He came not-no, he came not!
The night came on alone,
The little stars sat one by one
Each on his golden throne;
The evening air passed by my check,

The leaves above were stirred;
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.

Fast, silent tears were flowing,
When something stood behind;
A hand was on my shoulder,

I knew its touch was kind:
It drew me nearer, nearer —

We did not speak a word;
But the beating of our own hearts
Was all the sound we heard."

Kissing, actually! Oh, Mr. Milnes, you naughty, naughty man!

great fringes of eyelashes, close those silly coral slits of mouths. Avaunt, ye spider-waisted monsters! who have flesh, but no bones; silly bodies, but no souls. And ye, O young artists! who were made for better things than to paint such senseless gimcracks, and make fribble furniture for tawdry drawing-room tables, look at Nature, and blush! See how much nobler she is than your pettifogging art!how much more beautiful Truth is than your miserable tricked-up lies. More lovely is she than a publisher's bill at three months, - -a better paymistress in the end than Messrs Heath, Finden, and all their crew. The diversion made by Miss Slab- The world loves bad pictures, truly; ber has occupied us so long, that we but yours it is to teach the world, are obliged to bring our remarks ab- for you know better. Copy Nature. ruptly to a close, with the briefest Don't content yourselves with idle possible notice of the remaining Keep-recollections of her; be not satisfied sakes. "The Amaranth" is remarkable for the very bad engravings it contains, and the excellence of its literary department. "The Children of the Nobility " contains Landseer's beautiful picture of Miss Blanche Egerton, and no more. In "The Book of Beauty," most especially to be admired is the beautiful, sparkling Duchess of Sutherland; Lady Mahon, who looks beautiful, gentle, and kind; and Lady Powerscourt, whose face and figure seem to be modelled from Diana and Hebe. Oh, Medora, Zuleika, Juana, Juanina, Juanetta, and company!- Oh, ye of the taper fingers, and six-inch eyes! shut those

with knowing pretty tricks of drawing and color; stand not still because donkeys proclaim that you have arrived at perfection. Above all, read sedulously " Regina," who watches you with an untiring eye, "and, whether stern or smiling, loves you still." Remember that she always tells you the truth, she never puffeth, neither doth she blame unnecessarily. Remember, too, that the year beginneth. Can there be a more favorable opportunity to pour in with your subscriptions?

One word more. Thank Heaven, the nudities have gone out of fashion! the public has to thank us for that.

A SECOND LECTURE ON THE FINE ARTS.

BY MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH, ESQ.

THE EXHIBITIONS.

Jack Straw's Castle, Hampstead. MY DEAR BRICABRAC, -You, of course, remember the letter on the subject of our exhibitions which I addressed to you this time last year. As you are now lying at the Hôtel Dieu, wounded during the late unsuccessful émeute (which I think, my dear friend, is the seventeenth you have been engaged in), and as the letter which I wrote last year was received with unbounded applause by the people here, and caused a sale of three or four editions of this Magazine, I cannot surely, my dear Bricabrac, do better than send you another sheet or two, which may console you under your present bereavement, and at the same time amuse the British public, who now know their friend Titmarsh as well as you in France know that little scamp Thiers.

than look over the heap of picturegallery catalogues which I brought with me from London, and communicate to you, my friend in Paris, my remarks thereon.

A man, with five shillings to spare, may at this present moment half kill himself with pleasure in London town, and in the neighborhood of Pall Mall, by going from one picture gallery to another, and examining the beauties and absurdities which are to be found in each. There is first the National Gallery (entrance, nothing), in one wing of the little ginshop of a building so styled near St. Martin's Church; in another wing is the exhibition of the Royal Academy (entrance, one shilling; catalogue, one ditto). After having seen this, you come to the Water-Color Exhibition in Pall Mall East; then to the gallery in Suffolk Street; and, finally, to the New Water-Color Society in Pall Mall, -a pretty room, which Well, then, from Jack Straw's Cas- formerly used to be a gamblingtle, an hotel on Hampstead's breezy house, where many a bout of seven'sheath, which_ Keats, Wordsworth, the-main, and iced champagne, has Leigh Hunt, F. W. N. Bayly, and been had by the dissipated in former others of our choicest spirits, have days. All these collections (all the often patronized, and a heath of which modern ones, that is) deserve to be every pool, bramble, furze-bush-with-noticed, and contain a deal of good, clothes-hanging-on-it-to-dry, steep, bad, and indifferent wares, as is the stock, stone, tree, lodging-house, and way with all other institutions in this distant gloomy background of London wicked world. city, or bright green stretch of sunshiny Hertfordshire meadows, has been depicted by our noble English landscape painter, Constable, in his own Constabulary way. -at Jack Straw's Castle, I say, where I at this present moment am located (not that it matters in the least, but the world is always interested to know where men of genius are accustomed to disport themselves), I cannot do better

