more, and we will sing to you the after perusing it, and write off letters mystic numbers of as in presenti under to their friends, not about business, the arches of the Pons Asinorum." but out of their fulness of heart, and But the children of the present gen- to wish old acquaintances a happy eration hear not; for they reply, Christmas. Had the book appeared "Rush to the Strand and purchase a fortnight earlier, all the prize cattle five thousand more copies of The would have been gobbled up in pure Christmas Carol."" I love and friendship, Epping denuded of sausages, and not a turkey left in Norfolk. His royal highness's fat stock would have fetched unheard of prices, and Alderman Bannister would have been tired of slaying. But there is a Christmas for 1844, too; the book will be as early then as now, and so let speculators look out. In fact, one might as well detail the plot of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," or "Robinson Crusoe," as recapitulate here the adventures of Scrooge the miser, and his Christmas conversion. I am not sure that the allegory is a very complete one, and protest, with the classics, against the use of blank verse in prose; but here all objec- As for TINY TIM, there is a certions stop. Who can listen to objec- tain passage in the book regarding tions regarding such a book as this? that young gentleman, about which a It seems to me a national benefit, and man should hardly venture to speak to every man or woman who reads it in print or in public, any more than a personal kindness. The last two he would any other affections of his people I heard speak of it were private heart. There is not a reader women; neither knew the other, or in England but that little creature the author, and both said, by way of will be a bond of union between the criticism, "God bless him!" A Scotch author and him, and he will say of philosopher, who nationally does not Charles Dickens, as the women just keep Christmas Day, on reading the now, "GOD BLESS HIM!" What a book, sent out for a turkey, and asked feeling is this for a writer to be able two friends to dine-this is a fact! to inspire, and what a reward to reap! Many men were known to sit down | M. A. T. MAY GAMBOLS; OR, TITMARSH IN THE PICTURE-GALLERIES. THE readers of this miscellany may, perhaps, have remarked that always, at the May season and the period of the exhibitions, our eccentric correspond ent Titmarsh seems to be seized with a double fit of eccentricity, and to break out into such violent fantastical gambols as might cause us to be alarmed did we not know him to be harmless, and induce us to doubt of his reason but that the fit is generally brief, and passes off after the first excitement occasioned by visiting the picture-galleries. It was in one of these fits, some years since, that he announced in this Magazine his own suicide, which we know to be absurd, for he has drawn many hundred guineas from us since : : -on the same occasion he described his debts and sojourn at a respectable hotel, in which it seems he has never set his foot. But these hallucinations pass away with May, and next month he will, no doubt, be calmer, or, at least, not more absurd than usual. Some disappointments occurring to himself, and the refusal of his great picture of "Heliogabalus" in the year 1803 (which caused his retirement from practice as a painter), may account for his extreme bitterness against some of the chief artists in this, or any other school or country. Thus we have him in these pages abusing Raffaelle; in the very last month he fell foul of Rubens, and in the present paper he actually pooh-poohs Sir Martin Shee and some of the Royal Academy. This is too much. "Calum ipsum," as Horace says, "petimus stultitiâ." But we will quote no more the well-known words of the Epicurean bard. We only add that we do not feel in the least bound by any one of the opinions here brought forward, from most of which, except where the writer contradicts himself and so saves us the trouble, we cordially dissent; and perhaps the reader had best pass on to the next article, omitting all perusal of this, excepting, of course, the editorial notice of — Ó. Y. Jack Straw's Castle, Hampstead, THIS is written in the midst of general desolation and discouragement of the honest practitioners who dwell in the dingy first-floors about Middlesex Hospital and Soho. The long-haired ones are tearing their lanky locks; the velvet-coated sons of genius are plunged in despair; the law has ordered the suppression of Art Unions, and the wheel of Fortune has suddenly and cruelly been made to stand still. When the dreadful news came that the kindly, harmless Art-lottery was to be put an end to, although Derby lotteries are advertised in every gin-shop in London, and every ruffian in the city may gamble at his leisure, the men of the brush and palette convoked a tumultuous meeting, where, amidst tears, shrieks, and wrath, the cruelty of their case was debated. Wyse of Waterford calmly presided over the stormy bladder-squeezers, the insulted wielders of the knife and maulstick. Wyse soothed their angry spirits with words of wisdom and hope. He stood up in the assembly of the legislators of the land and pointed out their wrongs. The painters' friend, the kind old Lansdowne, lifted up his cordial voice among the peers of England, and asked for protection for the children of Raffaelle and Apelles. No one said nay. All pitied the misfortune of the painters; even Lord Brougham was stilled into compassion, and the voice of Vaux was only heard in sobs. These are days of darkness, but there is hope in the vista; the lottery subscription lies in limbo, but it shall be released therefrom and flourish, exuberantly revivified, in future years. Had the ruin been consummated, this hand should have withered rather than have attempted to inscribe jokes concerning it. No. "Fraser" is the artists' friend, their mild parent. While his Royal Highness Prince Albert dines with the Academicians, the rest of painters, less fortunate, are patronized by her majesty REGINA. Yes, in