Ruysdael, Waterloo, and Wynants, you will notice the same natural combinations: the stunted oak, the rugged hawthorn, the pollard willow, all lend their aid to the truthfulness of the scene. Thus it is that we observe the surrounding imagery not only influences the taste of the artist, but leads his study to those objects presented to his pencil. I am more anxious that your attention should be drawn to these circumstances, as you will be less likely to be led astray in composing landscapes of a heterogeneous character, where one part destroys the truth and natural effect of the other."

We observe that Mr Burnet here uses the word picturesque in its false technical meaning. Is the stunted oak more picturesque than the trees in the Peter Martyr? The picturesque has its only existence in propriety. He has given in a plate a slight outline of the trees of the Peter Martyr, but they lose their effect in this transcript. Is it that they want the angels in the sky, and the murdered man, over whom they should suspend, as it were, the branch of shelter, for sympathy, and the murderer, from whom the trunks should seem to shrink back, abhorrent of the foul deed? Is he not mistaken with regard to the locality of Salvator's studies? He might have noticed that it is only the rugged character that Salvator Rosa preserves; he ever omits the vivid greens, and takes away the gloss and smoothness from the leafage this he does, preferring the nature of his ideal to the actual and external. Now, .as regards art, there is something very curious in this diversity of character in trees. It would be worth while to search a little into the philosophy of it. Why is it that some painters, indeed nearly all the Italian, choose the overarching foliage, the pensile boughs, if the study of nature alone was their object? The thorn and the oak grow together among trees of this character. Why, on the contrary, do Ruysdael and Hobbima, and all the painters of the Dutch and Flemish school, shun that character of trees which the Italians select? There are doubtless good reasons we know and feel there are, for we cannot imagine an introduction into a picture by Ruysdael, of the foliage, the bending boughs, and deep shadow-making leafage of

Gaspar Poussin. Should we not be equally shocked at a portion of a picture by Gaspar being obliterated, to make room for a well-executed Hobbima? It is said, and said truly, portion of one by Ruysdael or there would be an incongruity-but the why is not so clear. We see the different kinds not unfrequently growing out of the same soil, and our poets love to enumerate them, when they would paint in words their scenes of peculiar beauty. See with what trees Spenser clothes his pleasant grove:— "Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy.

The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall,
The vine prop elme, the poplar never dry,
The builder oake, sole king of forests all,
The aspine, good for staves, the cypress fune-
rall.

The lawrel, meed of mightie conquerours
And poets sage, the firre that weepeth still,
The willow worn of forlorne paramours,
The eugh obedient to the bender's will,
The birch for shaftes, the sallow for the mill,
The mirrhe sweete bleeding in the bitter
wound,

The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill,
The fruitfull olive, and the platane round,
The carver holme, the maple seldom inward

sound."

Perhaps it will be said that poets paint vaguely; the eye sees only what the mind wills. The diorama moves

the scene is not arrested in its confusion. But we do see a great variety in nature, and are not offended-we see the trees of Poussin and Ruysdael growing together. We frequently see the slim and tall poplar overtopping the huge and spreading oak. We see then that the oak is dwarfed -but we are not offended, unless we refer the scene to the principles of art. We then find that it is the purpose of the mind to dignify the oak, and in our transcript would not see it so dwarfed. If, then, the poplar dwarfs the oak, that we would fain have high as well as broad, that it may be huge. Do not the principles of art make conditions for all trees? The painter seizes on one condition, one characteristic, which, if he be poetical, he forms into a sentiment, and this sentiment requires congruity; and where a particular sentiment is in the general, the painter avoids those forms that have the sentimental tendency.

Thus, the pendent leaves and hanging boughs-whether they recede

and form deep hollows, or meet and associate, or look Narcissus-like into the waters always more or less convey some sentiment. They, in fact, appear sentient in themselves, to have a motion of life; and their very leaves are tongues that utter whisperingsthere is a solemn mystery within their hollows. The painter, feeling this, makes it the sentiment of his picture, and therefore cautiously avoids an uncommunicating leafage, and inexpressive trunks and boughs; and as much as he may, he gives even to rocks and stones, skies, and even his very lights and shadows, this interchanging expression of sentiment. It must be admitted that there are certain forms that have naturally, by their bending and receding, this character; and that being the case, they are omitted in the pictures of those artists whose object is to portray the common and everyday look of nature, whose expression is unstamped by other thought or feeling than such as the rude uncultured walkers in the woods might entertain. In the picture of Salvator Rosa in the National Gallery, the trees shrink back from the presence of the woodman-they are poetically sentient. There is the god Mercury in the stream. His picture would be even of less value than his statue in the fable, had Hobbima or Cuyp put him in one of their reedy ditches. Could Tobit and the Angel come out of a pool of Wynants'? No bleeding myrtle, growing by the oaks of Ruysdael, will ever tell the tale of Polydorus with effect.

