, and from first to last proves itself successful just so far, as content with

humble walk, it renounces ambition.

From the crowd of presumptuous mediocrity stand out, in the prominence due to simple truth, two companion yet rival painters, Reynolds and Gainsborough. Gains borough, in the International Exhibition, is well represented; Reynolds is less fortunate. The pictures painted by the latter have been estimated at above one thousand in number-the published engravings from these works are set down at seven hundred. It is manifest, then, that even thirty-five pictures, not always the choicest -many, moreover, faded and decayed-cannot do justice to the power and the versatility of this great artist. Therefore is it that, in the present Exhibition, Gainsborough, more circumscribed in sphere, has taken his competitor to advantage. Yet we need scarcely say that the collection contains some of the President's best and most lovely works: The Infant Samuel,'The Schoolboy,' The Age of Innocence,' Heads of Angels,' and 'Simplicity,' all belong to that charming class in which mere portraiture gives place to imagination. Some of these works are indeed poetic portraits bearing a fancy title, others pretty playful little pictures, which wiled away the few vacant hours left to the artist by his importunate sitters. Among the portraits which rose into works of ideal beauty must be mentioned in foremost rank the head of Mrs Siddons, in character of Tragic Muse. Cymon and Iphigenia,' a late production, shows, by its Venetian intensity of colour, the artist's ruling passion strong in death. The heads of Reynolds, as contrasted with the works of rival masters, are sketchy and slight. The doctrines which he inculcated in his Discourses are indeed opposed to detail. In his 'Fourteenth Address to the Students of the Royal Academy,' he says: "The likeness of a portrait consists more in preserving the general effect of

the countenance than in the most minute finishing of the features, or any of the particular parts." Woolner's busts of Tennyson and Maurice owe their character to the contrary principle. Yet how fortunate were the sitters of Reynolds, may be judged by the manly bearing and the graceful charm which he has given to the beauteous ladies and the illustrious statesmen of his times. Among other of his wellknown portraits we may mention those of the lovely Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; of Viscountess Althorp, and the Hon. J. C. Spencer; of Mrs Hartley as a Bacchante; of Lady Elizabeth Foster; and of Miss Boothby. In the works of Reynolds, indeed, we ever find the fascination which environed his person and adorned his conversation and manner. Reynolds we know as a man of culture, and he shows even in his portraits the subtle skill and the æsthetic sense which are allied to literary address. His portraits of statesmen are executed with the finesse of a courtier; his heads of duchesses are handled with the adroitness of a ladies' man; and his children have the nature and the joy of one who had romped in nursery and playground.

But Gainsborough, the rival of Reynolds, was also a child of nature, simple and hearty, as indeed his landscapes, peasants, and cottage-doors tell us so frankly. These charming works are altogether sketchy, and the very reverse, in their broad generalities, of PreRaphaelite finish. Gainsborough had the advantage in landscape; but in the art of portrait-painting the run seems to have been even between him and Reynolds. Gainsborough holds his ground even to this day. For execution no work in the Exhibition is more masterly than Mrs Elliot;' and as for notoriety, no picture has been the theme of so much town and table talk as the 'Blue Boy.' Reynolds, in his Eighth Discourse, had dogmatised somewhat too positively. "It ought," says the learned

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