they are French, and another that they are not good. They have great merit, it is true, but their merits are only splendid sins. They are mechanical, mannered, colourless, and unfeeling.-No. 237 is Murillo's Spanish Girl, with Flowers. The sun tinted the young gipsey's complexion, and not the painter.-No. 240, is The Cascatella and Villa of Mæcenas, near Tivoli, by Wilson, with his own portrait in the fore-ground. It is an imperfect sketch; but there is a curious anecdote relating to it, that he was so delighted with the waterfall itself, that he cried out, while painting it: "Well done, water, by G―d!”No. 243, Saint Cecilia, by Guercino, is a very pleasing picture, in his least gaudy manner.-No. 251, Venus and Adonis, by Titian. We see so many of these Venuses and Adonises, that we should like to know which is the true one. This is one of the best we have seen. We have two Francesco Molas in this room, the Rape of Proserpine, and a Landscape with a Holy Family. This artist dipped his pen leaves are wet and heavy with dew, and the eye dwells "under the shade of melancholy boughs." In the old collection (in Mr. Desenfans' time) the Poussins occupied a separate room by themselves, and it was (we confess) a very favourite room with us.-No. 226, is a Landscape, by Salvator Rosa. It is one of his very best-rough, grotesque, wild-Pan has struck it with his hoof-the trees, the rocks, the fore-ground, are of a piece, and the figures are subordinate to the landscape. The same dull sky lowers upon the scene, and the bleak air chills the crisp surface of the water. It is a consolation to us to meet with a fine Salvator. His is one of the great names in art, and it is among our sources of regret that we cannot always admire his works as we would do, from our respect to his reputation and our love of the man.. Poor Salvator! He was unhappy in his life-time; and it vexes us to find that we cannot make him amends by thinking him so great a painter as some others, whose fame was not their only inheritance!cil so thoroughly in Titian's palette, 227, Venus and Cupid, is a delightful copy after Correggio. We have no such regrets or qualms of conscience with respect to him. "He has had his reward." The weight of his renown balances the weight of barbarous coin that sunk him to the earth. Could he live now, and know what others think of him, his misfortunes would seem as dross compared with his lasting glory, and his heart would melt within him at the thought, with a sweetness that only his own pencil could express. 233, The Virgin, Infant Christ, and St. John, by Andrea del Sarto, is exceedingly good.-290, Another Holy Family, by the same, is an admirable picture, and only inferior to Raphael. It has delicacy, force, thought, and feeling. "What lacks it then," to be equal to Raphael? We hardly know, unless it be a certain firmness and freedom, and glowing animation. The execution is more timid and laboured. It looks like a picture (an exquisite one, indeed), but Raphael's look like the reality, the divine reality!-No. 234, Cocles defending the Bridge, is by Le Brun. We do not like this picture, nor 271, The Massacre of the Innocents, by the same artist. One reason is that that his works cannot fail to have that rich, mellow look, which is always delightful.-No. 303, Portrait of Philip the Fourth of Spain, by Velasquez, is purity and truth itself. We used to like the Sleeping Nymph, by Titian, when we saw it formerly in the little entrance-room at Desenfans', but we cannot say much in its praise here. The FIFTH ROOM is the smallest, but the most precious in its contents. No. 322, Spanish Beggar Boys, by Murillo, is the triumph of this collection, almost of painting. In the imitation of common life, nothing ever went beyond it, or, as far as we can judge, came up to it. A Dutch picture is mechanical, and mere stilllife to it. But this is life itself. The Boy at play on the ground is miraculous. It is done with a few dragging strokes of the pencil, and with a little tinge of colour; but the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the chin, are as brimful as they can hold of expression, of arch roguery, of animal spirits, of vigorous, elastic health. The vivid, glowing, cheerful look is such as could only be found beneath a southern sun. The fens and dykes of Holland (with all our respect for them) could never produce such au epitome of the vital principle. The other boy, standing up with the pitcher in his hand, and a crust of bread in his mouth, is scarcely less excellent. His sulky, phlegmatic indifference speaks for itself. The companion to this picture, 324, is also very fine. Compared with these imitations of nature, as faultless as they are spirited, Murillo's Virgins and Angels, however good in themselves, look vapid, and even vulgar. A Child Sleeping, by the same painter, is a beautiful and masterly study. No. 329, a Musical Party, by Giorgione, is well worthy of the notice of the connoisseur.-No. 331, St. John preaching in the Wilderness, by Guido, is an extraordinary picture, and very unlike this painter's usual manner. The colour is as if the flesh had been stained all over with brick-dust. There is, however, a wildness about it which accords well with the subject, and the figure of St. John is full of grace and gusto. No. 344, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by the same, is much finer, both as to execution and expression. The face is imbued with passion.-No. 345, Portrait of a Man, by L. da Vinci, is truly simple and grand, and at once carries you back to that age.-Boors Merry Making, by Ostade, is fine; but has little business where it is. Yet it takes up very little room,-No. 347, Portrait of Mrs. Siddons, in the character of the Tragic Muse, by Sir Joshua, appears to us to resemble neither Mrs. Siddons, nor the Tragic Muse. It is in a bastard style of art. Sir Joshua had an importunate theory of improving upon nature. He might improve upon indifferent nature, but when he had got the finest, he thought to improve upon that too, and only spoiled it.