escape of Francesco di Carrarra, last lord of Padua, and Taddea d'Este, his wife (who was ill at the time) from the power of Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan." So saith our catalogue; and further, it gives us the passage of history which the artist has illustrated.

"Dans les déserts et parmi les rochers, des émissaires de Visconti étoient aux aguets pour surprendre les fugitifs : partout les voyageurs étoient entourés de dangers, et Francois de Carrare, après avoir marché tout le jour dans les chemins tortueux qui sillonnent ces âpres montagnes, soutenant de son bras sa femme au bord des precipices, n'osoit point le soir entrer dans une maison pour s'y reposer; à Ventimiglia le podestat les fit poursuivre par ses archers."-Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age, tom. vii.

The escape! It is well to know the fact, lest from the power of the painter we might be led to make those woes and fears which were another's our own by gentle sympathy. We should scarcely, in sooth, have anticipated an escape; so beset with dangers and difficulties is the savage path trodden by the fugitives. Is it not a grand group? The lady! Oh, she is sick, sick, clinging in the extremity of fear and suffering-of mighty anguish, and still mightier love, to her right

noble husband. And he was there ever yet seen a more gallant cavalier? The paleness of will unalterable, of courage imperturbable, is on his cheek and brow; the blood has rallied in force at his body's citadel, the heart; and as with Lara in his last battle,

"In him there is an air

As deep, but far too tranquil for despair." One hand is on the hilt of his sword. He may be compelled to stand at bay upon the instant! His life will at least be dearly sold! The other hand gently presses his lady's arm, and that thrilling touch assures her

"

My friends may falter, and my band may flee;" Farewell to life, but not adieu to thee!" The head, and form, and aspect of the boy leading the mule, too, is admirably conceived and executed. The colouring, by the way, in this, as indeed in all Eastlake's pictures, is eminently Titianesque. He brings out the flesh in precisely the same manner, by means of that self-same russet shading in the outline. Come to the next room, and

see his " Martyr." In this figure will you not allow that he has in no small degree attained and achieved

"The tints of Titian and Correggio's grace?"

How delicately well is the expression of the countenance managed! Here is the courage of Christ's soldier most admirably displayed. The eyelids are closed, but they have not all concealed the meek resigned expression of the orbs beneath. You see the arrow fixed in the trunk of the tree to which the martyr is fastened. The last day I was here I heard a young painter observe, with no less truth than naïveté, "A common villain, sir, would have stuck that arrow in his side." I am afraid, however, that the original honour of the bad shot belongs to Titian.

*

Stop! here is one of Stanfield's Venetian pictures. It is painted under a strange, although no doubt true aspect, of the heavens. The figures are welldrawn and grouped, and it is altogether a fine painting. "It likes me not" so well, however, as the smaller one we before so enthusiastically admired. If I were not afraid of being supposed to mingle political prejudice with my feeling towards the picture, I would tell you there is too much of grey in it. You have seen enough - you are tired -you wish to go away. No, Liz, no! there is one more picture you must visit- ay, in the high enthusiasm of a pilgrim. But softly! Upon Addison's principle, as set forth in the introductory part of the first paper in the Spectator, I will furnish you with a reason for "enthusimusy." You remember that maudlin old proser talks of one's enjoyment in the perusal of a book being enhanced by our acquaintance with the fact of whether the author be a tall man or a short, of a fair or of a dark complexion, and so forth; in a word, by our knowing the author. He expresses the opinion prettily, as usual, and, as usual, feebly. He stole it from-I cannot immediately recollect from whom-but, at all events, from a writer of male mind, who had accordingly put forth his thoughts with vigour. No matter; if the doctrine be correct (and such I assuredly believe it to be) it should hold good as well with respect to creators of works of art as with the composer of books. Therefore is it I am anxious to shew you the painter of the picture to which we are about to wend our way. Do you see that tall, slender youth, with the neckerchief rather flung round than folded on a fair and muscular neck, and those blackest elf locks, clustering in orderly confusion about his head and brow? That is the painter of "The Installation of Captain Rock," which we are now going to see. His name? Why, it is not the most euphonious or sentimental in the world--Daniel MacClise. But "what's in a name," &c. &c., Lizzy? Look at him, and tell me if you be not persuaded that he must be a man of genius. I must tell you, by the by, that he is my beau idéal of a German student; not one of the mere filthy herd, who are only fit to puff away their souls with the aid of Meerschaum pipes, and patter Kant (if I may be allowed the pun), but a sort of Novalis

