regular and mournful to witness. They haunt the fairs and markets, losing in proportion to the advance of improvement elsewhere. On their first losses, they began to mortgage their lands. After bearing the burden of these mortgages till they could bear it no longer, their children have sold the lands: and among the shop-boys, domestic servants, and labourers of the towns, we find the old names of the former yeomanry of the district, who have parted with their lands to strangers. Much misery must always intervene during this process of transition. The farmer was tempted to lose the remembrance of his losses in drink when he attended the fairs and markets. The domestic manufactures he carried with him-the linen and woollen webs, woven by his wife and daughters-would not sell, except at a loss, in the presence of the Yorkshire and Lancashire

upon the swamps below them, and plough among the stones on the hillsides-here fencing in new grounds, there throwing several plots into one: they open slate-quarries, and make broad roads for the carriage of the produce; they cherish the young hollies and ash, whose sprouts feed their flocks, thus providing a compensation in the future for the past destruction of the woods. Thus, while the general primitive aspect of the region remains, and its intensely rural character is little impaired, there is perhaps scarcely a valley in the district | which, any more than this pass, looks exactly the same from one half century to another. The little lake below us was doubtless of a different extent, form, and character from what it is now, when the accident happened which is believed to have given it its name. Two brothers set out to cross it on the ice, as the shortest way to church, one Sunday, in a long-woollens and cottons, made by machinery. He forgotten time: the ice broke near the middle, and they were never seen more.

Such sales as we are about to attend (and it is time that we were turning back, after having once more fixed in our memory every feature of this noble pass)-show that changes among the people proceed no less certainly, while more rapidly, than among the scenes they dwell in. Once upon a time every household had nearly all that it wanted within itself. The people thought so little of wheaten bread, that wheat was hardly to be bought in the towns. Within even the existing generation, an old man of eighty-five, was fond of telling how, when a boy, he wanted to spend his penny on wheaten bread, and he searched through Carlisle from morning to evening before he could find a penny roll. The cultivator among the hills divided his field into plots, where he grew barley, oats, flax, and other produce, to meet the needs of his household. His pigs, fed partly on acorns or beech mast, yielded good bacon and hams; and his sheep furnished wool for clothing. Of course, he kept cows. The women spun and wove the wool and flax, and the lads made the wooden utensils, baskets, fishing-tackle, &c. Whatever else was needed, was obtained from the pedlers, who came their rounds two or three times a year; dropping in among the little farms from over the hills. The first great change was from the opening of carriage-roads. There was an inducement then to carry grain and stock to markets and fairs. More grain was sown than the household needed, and offered for sale. In a little while, the mountain farmers were sure to fail in competition in the markets, with dwellers in agricultural districts. The mountaineers had no agricultural science, and little skill; and the decline of the fortunes of the statesmen (estatesmen) as they are locally called, has been

became unable to keep his children at home;
and they went off to the manufacturing towns,
leaving home yet more cheerless-with fewer
busy hands and cheerful faces-less social
spirit in the dales-greater certainty of con-
tinued loss, and more temptation to drink.
Such is the process still going on. Having
reached this pass, it is clearly best that it
should go on till the primitive population, hav-
ing lost its safety of isolation and independence,
and kept its ignorance and grossness, shall
have given place to a new set of inhabitants,
better skilled in agriculture, and in every way
more up to the times.
It is mournful enough
to a resident to meet everywhere the remnants
of the old families, in a reduced and discou-
raged condition; but if they can no longer fill
the valleys with grain, and cover the hillsides
with flocks, it is right that those who can
should enter upon their lands, and that know-
ledge, industry and temperance, should find
their fair field and due reward.

When we leave the Highest House, after our luncheon, and turn through the gate for Troutbeck, we begin to see how the country-side makes a festival of such a breaking up as we have already told the story of. There is the family from the High Stock farm, climbing the hill to drop down into Troutbeck, by the shortest way. It is the first time this season, that they have ventured over the bog. And look at the fiddler, coming down from the opposite ridge, in hope of being wanted for a dance in the evening! And now, when looking down into the deep, long trough of the Troutbeck valley, we see how much it has lost of its wonted quiet. Its primitive dwellings have poured out their inhabitants, to make yonder crowd, far below, which marks the place of the sale. As we draw near, my heart fails me. I see the old man, with his downcast face, and the old wife, with

