beautiful monument to hallow and perpetuate our names. Our children -iny boy, Sebastian Piombo Titmarsh, will see this picture in his old age, hanging by the side of the Raffaelles in our National Gallery, I sometimes fancy, in the presence of such works of genius as this, that my picture of Sir Sam and Lady Hicks is but a magnificent error after all, and that it will die away, and be forgotten.

To this, then, of the whole gallery, I accord the palm. Next to "All the World's a Stage" is a charming picture by Archbishop Eastlake; so denominated by me because the rank is very respectable, and because there is a certain purity and religious feeling in all Mr. Eastlake does, which eminently entitles him to the honors of the prelacy. In this picture, Gaston de Foix (he, whom Titian painted, his mistress buckling on his armor) is parting from his mistress. A fair, peaceful garden is round about them; and here his lady sits and clings to him, as though she would cling forever. But, look! yonder stands the page, and the horse pawing; and beyond the wall which binds the quiet garden and flowers, you see the spears and pennons of knights, the banners of King Louis and de Foix, "the thunderbolt of Italy." Long, shining rows of steel-clad men are marching stately by; and with them must ride Count Gaston to conquer and die at Ravenna. You can read his history, my dear friend, in Lacretelle, or Brantôme; only, perhaps, not so well expressed as it has just been by me.

Yonder is Sir David Wilkie's grand picture,-" Queen Victoria holding her First Council." A marvellous painting, in which one admires the exquisite richness of the color, the breadth of light and shadow, the graceful dignity of the principal figure, and the extraordinary skill with which all the figures have been grouped, so as to produce a grand and simple effect. What can one say more, but admire the artist who has made,

out of such unpoetical materials as a table of red cloth, and fifty unoccupied, middle-aged gentlemen, a beautiful and interesting picture? Sir David has a charming portrait, too, of Mrs. Maberly, in dark crimson velvet, and a delicate white hat and feathers: a marvel of color, though somewhat askew in the drawing.

The Earl of Landseer's best picture, to my thinking, is that which represents her majesty's favorite dogs and parrot. He has, in painting, an absolute mastery over

Κννεσσιν

Οιωνοισι τε πασι;

that is, he can paint all manner of birds and beasts as nobody else can. To tell you a secret, I do not think he understands how to paint the great beast, man, quite so well; or, at least, to do what is the highest quality of an artist, to place a soul under the ribs as he draws them. They are, if you like, the most dexterous pictures that ever were painted, but not great pictures. I would much rather look at yonder rough Leslie than at all the wonderful painting of parrots and greyhounds, though done to a hair or a feather.

Leslie is the only man in this country who translates Shakspeare into form and color. Old Shallow and Sir Hugh, Slender and his man Simple, pretty Anne Page, and the Merry Wives of Windsor, are here joking with the fat knight; who, with a monstrous gravity, and profound, brazen humor, is narrating some tale of his feats with the wild Prince and Poins. Master Brook is offering a tankard to Master Slender, who will not drink, forsooth.

This picture is executed with the utmost simplicity and almost rudeness; but is charming from its great truth of effect and expression. Wilkie's pictures (in his latter style) seem to begin where Leslie's end; the former's men and women look as if the bodies had been taken out of them, and only the surface left. Lovely as the

queen's figure is, for instance, it looks like a spirit, and not a woman; one may almost see through her into the waistcoat of Lord Lansdowne, and so on through the rest of the transparent heroes and statesmen of the company.

Opposite the queen is another charming performance of Sir David, -a bride dressing amidst a rout of bridesmaids and relations. Some arc crying, some are smiling, some are pinning her gown; a back door is open, and a golden sun shines into a room which contains a venerable bed and tester, probably that in which the dear girl is to- - but parlons d'autres choses. The color of this picture is delicious, and the effect faultless: Sir David does every thing for a picture nowadays, but the drawing. Who knows? Perhaps it is as well left out. Look yonder, down to the ground, and admire a most beautiful, fantastic Ariel.

"On the bat's back do I fly,
After sunset merrily."

Merry Ariel lies at his ease, and whips with gorgeous peacock's feather his courser, flapping lazy through the golden evening sky. This exquisite little picture is the work of Mr. Severn, an artist who has educated his taste and his hand in the early Roman school. He has not the dash and dexterity of the latter which belongs to some of our painters, but he possesses that solemn earnestness and simplicity of mind and purpose which makes a religion of art, and seems to be accorded to only a few in our pro. fession. I have heard a pious pupil of Mr. Ingres (the head of your academy at Rome) aver stoutly, that, in matters of art, Titian was anti-Christ, and Rubens, Martin Luther. They came with their brilliant colors, and dashing worldly notions, upsetting that beautiful system of faith in which art had lived hitherto. Portraits of saints and martyrs, with pure eyes turned heavenward; and (as all true sanctity will) making those pure

who came within their reach, now gave way to wicked likenesses of men of blood, or dangerous, devilish, sensual portraits of tempting women. Before Titian, a picture was the labor of years. Why did this reformer ever come among us, and show how it might be done in a day? He drove the good angels away from painters' easels, and called down a host of voluptuous spirits instead, who have ever since held the mastery there.