spite of the Art-Union accident, there is hope for the painters. Sir Martin Archer Shee thinks that the prince's condescension in dining with the Academy will do incalculable benefit to the art. Henceforth its position is assured in the world. This august patronage, the president says, evincing the sympathy of the higher classes, must awaken the interest of the low; and the public (the ignorant rogues!) will thus learn to appreciate what they have not cared for hitherto. Interested! of course they will be. O Academicians! ask the public to dinner, and you will see how much interested they will be. We are authorized to state that next year any person who will send in his name will have a cover provided; Trafalgar Square is to be awned in, plates are to be laid for 250,000, one of the new basins is to be filled with turtle, and the other with cold punch. The president and the elite arc to sit upon Nelson's pillar, while rows of benches, stretching as far as the Union Club, Northumberland House, and St. Martin's Church, will accommodate the vulgar. Mr. Toole is to have a speaking-trumpet; and a twenty-four pounder to be discharged at each toast. There are other symptoms of awakening interest in the public mind. The readers of newspapers will remark this year that the leaders of public opinion have devoted an unusually large space and print to reviews of the fine arts. They have been employing critics, who, though they contradict each other a good deal, are yet evidently better acquainted with the subject than critics of old used to be when gentlemen of the profession were instructed to report on a fire, or an Old Bailey trial, or a Greek play, or an opera, or a boxing-match, or a picturegallery, as their turn came. Read now The Times," "The Chronicle," "The Post" (especially "The Post," of which the painting critiques have been very good), and it will be seen that the critic knows his business, and from the length of his articles it may be conjectured that the public is interested in knowing what he has to say. This is all, probably, from the prince having dined at the Academy. The nation did not care for pictures until then until the nobility taught us; gracious nobility! Above all, what a compliment to the public! As one looks round the rooms of the Royal Academy, one cannot but deplore the fate of the poor fellows who have been speculating upon the Art-Unions; and yet in the act of grief there is a lurking satisfaction. The poor fellows can't sell their pieces; that is a pity. But why did the poor fellows paint such fiddlefaddle pictures? They catered for the bourgeois, the sly rogues! they know honest John Bull's taste, and simple admiration of namby-pamby, and so they supplied him with an ar ticle that was just likely to suit him. In like manner, savages are supplied with glass beads; children are accommodated with toys and trash, by dexterous speculators who know their market. Well, I am sorry that the painting speculators have had a stop put to their little venture, and that the ugly law against lotteries has stepped in and seized upon the twelve thousand pounds, which was to furnish many a hungry British Raffaelle with a coat and a beefsteak. Many a Mrs. Raffaelle, who was looking out for a new dress, or a trip to Margate or Boulogne for the summer, must forego the pleasure, and remain in dingy Newman Street. Many little ones will go back to Turnham Green academies and not carry the amount of last half-year's bill in the trunk; many a landlord will bully about the non-payment of the rent; and a vast number of frame-makers will look wistfully at their carving and gilding as it returns after the exhibition to Mr. Tinto, Charlotte Street, along with poor Tinto's picture from "The Vicar of Wakefield," that he made sure of selling to an Art-Union priz man. This is the pathetic side of the question. My heart is tender, and I weep for the honest painters peering dismally at the twelve thousand pounds like hungry boys do at a tartshop. But here stern justice interposes, and the MAN having relented the CRITIC raises his inexorable voice — but, I say, the enemies of Art-Unions have had some reason for their complaints, and I fear it is too true that the effect of those institutions, as far as they have gone hitherto, has not been mightily favorable to the cause of art. One day, by custom, no doubt, the public taste will grow better, and as the man who begins by intoxicating himself with a glass of gin finishes sometimes by easily absorbing a bottle; as the law-student, who at first is tired with a chapter of Black stone, will presently swallow you down with pleasure a whole volume of Chitty; as EDUCATION, in a word, advances, it is humbly to be hoped that the great and generous British public will not be so easily satisfied as at present, and will ask for a better article for its money. Meanwhile, their taste being pitiable, the artists supply them with poor stuff- pretty cheap tawdry toys and gimcracks in place of august and beautiful objects of art. It is always the case. I do not mean to say that the literary men are a bit better. Poor fellows of the pen and pencil! we must live. The public likes light literature, and we write it. Here am I writing magazine jokes and follies, and why? Because the public like such, will purchase no other. Otherwise, as Mr. Nickisson, and all who are acquainted with M. A. Titmarsh in private know, my real inclinations would lead me to write works upon mathematics, geology, and chemistry, varying them in my lighter hours with little playful treatises on questions of political economy, epic poems, and essays on the Æolic digamma. So, in fact, these severe rebukes with which I am about to belabor my neighbor must be taken, as they are given, in a humble and friendly spirit; they are not actuated by pride, but by deep sympathy. Just as we read in holy Mr. Newman's life of Saint Stephen Harding, that it was the custom among the godly Cistercian monks (in the good old times, which holy Newman would restore) to assemble every morning in full chapter; and there, after each