Ay, and a S's eggs, too, as one would fancy, were great geniuses not above grammar. Mark the line too, "On gorgeous trappings mix with pomp and state." How what a "middle passage "! Mr. Fowell Buxton must shudder! What would they say to this in Exe. ter Hall? If Wilberforce's statue down stairs were to be confronted with this picture, the stony old gen and construe the whole of this sensible tleman would spring off his chair, and passage. Not less sublime is Mr. Ward's fellow academician. 230. "Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying: Typhon coming on." J. M. W. Turner, R.A. "Aloft all hands, strike the topmasts and belay! Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds Declare the Typhon's coming. board The dead and dying, ne'er heed their chains. Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope! MS. Fallacies of Hope. Fallacies of Hope, indeed: to a pretty mart has she brought her pigs! How should Hope be hooked on to the slaver? By the anchor, to be sure, which accounts for it. As for the picture, the R.A.'S rays are indeed terrific; and the slaver throwing its cargo overboard is the most tremendous piece of color that ever was seen; it sets the corner of the room in which it hangs into a flame. Is the picture sublime or ridiculous? Indeed I don't know which. Rocks of gamboge are marked down upon the canvas; flakes of white laid on with a trowel; bladders of vermilion madly spirted here and there. Yonder is the slaver rocking in the midst of a flashing foam of white-lead. The sun glares down upon a horrible sea of emerald and purple, into which chocolate-colored slaves are plunged, and chains that will not sink; and round these are floundering such a race of fishes as never was seen since he sæculum Pyrrhæ ; gasping dolphins redder than the reddest herrings; horrid spreading polypi, like huge, slimy, poached eggs, in which hapless niggers plunge and disappear. Ye gods, fly away in terror! And here, as we are speaking of the slave-trade, let us say a word in welcome to a French artist, Monsieur Biard, and his admirable picture. Let the friends of the negro forthwith be taken from it. It is the best, most buy this canvas, and cause a plate to striking, most pathetic lecture against the trade that ever was delivered. and the artist, who, as we have heard, The picture is as fine as Hogarth; right or wrong, has only of late years adopted the profession of painting, and was formerly in the French navy, had evidently drawn a great deal of his materials from life and personal observation. The scene is laid upon the African coast. King Tom or King Boy has come with troops of slaves down the Quorra, and sits in the midst of his chiefs and mistresses (one a fair creature, not much darker than a copper tea-kettle), bargaining with a French dealer. What a horrible callous brutality there is in the scoundrel's face, as he lolls over his greasy ledger, and makes his calculations. A number of his crew are about him; their boats close at hand, in which they are stowing their cargo. See the poor wretches, men and women, collared together, drooping down. There is one poor thing, just parted from her child. On the ground in front lies a stalwart negro; one connoisseur is handling his chest, to try his wind; another has opened his mouth, and examines his teeth, to know his age and soundness. Yonder is a poor woman kneeling before one of the Frenchmen; her shoulder is fizzing under the hot iron with which he brands her; she is looking up, shuddering and wild, yet quite mild and patient: it breaks your heart to look at her. I never saw any thing so exquisitely pathetic as that face. God bless you, Monsieur Biard, for painting it! It stirs the heart more than a hundred thousand tracts, reports, or sermons: it must convert every man who has seen it. You British government, who have given twenty millions towards the good end of freeing this hapless people, give yet a couple of thousand more to the French painter, and don't let his work go out of the country, now that it is here. Let it hang along with the Hogarths in the National Gallery; it is as good as the best of them. Or, there is Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay, who has a family interest in the matter, and does not know how to spend all the money he brought home from India; let the right honorable gentleman look to it. Down with your dust, right honorable sir! give Monsieur Biard a couple of thousand for his picture of the negroes, and it will be the best black act you ever did in your life; and don't go for to be angry at the suggestion, or fancy we are taking liberties. What is said is said from one public man to another, in a Pickwickian sense, de puissance en puissance, from Titmarsh, in his critical cathedra, to your father's eminent son, rich with the spoils of Ind, and wielding the bolts of war. What a marvellous power is this of the painter's! how each great man can excite us at his will! what a weapon he has, if he knows how to wield it! look for a