- a gentle idealist, who lives in his own world-a man familiar with high thoughts, and choicest impulses, and noblest aspirations, and the mute influences of incommunicable dreams. Can you not conceive him even now, as he stands in personal solitude amidst the buzzing throng - there being no communion whatsoever between his mind and the surrounding crowdcan you not conceive his soul and senses to be wrapt in the contemplation of some grand theorem of transcend ental philosophy; some forlorn yet pleasing speculation concerning God and Destiny, Freewill and the judgment of the last great day, the phantasmal forms of things, the mystery of existence, and the secrets of the grave? Or may he not, in sweet and subtle thought, be analysing and separating and defining the various differences, properties, and accidents of Soul and Mind, to use the language of the ancient Pythagoreans; or of Understanding and Reason, to adopt the phraseology of the modern transcendentalists? He may; -the wildered glance of that deeply-meaning eye, and that massive freely-chiselled brow, "sicklied o'er (as it is) with the pale cast of thought," declare that he may. Yet is he not! Visions of such matters, I should believe, have never heretofore possessed or shadowed his mind, all dreamer and mystic though he be; as is every man of genius upon occasions-every man who has the higher powers of the intellect, who has the almighty will

and the illimitable capability of excitement, which are the symbols and the implements of Genius. Great, however, he might be in any pursuit to which he chose to devote himself; he might be more and better than a painter. Having selected painting, however, I hesitate not to say, that if life and health be but vouchsafed to him for some years longer, he will be the first painter of his age. He is even now the Dryden; I should not despair of yet seeing him the Shakespeare of his art.

And why the Dryden? I will tell you. In reading the glorious poetry of Dryden, the sense, the feeling most strongly impressed upon one's mind, is of the POET'S Power, of his manly vigour, of his mighty intellect, which, giant-like, ever rears its head above the subject on which it is occupied, making it look as though it were beneath its full exertion; or as if, at least, its full exertion had not been vouchsafed to it. Ay, Lizzy! for that Intellect still towers above all its own creations, beautiful, august, resplendent, though they be; and conveys unfaillingly to the mind the sensation of indistinct and unlimited vastness. Thus is it in like manner with respect to MacClise's pictures. In gazing on them, we are more deeply impressed with a sense of the vigour and genius of the painter, than with admiration of the painting. The subject, however masterly may be the manner in which it has been treated, appears beneath his powers, and shews as though these vast powers were not all put forth upon it. We feel that he could do better than that on which our eye is resting; and we feel that, had it so pleased him, he might have done that better. But enough of disquisition critical and learned; let us go and speak to him. You have guessed he is a friend of mine, for though I have spoken but the truth, I have spoken it fervidly. Come, you cannot fail to like him; for he is one of those kindly beings

"That make the salt of earth."

expense in Italy. His fame ought, in no small degree, to be considered by them as theirs; and really, when they could find accommodation in good lights for acres, and literally "dirty acres," of daubed canvass, I think they might have done something better for the youthful artist they had reared.

As I am abusing the Academy upon one point, I may as well go on to abuse them upon another. This is general. The academicians and associates, men whose fame is already made, whether for good or evil, enjoy the privilege of touching their pictures so as to adapt their tints to the particular, and probably the new lights, in which they are placed in the exhibition-rooms. This privilege is denied to all others; so that the young and inexperienced those who have yet a reputation to create, and who would most need the use of all appliances and means, are precluded from the enjoyment of an indulgence which is accorded to others, who cannot be supposed to be so much in want of it, and who appear in the unenviable position of seeming to reserve it to themselves; not so much from a belief that it can be of any particular use to them, as from a conviction that it cannot fail to be of serious injury to their young competitors. In fact, their conduct in this respect is so excessively mean, so utterly unworthy of an association of Englishmen Englishmen, who from their very cradle are taught to love fair-play, that it only requires to be known to the public to be abolished. From the mode in which this picture is placed, whereby we are absolutely forced up to it by the incumbent crowd, it is necessary that I should tell you the story it conveys, that you may be enabled to enjoy it; and this I will do as shortly and as simply as I may.

