There is scarcely any human being so selfish as to wish to feed upon joy alone; and what a privilege it is, separated from those who could rejoice with us, that we can share our happiness with nature! The soar

deity of rural plenty, with her unextinguishable torch and crown of golden ears, wandering from field to field, heart-stricken, and alone; too mortal in her sufferings-too desolate in her divinity. We hail the purple morning, Aurora rises in her rosy car, driving lark, the bounding deer, and the sportive ing her snowy steeds over the cloud-capped mountains, separating the hills from their misty canopy, and scattering flowers and dew over her fresh untrodden pathway through the verdant valleys. We turn to the glorious sun as he rises from his couch of golden waves, and ask the inspiration of Apollo for the verse or for the lyre. We sail upon the ruffled sea, where the Nereides, sporting with the dolphins, lave their shining hair; or where Neptune, striking his trident on the foaming waters, bids the deep be still. We hear the bellowing of the stormy blast, and call on Æolus to spare us; or we listen to the thunder as it rolls above our heads, echoing from shore to shore, and tremble lest the forked lightning should burst forth from the sovereign hand of Jove.

Fanciful as these associations are, (almost too fanciful to afford us any real enjoyment,) they unquestionably supply the poet with images of beauty not to be found in real life; and they have also an important claim upon our consideration, from the place they occupy both in ancient and modern literature; as well as from the effect which this system of imperfect and dangerous theology produced, in promoting the refinements of art, and softening the habits and feelings of a barbarous people.

It is pleasant to turn from such visionary sources of gratification to those which are more tangible and true-to the smypathy which every feeling mind believes it possible to experience in nature. There is no state of feeling to which we may not find something in the elements, or in the natural world, so nearly corresponding, as to give us the idea. of companionship in our joys and sorrows. True, it would be more congenial to our wishes, could we find this companionship amongst our fellow-creatures; but who has not asked for it in vain? and turning to the woods, and the winds, and the blue skies, has not believed for a moment there was more sympathy in them than in the heart of

man.

lamb, animated with a joy like ours, become our brethren and our sisters; while the same light buoyant spirit that fills our bosoms, smiles upon us from the shining heavens, glows beneath us in the fruitful earth, or whispers around us in the fresh glad gales of spring. But, under the pressure of grief, this sympathy is most perceptible and most availing, because sorrow has a greater tendency than joy to excite the imagination, and thus it multiplies its own associations by identifying itself with every thing that wears the slightest shadow of gloom.

I will not say that the world in general is more productive of images of sadness than of pleasure; but from the misuse of our own faculties, and the consequent tendency of our own minds, we are more apt to look for such amongst the objects around us; and thus in our daily observation, passing over what is lovely, and genial, and benign, we fix our minds upon the desolating floods, the anticipated storm, the early blight, the cankered blossom, the faded leaf, the broken bough, or the premature decay of autumn fruit. This, however, is no fault of nature's, but our own; nor does it prove anything against the argument, that, whether happy or miserable, we may find a responding voice in nature, to echo back our gladness, and to answer to our sighs; that every feeling of which we are capable, in its purest and least vitiated state, may meet with similitude, and companionship, and association in the natural world; and above all, that he who desires to rise out of the low cares of artificial life, whose soul aspires above the gross elements of mere bodily existence, and whose highest ambition is to render up that soul, purified rather than polluted, may find in nature a congenial, faithful, and untiring friend.

I cannot better conclude these remarks, than by quoting a passage from the writings of one, who possessed the enviable art of combining science with sublimity, and philosophy with poetic feeling.

"Nature," says Sir Humphry Davy, "never deceives us; the rocks, the mountains, the streams, always speak the same language; a shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a thunder storm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these effects are rare and transient-in a few hours, or at least days, all the sources of beauty are renovated. And nature affords no continued trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution of humanity, no hopes for ever blighted in the bud, no beings full of life, beauty, and promise, taken from us in the prime of youth. Her fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of those blighted ones so common in the life of man, and so like the fabled apples of the Dead Sea, fresh and beautiful to the sight, but when tasted, full of bitterness and ashes."