while at Mr. Etty's pictures, and away you rush, your "eyes on fire," drunken with the luscious colors that are poured out for you on the liberal canvas, and warm with the beautiful sirens that appear on it. You fly from this (and full time too), and plunge into a green, shady landscape of Lee or Creswick, and follow a quiet stream babbling beneath whispering trees, and chequered with cool shade and golden sunshine; or you set the world - nay, the Thames and the oceanon fire with that incendiary Turner; or you laugh with honest, kindhearted Webster, and his troops of merry children; or you fall a-weeping with Monsieur Biard for his poor blacks; or you go and consult the priests of the place, Eastlake, Mulready, Boxall, Cope, and the like, and straightway your mind is carried off in an ecstasy, happy, thrilling hymns sound in your ears melodious, sweet thankfulness fills your bosom. How much instruction and happiness have we gained from these men, and how grateful should we be to them! It is well that Mr. Titmarsh stopped here, and I shall take special care to examine any further remarks which he may think fit to send. Four-fifths of this would have been cancelled, had the printed sheets fallen sooner into our hands. The story about the Clarendon is an absurd fiction; no dinner ever took place there. I never fell asleep in a plate of raspberry ice; and though I certainly did recommend this person to do justice by the painters, making him a speech to that effect, my opinions were infinitely better expressed, and I would repeat them, were it not so late in the month. -O. Y A PICTORIAL RHAPSODY CONCLUDED, AND FOLLOWED BY A REMARKABLE STATEMENT OF FACTS BY MRS. BARBARA. AND now, in pursuance of the promise recorded in the last number of this Magazine, and for the performance of which the public has ever since been in breathless expectation, it hath become Titmarsh's duty to note down his opinions of the remaining pictures in the Academy exhibition; and to criticise such other pieces as the other galleries may show. In the first place, then, with regard to Mr. Maclise, it becomes us to say our say; and as "The Observer", newspaper, which, though under the express patronage of the royal family, devotes by far the noblest part of its eloquence to the consideration of dramatic subjects, and to the discussion of the gains, losses, and theatrical conduct of managers, - - as I say, "The Observer" newspaper, when ever Madame Vestris or Mr. Yates adopts any plan that concurs with the notions of the paper in question, does not fail to say that Madame Vestris or Mr. Yates have been induced to reform in consequence of "The Observer's" particular suggestion; in like manner, Titmarsh is fully convinced, that all the painters in this town have their eyes incessantly fixed upon his criticisms, and that all the wise ones regulate their opinions by his. and the people all grin very comically, as people do in pictures called comic; but the soul of fun is wanting, as I take it, the merry, brisk, goodhumored spirit which in Le Sage's text so charms the reader. "Olivia and Malvolio" is, on the contrary, one of the best and most spiritual performances of the artist. Nothing can be more elegant than the tender, languid melancholy of Olivia, nor more poetical than the general treatment of the picture. The long clipped alleys and quaint gardens, the peacocks trailing through the walks, and vases basking in the sun, are finely painted and conceived. Examine the picture at a little distance, and the ensemble of the composition and color is extraordinarily pleasing. The details, too, are, as usual, wonderful for their accuracy. Here are flower-beds and a tree above Olivia's head of which every leaf is painted, and painted with such skill, as not in the least to injure the general effect of the picture. Mr. Maclise has a daguerrotypic eye, and a feeling of form stronger, I do believe, than has ever been possessed by any painter before him. Look at the portrait of Mr. Dickens, well arranged as a picture, good in color, and light, and shadow, and as a likeness perfectly amazing; a lookIn the language of "The Observer," ing-glass could not render a better then, Mr. Maclise has done wisely to facsimile. Here we have the real adopt our suggestions with regard to identical man Dickens: the artist the moral treatment of his pictures, must have understood the inward and has made a great advance in his Boz as well as the outward before he art. Of his four pictures let us dis- made this admirable representation miss the scene from "Gil Blas" at of him. What cheerful intelligence once. Coming from a second-rate man there is about the man's eyes and it would be well enough: it is well large forehead! The mouth is too drawn, grouped, lighted, shadowed, | large and full, too eager and active per haps; the smile is very sweet and generous. If Monsieur de Balzac, that voluminous physiognomist, could examine the head, he would, no doubt, interpret every line and wrinkle in it: the nose firm and well