*

The scene is laid in a ruined abbey - a very common sight in the south of Ireland, thanks to the old Fitzgeralds, and Butlers, and the more recent labours of Ireton and Cromwell. It is not quite so usual, however, to see tables spread, and the vulgar process of mastication going forward, in a place hallowed by superstition. But let that pass. There is a crowd assembled, and the business on hand is the installation of a chief, in the room of the last scoundrel who held the office, and whose career (it is to be presumed) has been lately cut short by the bullet of

the policeman, or, more appropriately, by the noose of the hangman. Perhaps that ill-favoured elderly personage, now stretched a corpse upon the tombstone, may be the late Captain Rock. At all events, the fine athletic fellow who is vowing revenge upon the body, is some relation-perhaps the nephew of the defunct rebel. The hunchback, raised upon the shoulders of a kneeling figure (who is laughing at the malicious enthusiasm, the impotent rage and fierceness of his deformed burden), is about, with congratulatory grin, to place an old infantry cap on the head of the young chieftain. Another fellow, in all the valorous excitement of drunkenness, places his paw over the hands of the other figures laid on the breast of the body; they, with various gestures, pledge themselves to vengeance. Three keeners are already engaged; one is chanting forth the praises of the deceased in the wild Ullaloah, and another is adjusting the toes, tying them for the decorous arrangement of the body. Young women, daughters probably of the deceased, in all the abandonment of grief, are flung on the ground, near their father's head. Above these is a descent of figures, bearing in a wounded man; serving to shew that an affray has recently taken place. On the left is a rude table seen in perspective, round which are various figures, engaged in different ways; four with crossed hands, pledging themselves in unity and good fellowship to the cause; others drinking whisky from egg-shells, and so on; while at the top of the table the country schoolmaster, the Philomath, as he would love to be called, is concluding an harangue on the grand topics of the day to a portion of the assemblage. The poor scholar, a youthful Dicky Shiel, is his most attentive auditor; still on the left, in the foreground, are two women, one playing with a child, who is trying to draw a sword - (this would seem to intimate an early familiarity with the use of weapons, which, by the way, the Irish peasant has not)-the other praying on the grave of a relative. There is beside, in the artistic cant, a bit of simplicity in the shape of a child carelessly picking daisies. On the right is a group, of an old Terry alt veteran teaching a young bosthoun how to use a gun, the muzzle of the gun being addressed to the spectator's eye as well as the finger of the old wooden-legged director; a group of girls are fluttered,

a

one places her hands on her ears, as if dreading the report of the piece; a boccaugh, or sham cripple, mad with patriotism and pothien, unbuckles his wooden leg, and flourishes his crutch,he is actively drunk; another leans on him passively ditto, and his face is expressive of a hiccup. Beyond this group, for the sake of composition, there is a plump of heads--of boys and girls; the latter are engaged in disguising the faces of their " bachelors," by painting moustaches on them, or by blackening the face all over; kissing and courting are of course going on simultaneously with the business of the hour. The scene takes place after one expedition, and previous to another. The line is completed by distant group listen to an agitator raised on a barrel, and very like Lord Althorp in the back. Now there is the story of the picture, which, from the air of confusion imparted to it by the bad light, and the proximity to it into which you are compelled by the constant crowd, it would have cost you half-a-dozen visits to make out. That this painting is a work of genius it is scarcely necessary to observe. Nothing can be finer than the drawing throughout; and the colouring, so far as the fair faces of the women are concerned, quite equals any thing that was ever done by Rubens. Still, however, there are many faults; but in sooth they are scarcely separable from the subject, which has been most injudiciously selected: it is one wherewith no human being entering the exhibition, unless it be some scoundrel agitator, can have the slightest sympathy. If the visitor be English, his feelings revolt against the portraiture of those Irish kerne - those rebelruffians, whose savage deeds, whose atrocious blood-guiltiness he is continually contemplating through the magnifying medium of the lying newspapers. If the visitor, on the contrary, be Anglo-Irish, what are his feelings towards the Rockites? the most intense contempt and hatred commingled-the feeling of the man towards the poisonous reptile: he knows that the Rockites are the most treacherous and cowardly rascals in the wide world, excepting only the agitators by whom they are incited. He is lost in amazement, therefore, to see genius employed upon the depicture of such a rascaille rabblement ! For myself,