THE POETRY OF PAINTING.

scenes being rendered poetically beautiful by the pencil of an able artist; yet there are lines of demarcation beyond which even genius dare not venture, and which cannot be transgressed without the most glaring violation of good taste. It is where the associations are such as are not only vulgar in themselves, but totally destitute of any claim upon the feelings or affections of the mind. Nor is it in the representation of scenes the most gross and degraded (though such do little credit to the taste of the painter); yet in them the violent passions which agitate our nature are frequently most powerfully and strikingly exhibited. Look, for example, upon a representation of the lowest stage of intoxication, and surely the pencil of the painter can pourtray no subject more loathsome and repulsive; yet even here the associations are not necessarily such as are altogether debarred from connection with refined intellectual speculations. In contemplating such a picture, we think immediately of the high capabilities of man, and of the dangerous profanation and abuse of his natural powers, of the spotless infancy of the being before us, the love that watched over his youth, the hopes that were centered in his manhood, and that now lie grovelling be

In turning our attention to the poetry of painting, we enter upon a subject which forms the first connecting link between the physical and the intellectual world. So far as painting is a faithful representation of ex-neath him in his fall. This class of subjects ternal nature, it belongs to the sphere of the senses; but as it holds intimate connection with some of the noblest efforts and affections of the human mind, it is scarcely inferior to the art of poetry itself, in the value it derives from the diffusion of poetic feeling, through the countless varieties of style and character, in which it is exhibited to mankind.

The poetry of painting is perhaps more felt, and less understood, than that of any other subject to which we can apply our thoughts; nor is it easy to define what is the nature of the charm by which we are fascinated on beholding a picture in perfect accordance with our taste, especially as this taste varies so much in different individuals, and even in the same becomes more select in its gratifications, in proportion as it is more cultivated and refined.

That the poetry of painting is not mainly dependent upon the choice of subjects is clear, from the most simple and familiar

then is not entirely beyond the limits of the field of poetry, though it certainly requires some stretch of fancy to prove them to be within it; yet there is another class so decidedly and irrevocably excluded, that it may not be uninteresting to mark the difference between them, and of these a single instance will be sufficient.

I remember seeing in an exhibition of paintings at Manchester, a picture of a huge red brick cotton-mill, so well executed, and so appropriately placed, as to look very handsome in its way; and no doubt that way was all-sufficient to the owner, who had a train of sweet and pleasant local associations with this picture, enjoyed snugly to himself, which if they were not poetical, had most probably a weightier charm, and one which he would not have exchanged for the lyre of Apollo. The surface of the picture was almost entirely covered with the brick building, and by its side was the all important engine-house, with tall spiral chimney

cent. per cent., and the distinctions of white and brown sauce, are the only visible characteristics. .

pointing to the sky, but alas! with no hea-racters-portrait, landscape, and historical venward purpose. It was the picture of a painting. Of these three, portrait painting manufactory, and nothing more-most pro- is decidedly the least calculated for the disbably the owner wanted nothing more. play of poetical feeling, not only because it There was not, as there might have been, is generally practised under the arbitrary a broken foreground, denoting the rugged will of those who possess neither taste nor course of one of those polluted streams understanding in the fine arts, but because which murmur on (for what can still the there are so few subjects really worthy in voice of nature?) with the same melody as themselves, and these few are too frequentin its native woods, before the click of rat- ly beyond the reach of the artist; while the tling machinery broke in upon the harmony rubicund and wealthy citizen, having grown of man's existence. There was no pale girl, sleek upon turtle soup, after retiring with his with darkened brow and dejected form, re- rosy consort to their Belle Vue, or Prospect turning to her most unnatural labours, a liv- Cottage, in the suburbs of the town, deems ing and daily sacrifice to the triumphs of it a suitable and gratifying appropriation of national prosperity; there was not even that some portion of his hard-earned wealth, to deep and turbid stream, that dense and per- employ one of the first artists of the day in petually rising fountain of thick smoke, burst- making duplicates of forms, which a fulling, as if with indignation, from the gross sized canvas is scarcely wide enough to conconfines of its narrow birthplace, first dart-tain, and faces, in which the expression of ing upwards in one compact and sable pillar, as if from the crater of a volcano, and then folding and unfolding its dark volume, until, assuming a more ethereal character, it floats away upon the gale, and ambitious of a higher union, mingles at last with the vapours that sail along the purer regions of the sky-no, there was nothing in this picture but a cotton-mill; and the wealthy owner, with a praiseworthy feeling of gratitude and respect for the origin of his prosperity and distinction in the world, had done his best to immortalize the object that was not only the most important, but the dearest to him on earth. Yet notwithstanding this was, in the opinion of at least one individual, a picture of great merit, it was unquestionably of that class to which no single poetical idea could by any possibility be attached. It is true that such a building as was here represented, need not be without its intellectual associations. It might give rise to some of the most profound speculations relative to trade, commerce, and the wealth of nations; all that I maintain is, that this picture could not in any way call forth the passions or affections of our nature, or awaken those emotions of the soul which constitute the very essence of poetry.