placed; the nostrils wide and full, as are the nostrils of all men of genius (this is Monsieur de Balzac's maxim). The past and the future, says Jean Paul, are written in every countenance. I think we may promise ourselves a brilliant future from this one. There seems no flagging as yet in it, no sense of fatigue, or consciousness of decaying power. Long mayst thou, Boz! reign over thy comic Kingdom; long may we pay tribute, whether of threepence weekly, or of a shilling monthly, it matters not. Mighty prince! at thy imperial feet, Titmarsh, humblest of thy servants, offers his vows of loyalty, and his humble tribute of praise. And now (as soon as we are off our knees and have done paying court to sovereign Boz) it behooves us to say a word or two concerning the picture of " Macbeth," which occupies such a conspicuous place in the Academy gallery. Well, then, this picture of "Macbeth" has been, to our notion, "Malvolio," is far more spiritual and suggestive, if we may so speak; it tells not only its own tale very charmingly, but creates for the beholder a very pleasant, melancholy train of thought, as every good picture does in its kind, from a six-inch canvas by Hobbima or Ruysdael up to a thousand-foot wall of Michael Angelo. If you read over the banquet scene in words, it leaves an impression far more dreadful and lively. On the stage it has always seemed to us to fail; and though out of a trapdoor in the middle of it Mr. Cooper is seen to rise very solemnly, — his face covered with white, and a dreadful gash of vermilion across his neck; though he nods and waggles his head about in a very quiet, ghostlike manner; yet, strange to say, neither this scene, nor this great actor, has ever frightened us, as they both should, as the former docs when we read it at home. The fact is, that it is quite out of Mr. Cooper's power to look ghostly enough, or, perhaps, to soar along with us to that sublime height to which our imagination is continually carrying us. "Len. May it please your highness sit? in MACBETH's place. "Macb. Here had we now our country's Were the grac'd person of our Banquo present; ness, Than pity for mischance. "Rosse. His absence, sir, Lays blame upon his promise. Please it a great deal too much praised and The Ghost of BANQUO appears, and sits abused only Titmarsh understands the golden mean, as is acknowledged by all who read his criticisms. Here is a very fine masterly picture, no doubt, full of beauties, and showing extraordinary power; but not a masterpiece, as I humbly take it, not a picture to move the beholder as much as many performances that do not display half the power that is here exhibited. I don't pretend to lay down any absolute laws on the sublime (the reader will remember how the ancient satirist has accused John Dennis of madness, for his vehement preaching of such rules). No, no; Michael Angelo T. is not quite so impertinent as that; but the public and the artist will not mind being told, without any previous definitions, that this picture is not of the highest order. The "Macb. The table's full. "Len. Thy gory locks at me. "Rosse. Gentlemen, rise; his highness is not well. "Lady M. Sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus, self! Why do you make such faces? When all's done, You look but on a stool. "Macb. Pr'ythee, see there! Behold! Look!-Lo! How say you? — Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. If charnel-houses, and our graves, must send Those that we bury back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites. [Ghost disappears. "Lady M. What! Quite unmann'd in folly? "Macb. If I stand here, I saw him. "Lady M. Fie, for shame! "Macb. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th' olden time, Ere human statute purg'd the gentle weal; Ay, and since, too, murders have been perform'd Too terrible for the ear. The times have been, That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools. This is more strange Than such a murder is. I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that know me. Come, love and health to all; Then, I'll sit down. Give me some wine, I drink to the general joy of the whole -fill full. table, A large part of this vast picture Mr. Maclise has painted very finely. The lords are all there in gloomy state, fierce stalwart men in steel; the variety of attitude and light in which the different groups are placed, the wonderful knowledge and firmwhich each individual ness with figure and feature are placed down upon the canvas will be understood and admired by the public, but by the artist still more, who knows the difficulty of these things which seem so easy, which are so easy, no doubt, to a man with Mr. Maclise's extraordinary gifts. How fine is yonder group at the farthest table, lighted up by the reflected light from the armor of one of them! The effect, as far as we know it, is entirely new; the figures drawn with exquisite minuteness and clearness, not in the least interrupting the general harmo ny of the picture. Look at the two |