The poplars round "Poplar Hall" will never pass for the sisters of Phaeton. In the Dutch and Flemish pictures, the business of everyday life is everything-respectable toil is the best occupation of the inhabitants of their pictorial land. They cannot afford to run into the vagaries of sentimental incongruities-and thus their works are perfect to their intention, as were those of the Italian schools, particularly Gaspar Poussin, to their insight into a more sentient nature. We do not mean to say that we have unravelled the threads of this philosophy. There may be some truth in our hasty theory-we throw it out as a venture that may be marketable for better opinions.

We cannot quite agree with Mr Burnet in his estimation of the degree of nature in the landscapes of Rubens.

"As I have mentioned the two great founders of landscape painting, Titian and Rubens, I must say a few words on the landscapes of the great Flemish painter. The works of Rubens in this department are slight, and unaccompanied with either much glazing or detail; most of them were painted in a journey through Flanders, taken on account of his health. But slight as they are, they breathe the true spirit of nature, given by the hand of a master perfectly acquainted with the arrangement of hot and cold colours, and therefore to be viewed on this broad principle alone. Look at the Rubens landscape late Sir George Beaumont, and judge for in the National Gallery, presented by the yourself. And always bear this in mind, if you lay out your work on a broad, intelligent principle, whether you give much detail or little, it will command

attention."

Whatever Rubens did was of power, and that is certainly seen in his landscapes; but in those whose scenes are of the most homely kind, there is a power in the colouring quite at variance with the subjects. Had we been acquainted with the landscapes only through Bolowert's admirable engravings, we should have acknowledged the fascinating hand of a high genius; but if we are to judge from the lauded specimens in the National Gallery, we confess that the eccentricity of the colouring, and that of scenes professedly of the humblest kind, has quite destroyed the pleasure which the consummate skill of the painter in other respects would have given. In colouring, they are really more unlike nature than any pictures we remember to have seen. The browns and yellows are quite outrageous, and not, as we think, tempered with the cool colours Mr Burnet sees in them. The Chateau of the Artist-that so much lauded by Mr Burnet-has always appeared to us disagreeable. The violent blood-stained browns are like no earth; and there is a littleness, a multiplicity of littlenesses, in the distance, that makes all the foreground violence worse. In fact,

the colouring is a vagary; it neither tells the subject nor assists it; nor does it represent morning, evening, or mid-day, though the writer of the National Gallery Print-Book assures the reader it is an autumnal morning. The scene is dank and hateful. There is another in the collection-a small sunset-but such as eyes never beheld, yet the subject demanded simple truth. We should almost be tempted again to ask, "Was Rubens a colourist ?"

The opinion of a modern artist in favour or in dispraise of a contemporary must be taken with caution, especially when a comparison is made between the works of the living and the dead. Mr Burnet takes occasion to find fault with the faultless Vandervelde, for the "fixed in the form and treatment of the waves," as destructive of the undulating, unsteady character of sea; and compares with it a sea-piece by Turner, both in the Bridgewater collection. If we are not mistaken, these two pictures were exhibited some years ago, side by side, in the British Institution. If the eye could take in at once every painted wave, and distant portion of sea, we should still differ from the criticism; for the law of the sea would render any one portion pretty much as Vandervelde has painted it; nor is the actual motion of the whole body in the least destroyed, because the eye does not see all at once in detail. The motion of Vandervelde's seas is perfect, and the transparent depth of the water, in which we remember thinking the companion picture deficient. Had Vandervelde been painting an historical sea, he would have been less accurate, or rather less precise, in his forms. The author remarks elsewhere, that Vandervelde never painted green water. His scenes, it may be remembered, were off the coast of Holland.