Commençons donc avec le commencement-with the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, which consists, as everybody knows, of thirty-eight knight and esquire academicians, and nineteen simple and ungenteel associates, who have not so much as shabby Mister before their names. recollect last year facetiously ranging these gentlemen in rank, according to what I conceived to be their merits,

a

I

while behind it (a cold gray moon looking down on it), slow, sad, and majestic, follows the brave old ship, with death, as it were, written on her. I think, my dear Bricabrac (although, to be sure, your nation would be somewhat offended by such a collection of trophies), that we ought not, in common gratitude, to sacrifice entirely these noble old champions of ours, but that we should have somewhere a museum of their skeletons, which our children might visit, and think of the brave deeds which were done in them. The bones of "The Agamemnon" and "The Captain,"

-King Mulready, Prince Maclise, Lord Landseer, Archbishop Eastlake (according to the best of my memory, for Jack Straw, strange to say, does not take in "Fraser's Magazine"), and so on. At present, a great number of new-comers, now associates even, ought to be elevated to these aristocratic dignities; and, perhaps, the order ought to be somewhat changed. There are many more good pictures (here and elsewhere) than there were last year. A great stride has been taken in matters of art, my dear friend. The young painters are stepping forward. Let the old fogies look to it; let the old Academic Olym-"The Vanguard," "The Culloden," pians beware, for there are fellows among the rising race who bid fair to oust them from sovereignty. They have not yet arrived at the throne, to be sure, but they are near it. The lads are not so good as the best of the academicians; but many of the academicians are infinitely worse than the lads, and are old, stupid, and cannot improve, as the younger and more active painters will.

If you are particularly anxious to know what is the best picture in the room, not the biggest (Sir David Wilkie's is the biggest, and exactly contrary to the best), I must request you to turn your attention to a noble river-piece by J. W. M. Turner, Esq., R. A., "The fighting Téméraire". as grand a painting as ever figured on the walls of any academy, or came from the casel of any painter. The old Téméraire is dragged to her last home by a little, spiteful, diabolical steamer. A mighty red sun, amidst a host of flaring clouds, sinks to rest on one side of the picture, and illumines a river that seems interminable, and a countless navy that fades away into such a wonderful distance as never was painted before. The little demon of a steamer is belching out a volume (why do I say a volume? not a hundred volumes could express it) of foul, lurid, red-hot, malignant smoke, paddling furiously, and lashing up the water round about it;

and "The Victory," ought to be sacred relics, for Englishmen to worship almost. Think of them when alive, and braving the battle and the breeze, they carried Nelson and his heroes, victorious by the Cape of St. Vincent, in the dark waters of Aboukir, and through the fatal conflict of Trafalgar. All these things, my dear Bricabrac, are, you will say, absurd, and not to the purpose. Be it so: but Bow-bellites as we are, we Cockneys feel our hearts leap up when we recall them to memory; and every clerk in Threadneedle Street feels the strength of a Nelson when he thinks of the mighty actions performed by him.

It is absurd, you will say (and with a great deal of reason), for Titmarsh, or any other Briton, to grow so politically enthusiastic about a four-foot canvas, representing a ship, a steamer, a river, and a sunset. But herein surely lies the power of the great artist. He makes you see and think of a great deal more than the objects before you; he knows how to soothe or to intoxicate, to fire or to depress, by a few notes, or forms, or colors, of which we cannot trace the effect to the source, but only acknowledge the power. I recollect, some years ago, at the theatre at Weimar, hearing Beethoven's "Battle of Vittoria," in which, amidst a storm of glorious music, the air of "God save the