SIGHTS OF LONDON. MEXICAN WONDERS: OR A PEEP INTO THE PICCADILLY MUSEUM ; MY DEAR SIR,— 24 ATHENEUM VOL. 2. 2d series. to satisfy my curiosity, without either travelling to Grand Cairo, like the Spectator, or making a voyage to the North Seas, like Captain Parry. This power of changing our horizon without changing our latitude we owe to Mr. Bullock; and I sincerely hope he will live long enough to give us a view of every thing worth seeing on the habitable globe, until it may be said that the whole world has shifted, piecemeal. through the two great rooms in Piccadilly. Upon entering these chambers, last week, I appeared to have left the Old World outside the door; I had taken a "Trip to Mexico" without even the ceremony of asking Neptune for a soft wave, or Eolus for a fair wind; I had, in fact, stepped from Burlington-arcade into the middle of America. Every thing was new; nothing reminded me of Old England,-save and except that I had to pay half-acrown for a couple of sixpenny_catalogues, whereby my voyage to Mexico cost me nearly double what it ought. This forcibly reminded me that I could not be very far from Westminster-abbey, and that Great Britain's local deity, Mammon, in the shape of a door-keeper, was still close at my elbow, picking my pocket. However, even Charon expects a penny for rowing us over the Styx,-and why should not Mr. Bullock receive forty times as much for taking us over more than forty times as wide a water-the Atlantic Ocean? Upon walking into the upper room, which contains the reliques of Ancient Mexico, I was mightily struck by the close resemblance many of them bore to the antiquities of Egypt. There was a Zodiac of Denderah, under the title of the Great Kalendar Stone of Mexico, and otherwise known to the Indians by the name of Montezuma's Watch. It weighs five tons, and I cannot help remarking, that if Montezuma's breeches pocket was propor ty.-At the west end of the same room (which is fitted up so as to convey some notion of the Temple of Mexico) is a colossal Rattle-snake, in the act of swallowing a female victim; this Idol of the people is confronted by another amiable figure, at the eastend, representing Teoamiqui, the goddess of war. Her form is partly human, and the rest divided between rattle-snake and tiger. The goddess has moreover adorned her charms with a necklace composed of human hearts, hands, and skulls; and before her is placed the great Sacrificial Altar, on the top of which is a deep groove where the victim was laid by the priest. This, and many other objects in the room, are sculptured with a degree of precision and elegance, the more surprising as the use of iron was unknown to Mexico, when invaded by the Spaniards. tional to his watch, and Montezuma these monstrous types of human vanihimself proportional to his breeches, Montezuma must have been a very great man indeed. In the centre of the stone is the Sun, round which the Seasons are represented in hieroglyphics, outside of which again are the names of the eighteen Mexican months of twenty days each, making up a year of 368 days. It would appear from this that the Mexicans had made some advances in astronomy, when Cortez and his priests reduced them by civilization to their primitive state of ignorance. Then there is the statue of an Azteck Princess; the lady is represented sitting on her feet, her hands rest on her knees, and give her the appearance of the front of the Egyptian Sphinx, to which the resemblance or the head-dress greatly contributes. A bust of a female in lava looks very like the Isis of Old Nile, with a crown of turretry on her head. Canopus, also, the round-bellied divinity of the East, stands here in the shape of a stone pitcher; and some hieroglyphical paintings of the Ancient Mexicans, on paper of Maguey, or prepared deer-skin, add considerably to the circumstantial evidence afforded by the other objects. But the most remarkable proof in support of the hypothesis that the Mexicans and Egyptians were formerly but one people, is the existence of the pyramids in the valley of Otumba, about thirty miles from Mexico. One of these is higher than the third of the great pyramids at Ghiza. They are called Teocalli, are surrounded by smaller ones, consist of several stories, and are composed of clay mixed with small stones, being encased with a thick wall of amygdaloid,—just in the manner of the structures at Cairo and Saharah. Taking the above hypothesis as established by these resemblances, the much contested question concerning the purpose for which these artificial mountains were constructed is at once set to rest, by the Mexican tradition, which assigns them as the mausolea, or burial-places of their anA miniature pyramid, about four feet high, in a corner of a room, gives the spectator a good idea of cestors. In the lower room is a panoramic view of the city of Modern Mexico, with a copious assortment of the ani mal, vegetable, mineral, and artificial productions of that kingdom: the aloe, the cactus, the maguey (called by Purchass, the "tree of wonders") the tunnal or prickly pear tree, the cacao, the banana, &c.; humming birds as small as humble-bees, and frogs as big as little children; Spanish cavaliers in wax, and dolphins of all colours but the true ones; native gold and silver, with many other less attractive valuables. But to me the most interesting object in this collec tion of foreign curiosities, was a living specimen of the Mexican Indian,Jose Cayetana Ponce de Leon,whose family name, by the bye, being that of the discoverer of Florida, is not a little contradictory of his alleg ed Indian descent. He is in the costume of his country, has a fine, sunburnt, intelligent countenance, wears his hair a la mode de sauvage, down in his eyes, and his hat, like a quaker, on the top of his head. He appears sensible, and is very communicative; several pretty women entered into conversation with him while I was there, and he supported the or deal firmly,notwithstanding the bright ness of their eyes and the swiftness of their tongues. If