298

Why, even

J. has found a party of

her apron often at her eyes. Their children | through the dales to buy them up. Ah! now should have removed them yesterday. But the old cabinet is going; and this, at last, is they would not go, I am told, and they boast too much for the humbled owner. of their children's doings in the great towns, I cannot bear it. as they fill the jugs of beer on yonder table, friends to join. I shall deliver over the purse and set on another bottle of whiskey. How and the whole business-pig-buying and allthe auctioneer walks to and fro, to collect the to her, and go home. bids, restless as a beast in a cage, rather than majestic as a southern auctioneer in a pulpit. There there goes the old carved chair-the straight, highbacked, black chair, so curiously carved, with its date, 1607, half disclosed among the old vine pattern! It is bought in at once, evidently for some moneyed personprobably some London gentleman, or West End cabinet-maker; for these old carved chairs are the fashion in London now, and agents go

And here I am again in quiet, half way up the heights, with that finest of all the views of Windermere opening before me, which you Americans say, is so like their North River, near West Point. It is not so beautiful as that, For three miles but it is exquisite in its way. to come it will be before me at every turn, till I have descended to its brink, and left it behind me, a mile from my own home.

LINES IN HONOUR OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES,

Which expired at midnight, March 3d, 1843. [Never before published.]

BY JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

BENJAMIN WEST.

BY JOHN SARTAIN.

(Continued from p. 120.)

As the dramatic art in England was indebted to John Kemble for introducing to the stage a costume appropriate to the character and time represented, so does historic pictorial art in like manner owe to the great American painter its rescue from the absurd practice that up to his time prevailed. Garrick played King Lear and Richard the Third in a style of dress but little removed from that in which his successors acted Sir Peter Teazle; while Desdemona's graceful form was outwardly distorted by a hideous framework of wicker baskets over her hips (called hoops), to set out the gown; and the structure of whalebone, etc., erected amidst her well-powdered hair, required almost the skill of an architect to construct.

He

and others, but he planned, and in great part executed, a magnificent series of pictures on the progress of revealed religion, which he divided into four classes,-the antediluvian, the patriarchal, the mosaical, and the prophetical, in all thirty-six subjects, an equal number being taken from the Old and New Testament. Eight only remained to be painted of this surprising work, when the derangement of his patron's mind arrested his pencil. was informed by the new authority that the pictures painting for the royal chapel must be suspended, and he found that the customary quarterly instalments in which he had received his thousand pounds a year on account of the works in progress, had also been stopped. It The same people who saw nothing in all this was evident that the Prince Regent, afterwards monstrosity that did violence to good taste, George the Fourth, was unfavourably disposed would, at the same time, have had West paint towards West and his pictures. After he bethe subject of the death of General Wolfe, came king, and was amusing himself with under the walls of Quebec, in America, with alterations in Windsor Castle, he was about to the figures clad in the costume of Greeks and consign to the lumber-room all the pictures by Romans! But the good sense of our artist West, with which one of the apartments was sufficed him to break the shackles of a stupid entirely filled. But the courtly artist, Sir Thocustom, and he succeeded, in his own way, in mas Lawrence, ventured to remonstrate, stating producing from that subject what is acknow-it as his opinion, that there was not a painter ledged to be one of the very finest historical pictures in England. So powerful is the force of habit, that even the sagacious and philosophic Reynolds, when West began this picture, declared that the attempt to paint modern heroes in modern dress would be a failure. After the work was completed he called to see it, and having sat silently before it for perhaps half an hour, arose, saying, "West has conquered; he has treated the subject as it ought to be treated; I retract my objection; I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will occasion a revolution in art." "I wish," said the King, "that I had known all this before, for the objection has been the means of Lord Grosvenor's getting the picture. But you shall make a copy for me."

then living equal to the task of supplying their place with works of equal merit; so they were allowed to remain.

