There in my arms; for there the rains will come, Look on her with the darling on her knees, Lily-the child of Julian and Lilia-is one of the poem's loveliest features, and deserves something better than the passing allusion to which our space limits us. Spite of an occasional blemish in the picture through an attempt to over-realize, it is on the whole as truthful in its details as charming in its conception. Lily is throughout a sort of ministering spirit to her father, and touching is it to see how the faith of the child's heart-the faith of innocence-answers to that faith in the man which has been conquered through the strife of experience; how the heaven which lies around us in our infancy' sleeps, like a vale, at the foot of those heights in the same kingdom which the 'violent have taken by force.' We must now close Mr. MacDonald's volume. A fair estimate of his powers may be gained from the instances which we have cited. They can hardly fail to delight his readers, though insufficient to convince them that he has accomplished a great work of art. The highest crown of genius may not now be decreed to this writer; but he has proved his title to enter those lists where knights alone are privileged to contend. And we cannot but bid 'God speed' to one who has shown these great attributes of mental chivalry-allegiance to the sacred behests of religion, and tender reverence for childhood and woman. 160 ART. III.-Memoirs of Sir Robert Strange, Knight, Engraver, Member of several Foreign Academies of Design; and of his Brother-in-law, Andrew Lumisden, Private Secretary to the Stuart Princes, and Author of The Antiquities of Rome.' By James Dennistoun of Dennistoun. In Two Volumes. Svo. London: Longman & Co. 1855. JAMES DENNISTOUN of Dennistoun, is a name favourably known in the antiquarian researches of his country, and in works of more general interest demanding care, industry, and literary skill. These Memoirs, which had scarcely issued from the press ere the public journals recorded their author's death, will not diminish his well-earned reputation. If they can boast of little that is striking or brilliant, at least they do not contain a word which with his dying hand he could have wished to cancel. By marriage with a descendant of Sir Robert Strange, he came into possession of letters and documents forming the basis of these volumes, and which may possibly be found to possess an interest and importance sufficient to rescue them from oblivion. The career of Strange the engraver was not eventful. His life is little more than a record of his art, of the difficulties which therein beset him, of his unflagging industry and ardour, of the renunciation for many years of family bonds and domestic comforts to the paramount claims and charms of an all-engrossing profession. His wife, a His wife, a Miss Lumisden, of honourable descent, and an ardent Jacobite, makes fighting for her Prince' in the Scottish Rebellion of last century, the condition on which she accepts her lover. Strange is thus unfortunately, if not somewhat unwillingly, involved in the ruined fortunes of the Stuart dynasty. He fights at Culloden, engraves a portrait of the Prince,' executes plates for the issue of paper money, and, involved in the general consternation and overthrow, with difficulty escapes capture, and remains for a time in close concealment. It is evident that the connexion between Strange and the Rebellion was more professional than political, and in after-life he allowed no romantic or wild notion of legitimacy to divide the allegiance he had sworn to his art. With his ardent wife it was far otherwise. Ambitious, made to govern and to dictate, the sphere of family duty was far too narrow for her enterprise, and in a cause less hopeless and desperate, she would gladly have become the focus of faction and intrigue. Andrew Lumisden, her brother, with less vigour and impetuosity of character, would seem in the blindness and constancy of his attachment to the Stuart dynasty, to supply his want of enthusiasm. Fighting and defeated with 'his Prince' at Culloden, he was for years a proscribed exile from his country; suffered the privations of poverty, was rescued from absolute want by pittances in the form of pensions, and after assiduously serving for four-and-twenty years as Secretary in the mock court which the Stuart princes held in Rome, he was once more cast out upon the world a victim to his master's drunken caprice. Having thus indicated the general character of these volumes, we will now enter on a more detailed examination of that art of which Strange is here the representative. We have recently seen it stated that line engraving is in danger of becoming in this country extinct, from want of due appreciation and patronage; and we think that we may be doing some service to a languishing art, if, in bringing the life of Strange before the notice of our readers, we succeed in claiming for the legitimate product of the graver increased attention and support. We are not insensible to the bewitching softness of mezzotint, but its delicate effeminacy only makes us prize more highly the character and manliness of line engraving. Neither would we for a moment assert that the popularity of lithography is disproportioned to its merit: the rapidity and economy of its execution, no less than its capabilities, make it the stepping-stone by which Art descends from its heights and becomes the domestic associate of the peasant instead of the sole prize of the prince. Wood engraving is no less popular and diffusive in its character, and the capability it possesses in the printing process of illustrating and combining with letter-press, has led to one of the most marked Art developments of the present day. Art, like literature, has become democratic, and subsists not on a patron, but on the applause of the populace. Competition, small profits, quick returns, with a rapid multiplication, such as only machinery can accomplish, have popularized Art, certainly without elevating it. This is a result which, with all its attendant disadvantages, we are far from regretting. The wider the basis upon which Art rests, the more stable is the structure, and the better capable of being reared in beauty and security to heights which may ultimately transcend all past attainments. Still