have all the characteristics of that illfavoured race: but the women are, one and all, Anglo-Hibernian. That sunny hair, those blue eyes, that delieately-fair complexion, were never yet seen, excepting amongst the English of England and the English of Ireland. They are to be found in no other country, nor amongst any other race under the sun.

*

*

*

You are quite right. The faces of the ladies (for such they be) are as clearly distinguishable from the murky faces of the peasantry as the pure crystal waters of Lake Leman from the dusky current of the Rhone, with which, cast together though they be, the gentle lake suffers not its glassy floods to mingle. I repeat, then, that I much regret he did not transfer the scene to some other country and some other age; that he did not imbody persons in whom we might acknowledge sympathy. Might not some such passage as is here represented be imagined in the history of Spartacus, that immortal slave and rebel? Might we not have him in the ruins of some ancient temple, vowing vengeance against imperious Rome and the Roman name, over the body of some fellow-slave, done to death by the cruelty of his patrician master, and surrounded by the multitude of slaves, male and female, belonging to some great household? Here would have been an opportunity, by the introduction of rich and flowing costume, to relieve the picture from some of that monotony of tone in the colouring which it necessarily acquires from the sombre dresses of the men. Here would be a scene which would strike every heart with sympathy - every heart, at least, that was conscious of the wrongs which in the olden time were heaped by the guilty few upon the miserable many. But away with these dreams! Amongst the rest, I regret that MacClise painted this particular picture; for I am much afraid that he will be mistaken for a Radical, or, still worse, a Whig: the fact being, that he has never dabbled the least in politics, and has nothing of political feeling, excepting perhaps that instinctive disposition to free and gentle Toryism which is proper to a high-minded gentleman. But let us consider the picture as it actually is. And after one observation or two in blame, let us turn to the more grateful duty of praise. There is a want of unity in the design which injures the effect, though inseparable from the ambitious nature of the subject, which is the representation of a miscellaneous multitude, severally operated upon at a period of high excitement by the feelings proper to their nature. There are in this picture materials for a dozen different pictures, that would be each excellent of its kind. Again, there is the ambitious attempt to represent positive action, which almost always fails miserably, and never can, in my mind, be executed with complete success. I allude to the group in which the boccaugh plays the principal part.

And lastly, I would say, the admixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce, as in real life, was a perilous experiment in painting: it rarely succeeds in poesy-rarely even in plain plain prose, and nothing but high genius could make it other than a failure in "painting mute and motionless." In a word, to use a familiar illustration, a calm, cold spectator, coming to gaze upon a picture in which the fitful ebullitions of our nature are represented, is pretty much in the situation of a man perfectly sober entering a company excited and flushed with liquor. Nothing, however, can be finer than the expression of the principal figure; there is in it all the nobleness of intense feeling, without the slightest touch of exaggeration. All the women, especially the sister who is tying on the sash, and the delicious little minx who affects to dread the report of the gun, are most exquisitely depicted. The chiaro 'scuro, too, is better and more artistic in this picture than in any other of MacClise's I have ever seen; and there is wonderful breadth, when you consider the number of heads and the difficulty of massing the various groups.

Enough, however, for one day; I really cannot think of keeping you longer in the oppressive atmosphere of this crowd. We will turn in again tomorrow, and then I will shew you some exquisitely beautiful drawings by Chalon.

Crimine persona est?"