On the King's recovery the painter was again directed to proceed with his labours, but with the relapse came also a second suspension of the works, which this time was final. It was now that our artist began those great pictures, a part of which have been extensively exhibited in his native country. "Death on the Pale Horse," purchased a few years since by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia for ten thousand dollars, is still in one of the galleries of that institution, and is a wonderfully fine work. It measures twentyfive feet by fifteen, and was produced when its author had nearly attained the age of eighty years. When it first arrived in Philadelphia it was exhibited to the public in the Hall of Independence, the use of which the city authorities

Whether the copy was ever made does not clearly appear, but he continued to paint for his friendly employer not only numerous his-had granted for the purpose. It covered the torical pictures, many of which are well known in this country by the fine engravings that were made from them by William Sharp

entire east wall from side to side; and vast numbers thronged to see it. In the same gallery of the Academy is another fine work by

By

him of "Paul and Silas," which formerly be- | bringing Sir Herbert Taylor to terms. longed to the City of Philadelphia, but is now what means the documents which he commenced also the property of the Academy. In one of publishing came into his possession did not the western rooms of the same building is the appear, but the affair was very speedily hushed famous picture of "Christ Healing the Sick in up, and the further publication of the papers the Temple," presented by the painter to the suppressed. They contained evidence of his Pennsylvania Hospital. "Christ Rejected" has own paternity, and exposed the atrocious disalso been extensively exhibited in the United soluteness of a portion of the royal family. States, where it probably still remains. It is, The date of the marriage of the Princess his perhaps, nearly as large as "Death on the Pale mother, to General Garth, leads naturally to Horse," at least it so appeared as I remember the inference that this domestic family trouble it in West's Gallery, in Newman's Street, Lon- was what overthrew the intellect of the King. don, where these two remarkable pictures were The connexion of the then Duke of Cumberland hung opposite each other; they looked ex- (now King of Hanover) with this business would, tremely well from the skilful management of from his known character, create no surprise the light. The light was of course admitted whatever. That General Garth should have through the roof, and immediately beneath it lent himself as convenient means of suppressing was a canopy of dark-coloured material, sup- the scandal, is less remarkable than that on ported on slender pillars. Thus, the effect of another occasion, the jury of twelve men should the pictures was much more luminous, owing have been furnished with consciences so elastic to the partial obscurity in which the spectator as to acquit the Duke of the murder of his stood. These and a number of others, the valet, in defiance of the evidence before them. product of the last years of his life, are all of The son was worthy of the sire, except in the the largest dimensions. degree of atrocity of his crimes.

Many of these works remained to be sold after his death, and the total product of the three days' sale appears to have been a little over twenty-five thousand pounds. He received from the King a trifle over thirty-four thousand pounds, and for other works, from different individuals, about six thousand. This forty thousand pounds obtained during his life, was by no means an adequate compensation for such skill and labour, assiduously exerted for nearly sixty years. A curious calculation has shown, that were all his works collected together, it would require a gallery eight hundred feet long, fifty feet broad, and twenty feet high, to contain them.

The interruption and subsequent stop which the King's loss of reason occasioned to the ardent painter's great work was a misfortune, not to its author merely, but proved a real loss to art. No artist had ever attempted so vast and comprehensive a series, and it is lamentable to contemplate the disappointment he must have suffered. The immediate cause of the sovereign's illness was not generally known, but certain articles written by or at the instance of the profligate and notorious Captain Garth, appearing in the London newspapers a little over twenty years since, throw some light upon the matter; and as the event produced the great and serious trouble of West's life, a slight notice of it may not be regarded as out of place here.

This man, as it appeared, had his support from the government funds, but finding the allowance inadequate to the wants of a life such as his, he became importunate for more; this being refused, he soon found means of

As the formation of the Royal Academy of Arts in England is intimately connected with the personal history of West himself, it can hardly be considered out of place here to take a rapid glance at that celebrated institution, which is by no means deserving of the admiration bestowed upon it by superficial observers. It began in fraud and trickery, and has been, for the most part, continued with a mixture of meanness and arrogance, by no means characteristic of the individual members, apart from their corporate capacity. The idea generally received of matters of this kind is such as interested persons dress up for the press; a decorous drama is played off before the public with set speeches written and conned by heart, and with due emblazoning of royal munificence, &c.; the whole intended to be seen but from one point of view. But only pass in behind the scenes, and look upon the wire-pullings and intrigues, and the affair assumes quite another aspect.

The custom, now universally prevalent where a sufficient number of artists reside, of holding annual exhibitions of pictures, is an admirable means of diffusing a love of art throughout the community, and in England began just ninety years ago. In 1750 the artists began seriously to agitate the project, from finding how great an attraction to the public the few pictures became, which they had presented to the Foundling Hospital in London. They had an academy of art supported by contributions amongst themselves, and the frequent discussions on the subject at these meetings finally led to successful action. Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote the introduction to the first catalogue,