Only a few artists of our country (none in yours, where the so-called Catholic school is a mere theatrical folly), and some among the Germans, have kept to the true faith, and eschewed the temptations of Titian and his like. Mr. Eastlake is one of these. Who does not recollect his portrait of Miss Bury? Not a simple woman - the lovely daughter of the authoress of "Love," Flirtation," and other remarkable works - but a glorified saint. Who does not remember his "Saint Sebastian;" his body bare, his eyes cast melancholy down; his limbs, as yet untouched by the arrows of his persecutors, tied to the fatal tree? These two pictures of Mr. Eastlake would merit to hang in a gallery where there were only Raffaelles besides. Mr. Severn is another of the school. I don't know what hidden and indefinable charm there is in his simple pictures; but I can never look at them without a certain emotion of awe- with that thrill of the heart with which one hears country children sing the Old Hundredth, for instance. The singers are rude, perhaps, and the voices shrill; but the melody is still pure and godlike. Some such majestic and pious har mony is there in these pictures of Mr. Severn. Mr. Mulready's mind has lately gained this same kind of inspiration. I know no one else who professes it, except, perhaps, myself. Without flattery, I may say, that my picture of Heliogabalus at Carthage" is not in the popular taste, and has about it some faint odor of celestial incense.

"Equando il sol gli aridi campi fiedi
Con raggi assai ferventi, e in alto sorge;
Ecco apparir Gerusalem si vede,

Ecco additar Gerusalem si scorge,
Ecco da mille voci unitamente
Gerusalemme salutar si sente!"

Well, Godfrey and Tancred, Peter, and the rest, look like little wooden dolls; and as for the horses belonging to the crusading cavalry, I have seen better in gingerbread. But what then! There is a higher ingredient in beauty than mere form: a skilful hand is only the second artistical quality, worthless, my Anatole, without the first, which is a great heart. This picture is beautiful, in spite of its defects, as many women are. Mrs. Titmarsh is beautiful, though she weighs nineteen stone.

Being on the subject of religious pictures, what shall I say of Mr. Ward's? Any thing so mysteriously hideous was never seen before now; they are worse than all the horrors in your Spanish Gallery at Paris. As Eastlake's are of the Catholic, these ⚫ may be called of the Muggletonian, school of art; monstrous, livid, and dreadful, as the dreams of a man in the scarlet fever. I would much sooner buy a bottled baby with two heads as a pleasing ornament for my cabinet; and should be afraid to sit alone in a room with "ignorance, envy, and jealousy filling the throat, and widening the mouth, of calumny endeavoring to bear down truth."

Mr. Maclise's picture of "Christmas" you will find excellently described in the May Number of a periodical of much celebrity among us, called "Fraser's Magazine." Since the circulation of that miscel

speak at length of the plot of this remarkable picture. There are five hundred merry figures painted on this canvas, gobbling, singing, kissing, carousing. A line of jolly serving men troop down the hall stairs, and bear the boar's head in procession up to the dais, where sits the good old English gentleman, and his guests and family; a set of mummers and vassals are crowded round a table gorging beef and wassail; a bevy of blooming girls are huddled in a circle, and play at hunt the slipper. Of course, there are plenty of stories told at the huge hall fire, and kissing under the glistening mistletoe-bough. But I wish you could see the wonderful accuracy with which all these figures are drawn, and the extraordinary skill with which the artist has managed to throw into a hundred different faces a hundred different characters and individualities of joy. Every one of these little people are smiling, but each has his own particular smile. As for the coloring of this picture, it is, between ourselves, atrocious; but a man cannot have all the merits at once. Mr. Maclise has for his share, humor such as few painters ever possessed, and a power of drawing such as never was possessed by any other; no, not by one, from Albert Durer downwards. His scene from "The Vicar of Wakefield" is equally charming. Moses' shining, grinning face; the little man in red who stands on tiptoe, and painfully scrawls his copy; and the youngest of the family of the Primroses, who learns his letters on his father's knee, are perfect in design and expression. What might not this man do, if he would read and meditate a little, and profit by the works of men whose taste and education were superior to his own.

Mr. Charles Landseer has two tableaux de genre, which possess very great merit. His characters are a little