monk had made his confession, it was free to-nay, it was strictly enjoined on any other brother to rise and say, "Brother So-and-so hath not told all his sins; our dear brother has forgotten that yesterday he ate his split-peas with too much gormandize;" or, "This morning he did indecently rejoice over his water-gruel," or what not. These real Christians were called upon to inform, not only of them selves, but to be informers over each other; and, the information being given, the brother informed against thanked his brother the informer, and laid himself down on the desk, and was flagellated with gratitude. Sweet friends! be you like the Cistercians! Brother Michael Angelo is going to inform against you. Get ready your garments and prepare for flagellation. Brother Michael Angelo is about to lay on and spare not. Brother Michael lifts up his voice against the young painters collectively in the first place, afterwards individually, when he will also take leave to tickle them with the wholesome stripes of the flagellum. In the first place, then (and my heart is so tender, that, rather than begin the operation, I have been beating about the bush for more than a page, of which page the reader is cordially requested to omit the perusal, as it is not the least to the purpose), I say that the young painters of England, whose uprise this Magazine and this critic were the first to hail, asserting loudly their superiority over the pompous old sham-classical big-wigs of the Academy- the young painters of England are not doing their duty. They are going backwards, or rather, they are flinging themselves under the wheels of that great_golden Juggernaut of an Art-Union. thought of the money is leading them astray; they are poets no longer, but money-hunters. They paint down to the level of the public intelligence, rather than seek to elevate the public to them. Why do these great genuises fail in their duty of instruction? Why, knowing better things, do they serve out such awful twaddle as we have from them? Alas! it is not for art they paint, but for the ArtUnion. The The first dear brother I shall take the liberty to request to get ready for operation is brother Charles Landseer. Brother Charles has sinned. He has grievously sinned. And we will begin with this miserable sinner, and administer to him admonition in | is a great subject. The history from a friendly, though most fierce and cutting manner. The subject of brother Charles Landseer's crime is this. The sinner has said to himself, "The British public likes domestic pieces. They will have nothing but domestic pieces. I will give them one, and of a new sort. Suppose I paint a picture that must make a hit. My picture will have every sort of interest. It shall interest the religious public; it shall interest the domestic public; it shall interest the amateur for the cleverness of its painting; it shall interest little boys and girls, for I will introduce no end of animals, camels, monkeys, elephants, and cockatoos; it shall interest sentimental young ladies, for I will take care to have a pretty little episode for them. I will take the town by storm, in a word." This is what I conceive was passing in brother Charles Landseer's sinful soul when he conceived and executed his NOAH'S ARK IN A DOMESTIC POINT OF VIEW. Noah and his family (with some supplemental young children, very sweetly painted) are seated in the ark, and a port-hole is opened, out of which one of the sons is looking at the now peaceful waters. The sunshine enters the huge repository of the life of the world, and the dove has just flown in with an olive-branch and nestles in the bosom of one of the daughters of Noah; the patriarch and his aged partner are lifting up their venerable eyes in thankfulness; the children stand around, the peaceful laborer and the brown huntsman each testifying his devotion after his fashion. The animals round about participate in the joyful nature of the scene, their instinct seems to tell them that the hour of their deliverance is near. There, the picture is described romantically and in the best of language. Now let us proceed to examine the poetry critically, and to see what its claims are. Well, the ark which we have our account of it, from a poet surely demands a reverend treatment; a blacksmith roaring from the desk of a conventicle may treat it familiarly, but an educated artist ought surely to approach such a theme with respect. The point here is only urged æsthetically. As a matter of taste, then (and the present humble writer has no business to speak on any other), such a manner of treating the subject is certainly reprehensible. The ark is vulgarized here, and reduced to the proportions of a Calais steamer. The passengers are rejoicing: they are glad to get away. Their live animals are about them no more nor less sublime than so many cattle or horses in loose boxes. The parrots perched on the hoop yonder have as little signification as a set of birds in a cage at the Zoological Gardens; the very dove becomes neither more nor less than the pet of the pretty girl represented in the centre of the picture. All the greatness of the subject is lost; and, putting the historical nature of the personages out of the question, they have little more interest than a group of any emigrants in the hold of a ship, who rouse and rally at the sound of "Land ho!" Why, if all great themes of poetry are to be treated in this way, the art would be easy. We might have Hector shaving himself before going out to fight Achilles, as, undoubtedly, the Trojan hero did; Priam in a cotton nightcap asleep in a fourposter on the night of the sack of Troy, Hecuba, of course, by his side, with curl-papers, and her tour de tête on the toilet-glass. We might have Dido's maid coming after her mistress in the shower with pattens and an umbrella; or Cleopatra's page guttling the figs in the basket which had brought the asp that killed the mistress of Antony. Absurd trivialities, or pretty trivialities, are nothing to the question; those I have adduced here are absurd, but they are just as |