set of costumes and figures decently posed and studied. If these were all, for instance, Mr. Charles Landseer's picture of "Charles I. before the Battle of Edge Hill," would be a good work of art. Charles stands at a tree before the inn door, officers are round about, the little princes are playing with a little dog, as becomes their youth and innocence, rows of soldiers appear in red coats, nobody seems to have any thing particular to do, except the royal martyr, who is looking at a bone of ham that a girl out of the inn has hold of.

Now this is all very well, but you want something more than this in an historic picture, which should have its parts, characters, varieties, and climax, like a drama. You don't want the Deus intersit for no other purpose than to look at a knuckle of ham; and here is a piece well composed, and (bating a little want of life in the figures) well drawn, brightly and pleasantly painted, as all this artist's works are, all the parts and accessories studied and executed with care and skill, and yet meaning nothing, the part of Hamlet omitted. The king in this attitude (with the bâton in his hand, simpering at the bacon aforesaid) has no more of the heroic in him than the pork he contemplates, and he deserves to lose every battle he fights. I prefer the artist's other still-life pictures to this. He has a couple more, professedly so called, very cleverly executed, and capital cabinet pieces.

Strange to say, I have not one picture to remark upon taken from "The Vicar of Wakefield." Mr. Ward has a very good Hogarthian work, with some little extravagance and caricature, representing Johnson waiting in Lord Chesterfield's antechamber, among a crowd of hangerson and petitioners, who are sulky, or yawning, or neglected, while a pretty Italian singer comes out, having evidently had a very satisfactory interview with his lordship, and who (to

rendezvous with another admirer. This story is very well, coarsely, and humorously told, and is as racy as a chapter out of Smollett. There is a yawning chaplain, whose head is full of humor; and a pathetic episode of a widow and pretty child, in which the artist has not succeeded so well.

There is great delicacy and beauty in Mr. Herbert's picture of " Pope Gregory teaching Children to Sing." His Holiness lies on his sofa, languidly beating time over his book. He does not look strong enough to use the scourge in his hands, and with which the painter says he used to correct his little choristers. Two ghostly aides-de-camp, in the shape of worn, handsome, shaven ascetic friars, stand behind the pontiff demurely; and all the choristers are in full song, with their mouths as wide open as a nest of young birds when the mother comes. The painter seems to me to have acquired the true spirit of the Middle-Age devotion. All his works have unction; and the prim, subdued, ascetic grace, which forms the charm and mystery of the missal-illuminations, and which has operated to convert some imaginative minds from the new to the old faith.

And, by way of a wonder, behold a devotional picture from Mr. Edwin Landseer, "A Shepherd Praying at a Cross in the Fields." I suppose the Sabbath church-bells are ringing from the city far away in the plain. Do you remember the beautiful lines of Uhland?

"Es ist der tag des Herrn

Ich bin allein auf weitern Flur
Noch eine Morgen-glocke nur
Und stille nah und fern.

"Anbetend knie ich hier

O susses Graun geheimes Wehn
Als knieten viele Ungesehn
Und beteten mit mir."

Here is a noble and touching pictorial illustration of them, of Sabbath repose and recueillement, — an almost endless flock of sheep lies

around the pious pastor; the sun shines peacefully over the vast fertile plain; blue mountains keep watch in the distance; and the sky above is serenely clear. I think this is the highest flight of poetry the painter has dared to take yet. The numbers and variety of attitude and expression in that flock of sheep quite startle the spectator as he examines them. The picture is a wonder of skill.

How richly the good pictures cluster at this end of the room! There is a little Mulready, of which the color blazes out like sapphires and rubies; a pair of Leslies, one called "The Heiress," one a scene from Molière, - both delightful: these are flanked by the magnificent nymphs of Etty, before mentioned. What school of art in Europe, or what age, can show better painters than these in their various lines? The young men do well, but the elders do best still. No wonder the English pictures are fetching their thousands of guineas at the sales. They deserve these great prices as well as the best work of the Hollanders.

I am sure that three such pictures as Mr. Webster's "Dame's School' ought to entitle the proprietor to pay the income-tax. There is a little caricature in some of the children's faces; but the schoolmistress is a perfect figure, most admirably natural, humorous, and sentimental. The picture is beautifully painted, full of air, of delightful harmony and

tone.

There are works by Creswick that can hardly be praised too much. One particularly, called "A Place to be Remembered," which no lover of pictures can see and forget. Danby's great "Evening Scene" has portions which are not surpassed by Cuyp or Claude; and a noble landscape of Lee's, among several others, a height, with some trees and a great expanse of country beneath.

From the fine pictures you come to the class which are very nearly being fine pictures. In this I would enumer

ate a landscape or two by Collins. Mr. Leigh's " Polyphemus," of which the landscape part is very good, and only the figure questionable; and, let us say, Mr. Elmore's "Origin of the Guelf and Ghibelline Factions," which contains excellent passages, and admirable drawing and dexterity, but fails to strike as a whole somehow. There is not sufficient purpose in it, or the story is not enough to interest, or, though the parts are excellent, the whole is somewhere deficient.