-No. 349, The Virgin and Child, by Correggio, can only be a copy.-No. 332, The Judgment of Paris, by Vanderwerf, is a picture, and by a master, that we hate. He always chooses for his subjects naked figures of women, and tantalises us by making them of coloured ivory. They are like hard-ware toys.-No. 354, a Cardinal blessing a Priest, by P. Veronese, is dignified and picturesque in the highest degree.-No. 355, The Adoration of the Shepherds, by Annibal Caracci, is an elaborate, but not very successful performance. -No. 356, Christ bearing his Cross, by Morales, concludes this list, and is worthy to conclude it. W. H. A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA, THIS gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. He just lived long enough (it was what he wished) to see his papers collected into a volume. The pages of the LONDON MAGAZINE will henceforth know him no more. Exactly at twelve last night his queer spirit departed, and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the old year. The mournful vibrations were caught in the dining room of his friends T. and H.; and the company, assembled there to welcome in another First of January, checked their carousals in mid-mirth, and were silent. Janus wept. The gentle Pr, in a whisper, signified his intention of devoting an Elegy; and Allan C, nobly forgetful of his countrymen's wrongs, vowed a Memoir to his manes, full and friendly as a Tale of Lydda! cross. To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted; and a two years' and a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a phantom. I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you-a sort of unlicked, incondite things-villainously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than such; and better it is, that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have beor pronounced by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only (historically) of another; as in his Fourth Essay (to save many instances) where under the first person (his favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connectious-in direct opposition to his own early history, -If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and affections of anothermaking himself many, or reducing many unto himself-then is the skil ful novelist, who all along brings in his hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubt less, under cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly? My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like him, hated him; and some, who once liked him, after wards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker; while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few understood him; and I am not certain that at all times he quite understood himself. He too much affected that dangerous figure-irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be an orator; and he seemed determined that no one else should play that part when he was present. He was petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called good com pany, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send away a whole company his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his companions for some individuality of character which they manifested.Hence, not many persons of science, and few professed literati, were of his councils. They were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain fortune; and, as to such people commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was a mistake. His intimados, to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged regiment. He found them floating on the surface of society; and the colour, or something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him-but they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If any of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to arise), he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not making more concessions to the feelings of good people, he would retort by asking, what one point did these good people ever concede to him? He was temperate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry-as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist! I do not know whether I ought to hemoan or rejoice that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the approaches of age; and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to him. They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like any thing important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses; but such as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings. He left little property behind him. Of course, the little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were found in his escrutoire, which have been handed over to the Editor of this Magazine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed signature. He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the Export department of the East India House will forgive me, if I acknowledge the readiness with which they assisted me in the retrieval of his few manuscripts. They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk, at which he had been planted for forty years; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed tracts, JAN. 1823, might be called his "Works." They seemed affectionate to his memory, and universally commended his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some ledger, which should combine the precision and certainty of the Italian doubleentry (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some newer German system-but