you are fluent in Spanish, Italian, or the vernacular Mexican, go and speak to him your self, in any or all of these languages. For my part, I can no more" (as we say in a tragedy) at present. JACOB GOOSE QUILL BIOGRAPHY OF ECCENTRIC CHARACTERS LATELY DECEASED. WILSON LOWRY, F.R.S. ON Tuesday the 22d of June, about two o'clock in the morning, died Mr. Wilson Lowry, Fellow of the Royal and Geological Societies, and one of the most eminent engravers in Europe. He entered the sixty-third year of his age on the 23d of January last. Nothing is known of his ancestry beyond his father, whose baptismal name was Joseph; who is believed to have been a native of Ireland; and who, at the time of the birth of Wilson, was a portrait-painter, residing in Whitehaven, scarcely known in the metropolis. The proper subject of this memoir was tall in person, and bore a strong family likeness to the portrait of his father, but was somewhat more eaglebrowed; and in the general character and cast of his features, was such a mixture of thoughtfulness, with benignity, as would have looked well in an historical picture; and as did look well in society, announcing the entrance of no common man wherever Wilson Lowry appeared. Indeed there were times and smiling occasions, when this benignant expression quite beamed from him; but his biographer must regret that it was too often clouded by the anxieties and disappointments which all men are condemned to feel, who exercise any of the liberal arts at the dictation of mercenary traders; for mercenary traders in art are seldom well informed; and some were so ignorant, when Lowry first put in practice that refined mode of engraving by means of which he terminated architectural forms, as Nature terminates her forms, that is to say, without those outlines which may be seen in the works of his predecessors,-as to argue with him that he ought to afford his plates cheaper than others of the profession, since he had not the trouble of engraving outlines. No artist, who is obliged to meet the public under mediation, can derive much habitual cheerfulness from the state of the patronage of his art. However, after the commencement of Dr. Rees's Cyclopædia, he had no longer occasion to complain of this grossness, his superiority beginning then to be duly appreciated. But we must return to earlier events, and earlier developements of the character of Wilson Lowry. When a boy at Worcester, he was less fond of play, and more so of books, than most other boys, recreating himself occasionally with nutting and angling. Here he became known, and was favourably noticed, by Mr. Ross, a sensible and ingenious man, but not a very well qualified engraver, from whom Lowry obtained his original, but very slight and imperfect, acquaintance, with the art in which he afterward so much excelled. He is sup posed to have been under articles, and to have served with Mr. Ross, for the space of three years or so; but this is less certain than is the fact that in Worcester, Lowry engraved his first plate, of which the subject, or more properly the occasion and object, was to attract customers to the shop of a certain fishmonger of that city. That important consequences should originate from trifling beginnings is nothing extraordinary, since were we to retrospect far enough, we should probably find this to be generally, if not always, the case: but still, we should feel the same kind of gratification of curiosity, or perhaps of a better principle, at a sight of this fishmonger's card, as at viewing the first bubbling up of the spring-head of the Thames, or any other river that has flowed on till it became a port of commerce. The price for which our juvenile artist agreed to engrave it was seven shillings, the amount of which sum was to be re ceivable, and was actually received in red herrings! As the waters of the Severn are neither insalubrious nor expensive, it seems probable that honesty, and perseverance, and hope, and a good youthful appetite, induced him to subsist on these herrings,-unless when friendship and perry cheered his prospects, and gave relief to his meals and studies-as long as they lasted. Indeed what else could he have done with red herrings ? No man has pu ever, in any mental pursuit, far outstripped his fellows, who possessed not considerable native energy of mind. Between the ages of berty and manhood, when this faculty is most vigorous, youth are frequently enterprising, and more or less reckless as to ulterior consequences. From some affront conceived, or some hope entertained, which cannot now be traced, our artist left his paternal home, and his employ, if any he had at that time, at about the age of sixteen, with an inconsiderable sum in his pocket, and travelling on foot to Warwick, obtained a further supply by engaging to assist Mr. Beavan (a herald painter of that town) in painting a castle; and by means of this addition to his finances, was enabled to make his way to the metropolis. Here our adventurer was probably without friends when he most needed them, and soon bewildered,-though by what course of accidents he came to fill an inferior station in the hospital of St. Thomas, is not known. It however gave him an opportunity of listening to the lectures that were delivered there on medicine and anatomy, and hence he acquired his taste for, and his rudimental knowledge of, Chemistry, and the healing arts, in which he always took consider able interest, and was no mean adept. He was particularly struck with the experiment of freezing mercury, and it led him to several results, both theoretical and practical; for, give him but an opportunity of seeing, and he saw at once, with intuitive perception, much further than most other men into the rationale of a subject; and hence. like Dr. Franklin, he was very adroit in aseertaining and mastering the true cause of any effect that was set before him. To the readiness with which he exercised this talent, even from an early age, we owe much of the various ability which he manifested; for, with regard to innate