There is very little comedy in the Exhibition, most of the young artists tending to the sentimental rather than the ludicrous. Leslie's scene from Molière is the best comedy. Collins's "Fetching the Doctor is also delightful fun. The greatest farce, however, is Chalon's picture with an Italian title, "B. Virgine col," &c. Impudence never went beyond this. The infant's hair has been curled into ringlets, the mother sits on her chair with painted cheeks and a Haymarket leer. The picture might serve for the oratory of an opera girl.

Among the portraits, Knight's and Watson Gordon's are the best. A "Mr. Pigeon" by the former hangs in the place of honor usually devoted to our gracious Prince, and is a fine rich state picture. Even better are there by Mr. Watson Gordon: one representing a gentleman in black silk stockings, whose name has escaped the memory of your humble servant; another, a fine portrait of Mr. De Quincey, the opium eater. Mr. Lawrence's heads, solemn and solidly painted, look out at you from their frames, though they be ever so high placed, and push out of sight the works of more flimsy but successful practitioners. A portrait of great power and richness of color is that of Mr. Lopez, by Linnell. Mr. Grant is the favorite; but a very unsound painter, to my mind, painting like a brilliant and graceful amateur rather than a serious artist. But there is a quiet refinement and beauty about his female heads, which no other painter

can perhaps give, and charms in spite of many errors. Is it Count D'Orsay, or is it Mr. Ainsworth, that the former has painted? Two peas are not more alike than these two illustrious characters.

In the miniature-room, Mr. Richmond's drawings are of so grand and noble a character, that they fill the eye as much as full-length canvases. Nothing can be finer than Mrs. Fry and the gray-haired lady in black velvet. There is a certain severe, respectable, Exeter-Hall look about most of this artist's pictures, that the observer may compare with the Catholic physiognomies of Mr. Herbert: see his picture of Mr. Pugin, for instance; it tells of chants and cathedrals, as Mr. Richmond's work somehow does of Clapham Common and the May meetings. The genius of May Fair fires the bosom of Chalon, the tea party, the quadrille, the hairdresser, the tailor, and the flunky. All Ross's miniatures sparkle with his wonderful and minute skill; Carrick's are excellent; Thorburn's almost take the rank of historical pictures. In this picture of two sisters, one has almost the most beautiful head in the world; and his picture of Prince Albert, clothed in red and leaning on a turquoise sabre, has ennobled that fine head, and given his royal highness's pale features an air of sunburnt and warlike vigor. Miss Corbaux, too, has painted one of the loveliest heads ever seen. Perhaps this is the pleasantest room of

the whole, for you are sure to meet your friends here; kind faces smile at you from the ivory; and features of fair creatures, O, how...

Here the eccentric author breaks into a rhapsody of thirteen pages regarding No. 2576, Mrs. Major Blogg, who was formerly Miss Poddy of Cheltenham, whom it appears that Michael Angelo knew and admired. The feelings of the Poddy family might be hurt, and the jealousy of Major Blogg aroused, were we to print Titmarsh's rapturous description of that lady; nor, indeed, can we give him any further space. He concludes by a withering denunciation of most of the statues, in the vault where they are buried; praising, however, the children, Paul and Virginia, the head of Bayly's nymph, and M'Dowall's boy. He remarks the honest character of the English countenance as exhibited in the busts, and contrasts it with Louis Philippe's head by Jones, on whom, both as a sculptor and a singer, he bestows great praise. He indignantly remonstrates with the committee for putting by far the finest female bust in the room, No. 1434, by Powers of Florence, in a situation where it cannot be seen; and, quitting the gallery finally, says he must go before he leaves town and give one more look at Hunt's "Boy at Prayers," in the Water-Color Exhibition, which he pronounces to be the finest serious work of the year.

The Deanery, Nov. 25, 1845. Ar this season of approaching Christmas, when tender mothers are furbishing up the children's bedrooms, and airing the mattresses which those little darlings (now counting the days at Dr. Swishtail's Academy, or the Misses Backboard's Finishing Establishment), are to occapy for six happy weeks, we have often, dear Mr. YORKE, examined the beautiful store of gilt books with pretty pictures which begin to glitter on Mr. Nickisson's library-table, and selected therefrom a store of presents for our numerous young friends. It is a pleasant labor. I like the kindly produce which Paternoster Row sends forth at this season. I like Christmas books, Christmas pantomimes, mincepies, snap-dragon, and all Christmas fruit; for though you and I can have no personal gratification in the two last-named deleterious enjoyments, to eat that abominable compound of currants, preserves, and puff-paste, which infallibly results in a blue pill, or to dip in a dish of inflamed brandy for the purpose of fishing out scalding raisins which we don't like, yet it gives us pleasure to see the young people so occupied — a melancholy and tender pleasure. We indulge in pleasant egotisms of youthful reminiscence. The days of our boyhood come back again. The holy holidays! How much better you remember those days than any other. How sacred their happiness is! how keen even at this minute their misery! I forget