In order to render the poetry of painting a subject more tractable in an unskilful and inexperienced hand, it will be necessary to consider it under its three different cha

While the painter is at work, sacrificing all that is noble in his art to the sad necessity for sordid gain, the gentleman insists upon a blue coat and buff waist-coat, but above all, upon a gold headed cane, which necessarily mars the picture with a bright yellow spot full in the centre. This however is a trifle by comparison, for the buttons help to carry off the glare of the gold, and the artist revenges himself by making the hand approximate to the same colour. It is in attempting to delineate the august person of the lady, that his skill and his taste are put to the severest test. With consternation in his countenance, he eyes the subject before him, and in the first agony of despair, queries within himself whether he cannot really afford to lose the offered reward. He ventures to remonstrate with great delicacy on some particular portions of the dress. But the lady is inexorable. It is a dress for which she has paid the highest price, and must look well. Money rules the day, and the painter, covering his palette with double portions of red and yellow, commences with his task. Upon the head of the fair sitter is a pink turban, interwoven with a massive gold chain, surmounting a profusion of flaxen ringlets, in the midst of which twinkle out two small blue eyes, faintly shaded by thin

specify in what the poetry of the art consists. There are certain fundamental principles, from whence our ideas of the beauty of nature are derived, which the slightest sketch is capable of illustrating, but which cannot be neglected without offence even to the most indifferent beholder. Of these principles, light and shade are the most important and conspicuous. Thus two objects, one to receive the rays of light, and another to receive the shadow of the first, are sufficient to constitute a picture. Let one of these be the massive stem of an old tree, grey with time, and shattered with the storms of ages, wearing round its hoary brow a wild wreath of clustering ivy, and stretching forth one verdant branch, still clothed with dense foliage as in former years. Let the other be the

the most important, there are minor points, which cannot be neglected without so glaring a violation of good taste that the eye is offended; and as we have often had occasion to remark, no sooner are the senses unpleasantly affected, than the powers of the mind are arrested in their agreeable exercise, and the poetic illusion is totally destroyed. In the choice of costume, it is highly essential to the poetical charm of the | portrait, that every thing wearing the character of constraint or conceit should be avoided. All those striking peculiarities which belong only to a class of beings whose feelings and avocations are entirely separate from the sphere of high mental refinement, or intellectual power, will be rejected by an artist of good taste. The coarse habit of the monk may be made sub-weedy banks of a silent river, in whose clear servient to the poetical interest of a portrait, because it is associated in our minds with ideas of reflection, study, and strict mental discipline; even that of a peasant is admissible, because his hardy frame may be animated by the bold independence and rude energy of a mountaineer; but he who would paint a butcher or a harlequin in their characteristic costume, must forfeit every pretension to the poetry of his art.

The local partiality of the Dutch painters has rendered this error strikingly conspicuous in some of their historical pieces. Whatever may be the merits of this school of artists, the national prejudice which retained the familiar costume, habits, and customs of their own peculiar people, even when representing the higher scenes and circumstances of life, proves them to have been but little qualified for the most noble and interesting branch of their art.

Besides the choice of costume, and of far | higher importance, is the proper adjustment of colours, and other mechanical branches of the art of painting, which cannot properly be discussed in a chapter on poetry, but which are of unspeakable importance in producing that delightful combination of form and colour by which the eye is so entirely gratified as to repose in perfect enjoyment and to leave the imagination to

wander as it will.

Entering upon the subject of landscape painting, it becomes much less difficult to

depths the shadow of this ancient tree is reflected, and we have at once a scene of sufficient interest and beauty to rivet the eye and fascinate the imagination. Still much must depend, even in a scene so simple as this, not only upon the skilful conduct of the pencil, but upon the poetical feeling of the artist. Perhaps the subject may be better understood by illustrating it with a case in point.

It was, a few years ago, my good fortune to receive instruction from a gentleman,* who, whatever may be his other pretensions, must be unanimously acknowledged to be one of the most poetical artists of the present day; a fact which is sufficiently proved by the fearless and independent manner in which he can snatch up the most barren subject, and invest it with a mysterious beauty of his own creating. The piece which this artist first gave me to copy, was a pencil sketch of a rude entrance by a little wooden bridge, over a narrow stream, to what might be a copse-wood, or indeed a wood of any kind; for the whole picture contained nothing more than three or four trees, a few planks of time-worn timber, and the reedy banks of this stream or pool. My task was performed with diligence, and with no little self-approbation, for my friends pronounced it to be admirable; and I saw myself that

* Mr. Cotman, now professor of drawing at King's College, London.