genius, he early adopted the salutary, though questionable, theory of Helvetius, which teaches that no such faculty or gift as genins exists, and that all the diversities of human attainment which we behold, are the result of education; understanding by that word, not always what preceptors intend to teach, or impress on the minds of their pupils, but what those pupils really acquire from experience and their own views of things, whether designed or not on the part of their instructors. By this first-rate genius, genius was altogether disclaimed. How Lowry came to devote himself professionally to an art so ill patronised, so ill understood, so publicly dishonoured at the English Royal Academy of Arts, and so unprofitable, unless followed as a trade, as Engraving, is not known to the present writer from any actual communication with himself, or from any other communication on which he can place certain reliance. If a judgment be formed from the above circumstances, and they be supposed to have been known at the time to our artist, necessity must have driven him on this course; if from his works, the arts must have had charms to attract him, in spite of the eternal war which he must wage with fortune when thus enlisted. However these things may have been, the present writer first became acquainted with him when a young man, residing in the neighbourhood of Vauxhall, and in the employ, or under the patronage (as the prostituted phrase was) of Alderman Boydell, to whom he is believed to have been introduced by a letter from the good-natured Ross, of Worcester; though, according to one of his early friends, this introduction was written by a gentleman of Shrewsbury, whose name is unknown. Lowry at the same time derived instruction in the art of Etching from his neighbour Mr. John Browne, the very ingenious coadjutor of Woollett. For Boydell, in addition to anonymous assistance on works not known to his surviving friends, he engraved three large plates; namely, a varied landscape, after Gaspar Poussin; a rocky seaport, after Salvator Rosa, a difficult and very meritorious performance for so young an artist; and a view of the interior of the Coalbrook Dale smelting-house, after Geo. Robertson; for which engravings he was very sparingly remunerated. It must have been during this period, that Mr. Surgeon Blizard, who was afterwards knighted, enquired at Boydell's for some young artist to make a drawing for him of Lunardi's balloon, and the alderman recommended Lowry, who performed the drawing, and behaved himself in other respects so much to the satisfaction of this eminent and benevolent surgeon, that he became his friend, gave him a perpetual ticket of admission to his own and other surgical lectures, and offered to instruct him professionally in the art of surgery; and Lowry actually became so far his pupil as to attend the hospitals at every interval of leisure from his engraving, for four years successively. It was during this period too, that he became intimately acquainted with the elder Malton, author of the elaborate folio treatise on Perspective, whose work and conversation considerably augmented, if it did not impart, our artist's passion for the mathematical sciences. The book, which it has been said he at first walked twenty-one miles to read, induced him to inquire out the author; but it is believed that he had previously been a solitary student in Euclid. And now he was stimulated to the mastery of algebra, perspective, trigonometry, the conic sections; and, in short, all the higher branches of geometrical science. His friend Landseer was present at Lambeth, and recollects the time when Malton explained to them both, with the river Thames and the reflected scenery on its banks for examples, the doctrines relating to that angle of incidence which regulates the perspective of the downward and sideward reflections of objects, from luminous bodies: and that Lowry himself struck out some useful hints in solving the difficul ties of a view down a geometrical staircase. It was moreover during this period of probation and rapid improvement, which comprehended several years, that he was used to call, not unfrequently, upon the late Mr. Byrne, the landscape engraver, for professional advice, which he always received with great deference and ingenuousness. The spirit of inquiry was then, as it has ever been, strong in him. His conversation abounded with tasteful observation and deep sensibility to the charms of nature and art. He was ardent and communicative, with great suavity of manners; and particularly studious of improving those manual means of professional excellence which were in ordinary use amongst engravers, in which his natural sagacity saw many defects. In other words, he would possess himself of the best mechanical apparatus, and the best materials of engraving, and would then busy himself in improving on those best, at any expense of time and money that was within his reach or anticipation. The abovementioned works, after Poussin and Rosa, show that he was eminently gifted to have excelled as a landscape engraver, particularly in the treatment of such scenes as contained rocks and ruined edifices, which is further attested by his etchings of Holyrood palace, the round tower of Ludlow castle, and the ancient market cross at Malmsbury, all after Hearne, and for the antiquities of Great Britain. His style of etching picturesque antiquities, is evidently formed on a keen perception of, and sensibility_to, the beauties of that of the elder Rooker, and of the analogies between that style and its archetypes in nature: but Boydell, as may be perceived by his own engravings, and his gross misappropriation of subjects to artists, possessed too little discernment to perceive these merits; and hence our art ist was induced to contemplate emigra tion to America, and to seek other engagements; among which he executed some plates (though of no great importance) for Johnson of St.Paul's churchyard, and Taylor of Holborn ; began a large one of the Dublin parliament |