them altogether, and cannot recover the clue. This incrusted, impenetrable, stifling appearance is not only unpleasant to the eye, but repels sympathy, and renders their pictures (what they have been asserted to be) negations equally of the essential qualities both of painting and sculpture.

Of their want of ideal passion, or of the poetry of painting, and tendency to turn every thing either into comic or tragic pantomime, the picture of Cain after the Murder of Abel, by Paul Guerin, is a striking example. This composition does not want power. It would be disingenuous to say so. The artist has done what he meant in it. What, then, has he expressed? The rage of a wild beast, or of a maniac gnashing his teeth, and rushing headlong down a precipice to give vent to a momentary frenzy; not the fixed inward anguish of a man, withered by the curse of his Maker, and driven out into the wide universe with despair and solitude and unavailing remorse for his portion. The face of his wife, who appears crouched behind him, possesses great beauty and sweetness. But the sweetness and beauty are kept quite distinct. That is, grief absorbs some of the features, while others retain all their softness and serenity. This hypercriticism would not have been possible, if the painter had studied the expression of grief in nature. But he took a plaster-model, and tried to melt it into becoming woe!

I have said enough to explain my objections to the

grand style of French art; and I am sure I do not wish to pursue so unpleasant a subject any farther. I only wish to hint to my countrymen some excuse for not admiring these pictures, and to satisfy their neighbours that our want of enthusiasm is not wholly owing to barbarism and blindness to merit. It may be asked then, "Is there nothing to praise in this collection?" Far from it. There are many things excellent and admirable, with the drawbacks already stated, and some others that are free from them. There is Le Thiere's picture of the Judgment of Brutus; a manly, solid, and powerful composition, which was exhibited some years ago in London, and is, I think, decidedly superior to any of our West's. In Horace Vernet's Massacre of the Mamelukes, no English critic will deny the expression of gloomy ferocity in the countenance of the Sultan, or refuse to extol the painting of the drapery of the Negro, with his back to the spectator, which is, perhaps, equal to any thing of the Venetian School, and done (for a wager) from real drapery. Is not "the human face divine" as well worth studying in the original as the dyes and texture of a tunic? A small picture, by Delacroix, taken from the Inferno, Virgil and Dante in the boat, is truly picturesque in the composition and the effect, and shews a real eye for Rubens and for nature. The forms project, the colours are thrown into masses. Gerard's Cupid and Psyche is a beautiful little picture, and is indeed as beautiful, both in composition

and expression, as any thing of the kind can well be imagined; I mean, that it is done in its essential principles as a design from or for sculpture. The productions of the French school make better prints than pictures. Yet the best of them look like engravings from antique groups or cameos*. There is also a set of small pictures by Ducis, explaining the effects of Love on the study of Painting, Sculpture, and Poetry, taken from appropriate subjects, and elegantly executed. Here French art appears in its natural character again, courtly and polished, and is proportionably attractive. Perhaps it had better lay aside the club of Hercules, and take up the distaff of Omphale; and then the women might fairly beat the men out of the field, as they threaten almost to do at present. The French excel in pieces of light gallantry and domestic humour, as the English do in interiors and pig-styes. This appears to me the comparative merit and real bias of the two nations, in what relates to the productions of the pencil; but both will scorn the compliment, and one of them may write over the doors of their Academies of Art-" Magnis excidit ausis.

The other cannot even say so much.

• The Orpheus and Eurydice of Drölling is a performance of great merit. The females, floating in the air before Orpheus, are pale as lilies, and beautiful in death. But he need hardly despair, or run wild as he does. He may easily overtake them; and as to vanishing, they have no appearance of it. Their figures are quite solid and determined in their outline.

CHAPTER VIII.

NATIONAL ANTIPATHIES.

THE prejudice we entertain against foreigners is not in the first instance owing to any ill-will we bear them, so much as to the untractableness of the imagination, which cannot admit two standards of moral value according to circumstances, but is puzzled by the diversity of manners and character it observes, and made uneasy in its estimate of the propriety and excellence of its own. It seems that others ought to conform to our way of thinking, or we to theirs; and as neither party is inclined to give up their peculiarities, we cut the knot by hating those who remind us of them. We get rid of any idle, half-formed, teazing, irksome sense of obligation to sympathise with or meet foreigners half way, by making the breach as wide as possible, and treating them as an inferior species of beings to ourselves. We become enemies, because we cannot be friends. Our self-love is annoyed by whatever creates a suspicion of our being in the wrong; and only recovers its level by setting down all those who differ from us as thoroughly odious and contemptible.

It is this consideration which makes the good qualities of other nations, in which they excel us, no setoff to their bad ones, in which they fall short of us; nay, we can forgive the last much sooner than the first. The French being a dirty people is a complaint we very often bring against them. This objection alone, however, would give us very little disturbance; we might make a wry face, an exclamation, and laugh it off. But when we find that they are lively, agreeable, and good-humoured in spite of their dirt, we then know not what to make of it. We are angry at seeing them enjoy themselves in circumstances in which we should feel so uncomfortable; we are baulked of the advantage we had promised ourselves over them, and make up for the disappointment by despising them heartily, as a people callous and insensible to every thing like common decency. In reading Captain Parry's account of the Esquimaux Indian woman, who so dexterously trimmed his lamp by licking up half the train-oil, and smearing her face and fingers all over with the grease, we barely smile at this trait of barbarism. It does not provoke a serious thought; for it does not stagger us in our opinion of ourselves. But should a fine Parisian lady do the same thing (or something like it) in the midst of an eloquent harangue on the infinite superiority of the French in delicacy and refinement, we should hardly restrain our astonishment at the mixture of incorrigible grossness and vanity. Unable to answer her argu

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