would be noticed, and it is silent because it could effect no good purpose by speaking.

Still there is a species of painting capable of affording great pleasure to the beholder, in which there appears to have been an equal representation of all parts of nature;where the artist seems to have discovered some camera lucida which had the power of staining the canvass with its shadowssome invaluable mirror, which retained indelibly the forms and the colours thrown upon its surface. We may be asked how we explain this pleasure consistently with our theory. If we attend to the subjects of these pictures the answer will be at once easy and satisfactory, for they will always be found to contain nothing which can interest the passions. Such are the flowers of Vandervelde, the cattle of Potter, the landscapes of Glover, the boors of Teniers, and one or two family scenes of Wilkie*. Here the pleasure of the spectator is derived from comparisons to which he is invited between the reality and its representation. He examines the picture in detail, and is delighted to find that nothing has been forgotten. Sometimes also this exactitude of representation produces an impression of reality, and conveys to the spectator's mind the same sensations as he would receive from

contemplating the scenes themselves. But this impression, thus gradually made by detailed comparisons, could not possibly affect the mind with the more powerful emotions, even if every part of the representation tended to the production of a like impulse. This, however, can never take place. Reality, as we have already shewn, offers to the mind a series of objects necessarily incongruous in their effects. Some affect it with their magnitude, some with their beauty, others with their pettiness or their deformity, and many have no definable operation on the mind. Nor can this defect (if we may be allowed the term) be obviated by arrangement, because the parts of the same object differ as much as the objects themselves; therefore, as we have already shewn, a gross and complete imitation of reality or nature will never produce powerful emotion, as contending forces will never strongly urge the object of their impulse. Still, in order to convey a feeling of reality, this incongruous assemblage must be represented; and hence the narrow limits of effect which it is given to this department of art to produce. But even here, although unobserved by the spectator, the artist has departed from his original. We believe that no painter ever existed who could confine himself to a mere transcript of nature.

The Breakfast.

Some play of lights, some artificial blending of colours and arrangement of shadows, must be allowed him, by which he may charm the eye and prepare it to view his work with complacency.

And now we are ready to return to the consideration of the meaning of Gusto an object which the reader may naturally suppose we had completely lost sight of.

We have seen that every work of art is intended to produce some specific effect on the beholder-that effect in its strength and vividness is called Gusto. It is not excellence, because that resides in the picture; it is what is produced by excellence in the mind of the spectator, and it is only used when the effect is powerful. It is in fact (if the grammarians will allow us to say so) a substantive in the superlative degree.

Gusto then is a feeling in the mind of the beholder, produced by the excellence or completeness with which the conception of the artist is conveyed to him, through the medium of the image presented to his eye; but, as we can hardly figure to ourselves the possibility of any man conveying to another an emotion which he did not experience himself, we confound our feelings with those of the artist, and thus we talk of his Gusto.

The vividity of conception in the mind of the artist is his Gusto. The vividity of conception conveyed into our minds by his works is our Gusto; and the work itself is merely the channel of communication between us.

If we look to the origin of Art, we shall see at once that no man would ever become a painter or a sculptor for the mere pleasure of representation. It is evident that the artist had in his mind some vivid image which he was anxious to shew to his fellow men. He cast about for means by which he might enable them to share in his emotions. Art offered itself as the most distinct, general, and powerful language; and he became a painter or a sculptor.

But here new difficulties arose. He found that to teach the fingers to obey the mind was by no means the work of a moment. Repeated attempts to produce this obedience gradually improved the language of art; but this improvement, while it diminished the labours of the young artist, who availed himself of the discoveries of his predecessors, and travelled along the road which they had marked out, had the disadvantage of inviting into the profession men who entered it with much the same rational object as a boy takes up the tools of the carpenter, attracted by the capacity of producing effect, but caring nothing for the end for which this effect is produced. Such artists, if they deserve the name, resemble

those authors who, by the aid of grammars, dictionaries, graduses, theme-writing, and verse-making, have attained what they call a style, and thence think themselves qualified to write a book, only taking a subject as an excuse for coming before the public, and as a necessary conformity to the prejudices of the world. We need not say that the works of such men have no Gusto. They form, it is true, the channel of communication between the mind of the artist and that of the beholder; but it is a channel without a current, for there are no ideas to be conveyed. Such a style of art has therefore (not inaptly) received the epithet of dry. To us it seems as , useless as a book composed by Swift's machine. But so long as men continue to reason themselves into the delusion that the object of art is imitation, that is to say, so long as men pay more attention to the signs than the things signified, so long will there be such writers and such painters as we have described.

But the times afford signs of better things. Unnecessary prettinesses, whether in art or in letters, begin to be despised. Some there are who think it beneath the dignity of man to become the slave of his own creatures-that language of whatever kind, verbal or graphic, ought not to receive a particle of attention beyond what is necessary to fit it for answering its purpose in the best possible manner.

W. P.

SONNET.