whether I have told elsewhere the story of my friend, Sir John C He came down to breakfast with rather a disturbed and pallid countenance. His lady affectionately asked the cause of his disquiet. "I have had an unpleasant dream. I dreamed I was at Charter-House, and that Raine flogged me!" He is sixty-five years old. A thousand great events may have happened to him since that period of youthful fustigation. Empires have waxed and waned since then. He has come into 20,000l. a year; Napoleon is dead since that period, and also the late Mr. Pitt. How many manly friends, hopes, cares, pleasures, have risen and died, and been forgotten! But not so the joys and pains of boyhood, the delights of the holidays are still as brilliant as ever to him, the buds of the school birch-rod still tickle bitterly the shrinking os coccygis of memory!

Do you not remember, my dear fellow, our own joy when the 12th came and we plunged out of school, not to see the face of Muzzle for six weeks? A good and illustrious boy were you, dear OLIVER, and did your exercises, and mine too, with credit and satisfaction; but still it was a pleasure to turn your back upon Muzzle. Can you ever forget the glories of the beef-steak at the Bull and Mouth previous to going home; and the majestic way in which we ordered the port and pronounced it to be "ropy or "fruity;" and criticised the steak as if we had been

Joseph Bregion, cook to Prince Ransmausky? At twenty-five minutes past four precisely, the grays were in the coach; and the guard comes in and says, "Now, gentlemen!" We lighted cigars magnanimously (since marriage long, long before His Grace the Duke of Wellington's pathetic orders against smoking, we gave up the vile habit). We take up the insides at the office in the Quadrant; and go bowling down Piccadilly on the road to Hounslow, Snow, the guard, playing Home, Sweet Home," on the bugle. How clear it twangs on the ear even now! Can you ever forget the cold veal-pies at Bagshot, and the stout waiter with black tights, on the look-out for the coach as it came in to a minute? Jim Ward used to drive. I wonder where Jim is now. Is he gone? Yes, probably. Why the whole road is a ghost since then. The coaches and horses have been whisked up, and are passed away into Hades. The gaunt inns are tenantless; the notes of the horn that we used to hear tootling over Salisbury Plain as the dawn rose and the wind was nipping cold, are reverberating in endless space. Where are the jolly turnpikemen who used to come out as the lamps lighted up the white bars of the gates, and the horses were in a halo of smoke? How they used to go over the six miles between Honiton and Escot Lodge! and there- there on Fair Mile Hill is the little carriage waiting, and HOME in it, looking out with sweet eyes,- eyes, oh, how steadfast, and loving, and tender!

This sentimentalism may surprise my revered friend, and annoy the public, who are not called upon to be interested in their humble servant's juvenile biography; but it all comes very naturally out of the opening discussion about Christmas and Christmas books in general, and of this book in particular, just published by Mr. Burns, the very best of all Christmas books. Let us say this,

dear YORKE, who, in other days, have pitilessly trampled on Forget-menots," and massacred whole galleries of "Books of Beauty." By the way, what has happened to the beauties? Is May Fair used up? One does not wish to say any thing rude, but I would wager that any tea-party in Red Lion Square will turn out a dozen ladies to the full as handsome as the charmers with whose portraits we are favored this year. There are two in particular whom I really never but let us not be too personal, and return to Mr. Burns's "Poems and Pictures."

The charming" Lieder und Bilder" of the Dusseldorf painters has, no doubt, given the idea of the work. The German manner has found favor among some of our artists - the Puseyites of art, they may be called, in this country, such as Messrs. Cope, Redgrave, Townsend, Horsley, &c.; who go back to the masters before Raffaelle, or to his own best time (that of his youth), for their models of grace and beauty. Their designs have a religious and ascetic, not a heathen and voluptuous tendency." There is with them no revelling in boisterous nudities like Rubens, no glowing contemplation of lovely forms as in Titian or Etty, but a meek, modest, and downcast demeanor. They appeal to tender sympathies, and deal with subjects of conjugal or maternal love, or charity, or devotion. poetry, Goethe can't find favor in their eyes, but Uhland does. Milton is too vast for them, Shakspeare too earthy, but mystic Collins is a favorite; and gentle Cowper; and Alford sings pious hymns for them to the mild strains of his little organ.

In

The united work of these poets and artists is very well suited to the kind and gentle Christmas season. All the verses are not good, and some of the pictures are but feeble; yet the whole impression of the volume is an exceedingly pleasant one. The solemn and beautiful forms of the figures; the sweet, soothing cadences