I am not able to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard him express a warm regard for his associates in office, and how fortunate he considered himself in having his lot thrown in amongst them. There is more sense, more discourse, more shrewdness, and even talent, among these clerks (he would say) than in twice the number of authors by profession that I have conversed with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the "old days of the India House," when he consorted with Woodroffe, and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and worthy representative, hating the point of sanctity, of old facetious bishop Corbet), and Hoole who translated TasSo, and Bartlemy Brown whose father (God assoil him therefore) modernized Walton-and sly warmhearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they called him in those days), and Campe, and Fombelle-and a world of choice spirits, more than I can remember to name, who associated in those days with Jack Burrell (the bon vivant of the South Sea House), and little Eyton (said to be a fac simile of Pope-he was a miniature of a gentleman) that was cashier under him, and Dan Voight of the Custom House that left the famous library. Well, Elia is gone for aught I know, to be reunited with themand these poor traces of his pen are all we have to show for it. How little survives of the wordiest authors! Of all they said or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words only! His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared separately; they shuffled their way in the crowd well enough singly; how they will read, now they are brought together, is a question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his "weaved-up follies." C PHIL-ELIA NEW YEAR'S DAY IN PARIS. NEW Year's Day is the day best suited to universal holiday of any of the three hundred and sixty-five. It is the period of the regeneration of the Calendar in the most interesting parts of the civilized world. Persons of all ranks and occupations take an interest in it. It is the beginning of a new era. We have made up our accounts of happiness and sorrow with the old year; we have struck the moral balance, calculated the profit and loss, and taken stock as a trader does of his goods. We turn over a new leaf, we enter upon a fresh series of transactions, and the common maxim, "As is the beginning so shall be the ending," disposes us to enter upon it joyfully. It is a day of peace-making. Family quarrels are adjusted, broken intimacies repaired, severed friendships reunited; and many a one who would reject an overture of réconciliation on the second of March, would make no scruple of being the foremost to propose it on the first of January: the season levels all the distinctions of etiquette which usually restrain the better impulses of the heart. These are among its positive advantages over all the other days of the year; it possesses many negative ones derived from their inefficiencies for holiday-making in its complete sense. Christmas Day, notwithstanding its gambols, turkeys, and plum-puddings, is of somewhat too serious a character for the purpose; besides that it suggests ideas of tradesmen's bills. Michaelmas, indeed, is hallowed by the roasting of geese, and, which is still better, the eating of them; but then the twenty-ninth of September is Quarter-day! As for Lady Day, and Midsummer-Midsummer duck-and-green-pease is mere affectation, the impotent struggle of a would-be holiday-they owe their prominence in the almanack purely to the invention of rent and taxes, and impudently stand forth as claimants on our purses, without even a decent attempt to render their approach less unwelcome, by affording us a pretext for merry-making: they are a couple of surly tax-ga therers. Easter and Whitsuntide are not altogether destitute of merit, but, the advantages they possess are considerably abated by their being more or less considered by different sects. This destroys their universality.Kings' birth-days are too local: one is not obliged to rejoice on the birthday of any king, excepting the king of one's own country. The joyous influence of the twelfth of August is necessarily confined to England and its immediate dependencies; but there is no law to compel a Dutchman to cut capers and be lively on that day, to keep British subjects in countenance. The birth-day of Louis XVIII is a day of jubilee throughout all France, and the English residents there emulate the natives of the country in their manifestations of happiness on the occasion; but in London an Englishman may rejoice or not, just as he pleases; and it is even probable that a Frenchman, living under the protection of a foreign government, might, on the seventeenth of November, exhibit a long face with impunity. Kings' birth-days are, decidedly, too local; but in all other respects they are so admirably fitted for holidays, that it is much to be lamented that all the crowned heads in Christendom were not ushered into the world on the same day of the year. One's own birth-day! It is an excellent holiday for one's own self, but infinitely too limited in its joyous influence for general use. And, alas! how many poor souls are there to whom the anniversary of their birth brings nought but bitter recollections, to whom it is a day of sorrow rather than of joy, who look back with repentance or regret upon the years which have passed, and heavily step forward into the year that is to come, without a hope perhaps-except that it may be their last! Lord Mayor's Day would be scarcely worth a passing notice, but that many persons of sense and erudition have considered it a fitting opportunity for holiday-making. The main objection against it is, that it is even more limited in its influence than a king's birth-day. It is purely a Lon |