Hail to thee, Music, hail to thee,
Thou art the voice of Liberty !-ETONIAN.

I WOKE with throbbing heart and restless brain;
The memory of that self-devoted maid,

A haunting care, upon my spirit prey'd,
And deeper thoughts, pregnant with obscure pain *,
Lay like a heavy load upon my brain:

When lo! a voice: 'twas a light-hearted boy,
Singing, ay, singing at his morn's employ ;

A boy, yet delicate and soft the strain

As ever maiden sang, at twilight hour,

In pastoral cot, or stately latticed bower.

I lay and listen'd, till all thoughts of pain

And sorrow melted from me, and my mind,
To a still dream of melody resign'd,

Lay hush'd and tranquil as a summer main.

*The expression "obscure pain" in the above Sonnet, is borrowed from a very

powerful line of Coleridge's:

And obscure pangs made curses of his sleep.

: 81

MADAME CATALANI.

AND now, said Lady Mary, reprenons le sujet des cantatrices. Let us take a more excursive range, and, leaving the warblers of our own isle, consider the exotic productions of a warmer climate; and first, "hail, foreign wonder," thou vast Leviathan of song, stupendous Catalani!

Ed. Br. I shall never forget the vague sensations of childish delight, which even the sound of that wonder-working name excited in me, when, having scarcely numbered eight summers, I was told one happy evening, that I should hear Catalani, then appearing for the first time in England, at the Opera House. O, blissful era, before we begin to define what gives us pleasure before we learn to criticise, or blame-when all is warmth, rapture, and illusion! I cannot give any distinct account of what I thought, or felt on that (to me) memorable evening. In the first place, the Opera House what a grandiloquent and mighty sound did that appellation carry with it to my inexperienced ears! What a multitude of strange, yet pleasing ideas, did it summon up, as by a spell! I had never been there before. Were I to dilate upon this subject, I fear that you would accuse me of covertly borrowing from the delightful Elia of the London Magazine, who describes so eloquently the sensations that accompanied his "first play. I will, therefore, boldly quote from him at once-for what other words than his own could supply so well,

"The shifts and turns,

Th' expedients and inventions multiform,
To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms
Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,

T'arrest the fleeting images, that fill
The mirror of the mind?"

Thus, then. "When we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed-the breathless anticipations I endured! The boxes full of well-dressed women of quality, the pilasters adorned with a glittering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed) resembling-a homely fancy-but I judged it to be sugar-candy,-yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy! The orchestra lights at length arose, those fair Auroras!' the bell sounded; the curtain drew up;"-and (to proceed in my own person) in rushed Catalani, with a musical shriek, which thrilled every nerve in my body. The opera was La Sèmi

VOL. II. PART I.

G

ramide. She is flying from her husband's ghost;-she entreats the perturbed spirit, to let her rest;-she exclaims with anguish, "Lascia mi, Lascia mi in pace." The attitude, so wild, yet so graceful-the look of beautiful horror the very words, though I have never seen, or heard them since, are all marvellously imprinted on my mind. The rest has faded from my recollection-except an indistinct and mysterious sort of image, which I have before my mental eyes, of a tomb scarcely discerned upon the darkened stage, and Catalani wandering near it with a dagger in her grasp. She plunges it in her bosom; she sinks upon the steps of the tomb ;-she breathes forth her soul, like the swan of Cayster, in dying harmony. To fall at once into the profound of Bathos, I own that I did (at the time) think it a little odd, that any one should sing while in the agonies of death, but I have no doubt that the oddity only increased the charm to my youthful imagination.

The next time that I heard Catalani was in Paris; I was then fifteen-an age at which all illusion has not yet left the mind; while the powers of judging, discriminating, and appreciating are fast unfolding themselves. Before I went to the theatre, I endeavoured to anticipate the pleasure I was about to enjoy, by recalling, as far as I was able, the impression which this wonderful performer had left upon my memory; but all was vague, and dim; I retained only a confused idea of tones, unlike those of the human voice-birdlike shakes; and, above all, of a peculiar vibration on a high note, like the undulating sound produced by running the finger round a water-glass. Thus was curiosity added to anticipation. The feeling was, "I am now about to know what it was I heard then." I was at length so wrought up, that I could have jumped out to push at the back of the old creeping fiacre, in which I was accompanying some ladies to the opera, as if I could have thus accelerated its motion. There are boxes in the French Opera House of singular construction; they are (as the French express it) "pratiqués" within the pillars that support the tiers, with openings for sight, invisible to those without, between the flutings of the column. They are only calculated to hold two, who, themselves unseen, can see all that is going forward. On an ordinary occasion, the situation for a female is by no means a reputable one-but on this, when every part of the theatre was occupied by the first company, when a hundred guineas had been even offered for a box, ladies thought themselves fortunate in being safely seated dans une loge de colonne, Here, then, I was placed, with one of the ladies of our party.

Lady M. She could not have been either remarkably young, or remarkably handsome, to submit to being thus hidden