we must confess that the prospects at least of line engraving are far from hopeful; we fear that already it belongs more to the past than to the present. We know what is the character of the modern plates hung in printsellers' windows; and we know, likewise, what it is to turn with mingled admiration and regret overa portfolio of old and sterling engravings. There we see Claudes translated by Vivares, without trick or ostentation, into soft, aërial tones; landscapes by Wollett, tremulous in line and emotional in feeling, rendering the infinite variety of nature, by a scarcely less infinite variety of manner; or we turn, perhaps, to a Holy Family by Bartolozzi, uniting precision of line with brilliancy of effect; the forms well rounded and modelled, the execution manly without degenerating into soft voluptuousness. It was no slight merit, we may rest assured, which, in a period thus fertile in engravers and prodigal in the excellence of their works, could entitle Strange to the foremost rank. We have recently had occasion to consider the life and genius of a man, the chief excellence of whose pictures was in the beauty of their colour; and now we are not less anxious justly to appreciate works which, wholly destitute of colour, seize upon the mind by merits of a totally different character. But so widely various and yet so potent and all-sufficing are the powers and capacities of Art in all its manifestations, that each phase in turn, while it holds the eye captive, is omnipotent, and exercises a sway, if not a tyranny, that for the moment admits of no superior. Under the spell of Etty, dazzled and drunk' by the glory of colour, we feel that colour is all in all; yet, again, chastened by the purity and unostentatious merit of a line engraving, we willingly surrender the gaude and glare of colour which appeals to sense for the tranquil and calmer, because more intellectual, feast of beauteous lines and expressive light and shade. Sir Robert Strange did good service to Art, not only by the excellence of his execution, but likewise by the high character of the works which he undertook to engrave. He not unreasonably turned to Italy as affording the pictures most worthy of his skill and labour. In the principal cities of that country he spent several years, making in the churches, palaces, and galleries careful drawings of the most celebrated pictures as subjects for his future engravings. He thus familiarized the public mind with works of the highest order, and by his merits and the boldness of his enterprise created a taste and a patronage alike honourable to the public and to himself. When we think of the service which he and others no less celebrated have conferred on Art, we cannot but regret that engraving was not earlier discovered. We might then have known something of the Greek paintings, which many have conjectured as scarcely less perfect than their sculpture and architecture. But the arts of the Revival were more fortunate. Raphael had his attendant genius in Marc Antonio, who, by engravings executed with a loving hand and kindred spirit, translated and diffused the works of the master. Thus have the genius and fame of the great painters been perpetuated and extended, and in our day so far popularized, that not long since we purchased, more for curiosity-it must be acknowledged-than edification, a print of Raphael's Transfiguration for fourpence. Engraving is to painting what printing is to literature; a man's picture is as yet in manuscript till it is engraved, hung in the shop-windows, and put within the actual possession of the multitude. A painter's fame is then, and not till then, secured from oblivion. When we think of what engraving has done and is doing for Art, and the Art education of the people, we fear that it is scarcely sufficiently estimated or understood. Whatever widens the circuit of our vision, 'the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses,' confers upon the race the greatest boon. Addison tells us, that our sight 'fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired.' It is Art, and especially engraving, which nourishes and enriches the mind through this faculty of vision. It educates and delights the child in his earliest years, and in his maturer age instructs and refines the man. Limited himself to time and space, it brings within his view the best and fairest of every land, with the riches which have been rescued from time's destructive deluge. Thus is the imagination through the eye fed with things of beauty, and by the outer gate of sense enter into the storehouse of the mind countless riches. We were never more impressed with the value of engraving than in Parma, the city of Correggio's labours. We spent the morning, with opera-glass in hand, visiting the churches, endeavouring to decipher and understand the exuberant creations with which Correggio adorned the cupolas. We knew that his object had been to paint the heaven of heavens, and surely no fitter sphere could be found, either for his genius or the boldness of the attempt, than the interior of a church dome. We had heard of the magic charm of his light and shade; that in these cupolas Art, no longer circumscribed by lines and figure, combined reality and immensity in one, spanned earth and air; and that Correggio had here built heaven, even if he had failed in peopling it. In vain did we attempt in the obscurity of church interiors to comprehend the subjects, or to judge of the merits of individual figures discoloured by damp, and obliterated by decay, and we were ready to join with the enemies of Correggio, who, at the close of his labours, raised the cry that he had painted a 'hash of frogs.' It was not till we visited the studio of Chevalier Toschi, the greatest engraver of which Italy in our day can boast, that we really understood the merits of these works. To the carefully executed drawings of Toschi, and the effective boldness of the engravings, executed by himself, and the school he formed around him, will Correggio owe in future days his fame as a painter of fresco. Since our visit, the Chevalier Toschi is dead; indeed, his age and infirmities almost precluded the hope that he could live to complete the arduous work on which he was engaged; but we understood that the numerous pupils whom we saw around |