He particularly directs the attention of his learner friend to the eleventh letter, in which we find the following valuable passage:

"With regard to lines, you will find a perpendicular has its greatest antagonist in a horizontal line, and the lines necessary to harmonise the two are conse

quently oblique lines. Now, as these lines incline more or less to extremes, they do not, by such inclination, give increase of force; on the contrary, they break down and soften, by their harmonious agreement, those lines with which they accord. So, in light and shade, black and white are the two extremes, and can only be united by the presence of middle-tint. According as this halftint is regulated will depend the force of either of the opposites. If it is of a light scale, the dark will have more point and strength-if of a deep shade, the white will have the greater value. Hence we see the necessity of regulating the half-tint according as we wish to increase the power of either the light or dark objects. Likewise, in colour, we shall find the same law will operate towards a similar result. For example, take blue, red, and yellow-the three primitive colours and let a green be added to the group, the red will gain an ascendency by the blue and yellow being harmonised by the compound colour; or, in the place of a green, let a purple be present, the yellow will increase in value from the same cause. This is the reason why cold colours have more force in a warm picture, and warm colours in a cold."

With regard to the lines-the horizontal and perpendicular, affected by the oblique-we would suggest, that, to restore the force of the perpendicular, lessened by the oblique, the oblique should be repeated, as reflected in a mirror: the perpendicular will then seem to rise more than before the oblique lines were added.

Among the plates, there is a very good one of detail, from a sketch by Mr William Simson. It has quite the charm of a daguerreotype. It is indeed in itself a picture-much more so than many by Wynants, where an ambitious landscape has been added.

We find it time to draw to a close. The readers of Mr Burnet's thin book-and we hope they are and will be many-cannot fail to find in it both amusement and instruction. It will surely do its part to promote a love of Art, and, in promoting a love of Art, it will be a key to that gardengate of Nature, where all who enter in, and admiringly love, in the end become wiser and better.

THOSE who are in any degree acquainted with the machinery of the British Government, know that it is worked by three classes of public persons. First, by the leaders of public office, the heads of departments-emphatically the Ministry, Those are the individuals who, having most distinguished themselves by ability in the House or being most fortunate in their connections with great familiesor being sustained by old pledges of party, are naturally looked up to in all changes, exert the largest influence in Parliament, and give the strongest security to their partisans for the permanence of Ministerial power.

The next class are also a race of important mark-generally recruited from the professions, and in almost every instance won over to political pursuits by the glitter of their prospects, rather than by any original passion for wielding the affairs of the commonwealth. Those men are generally persons of adroit and intelligent minds-by no means negligent of their own interests; not too tenderly attached to either side-equally familiar with both; and not at all disinclined to see virtue in a rising party, as well as to honour it in one in possession. Holding nearly the same relation to political struggle which lawyers hold to the bar, but few among them consider themselves entitled to look beyond their political brief, and for the time are apt to regard the retaining fee as deciding the

case.

This class mix largely in society, and are generally among its pleasantest members. Knowing all the minor matters of Whitehall, they figure with peculiar lustre, however with borrowed light, in the more mixed associations of the metropolis. Cabinet anecdotes drop with prodigious effect into the lap of the merely fashionable world. To have emerged from the whispering circle of the Treasury, confers a character of importance in the Clubs, inexplicable out of London; and, to

have hinted the first intelligence of a Ministerial fall, or predicted, by a fragment of gentle panegyric, the accession of a new luminary to the Cabinet galaxy, establishes a reputation for life, in all the banquets of the most epicurean city between the poles.

Those men are absolutely essential to an Administration. They are the organs, by which the secret and secluded men of the Cabinet receive and give impressions; they are the ears and eyes by which the Dii majorum gentium learn what the level world is doing; they are the restless feelers by which the body of the state discovers its way.

But they sometimes render other services. From them emanates many a piquant paragraph in the party journals; we may trace them in those prompt denials which tear up a whole tissue of neatly wrought fiction; we may find them in the "sincere assurances" which thicken round the death bed of a Cabinet with congratulations on its health; and always detect them in a prodigious burst of horror against official obliquity, and an overflow of eloquence on the necessity of speaking truth to a nation so "philosophical, well-informed, and incapable of being deceived" as Britain. In fact those contributions, however written, have an unmistakeable air, which is to be distinguished at first sight from the general work of the journalist-an air of business, a matter-of-fact style, a sort of self-reliance which belongs to those who are in the secret, and who can afford to tell a part of the truth, with a sufficient reserve of the remainder, to give weight to what they choose to divulge. The early numbers of the Anti-Jacobin were a capital specimen of this style. Paragraphs, thus coming with the stamp of office, have somewhat the same sort of effect in the columns of a newspaper, which the flinging of a squib might have in the quiet street of a village at midnight. It opens every eye at once, some to the glare, some to the danger of their

thatch; and it is some time before Hodge can venture to sleep again.

The third class are like the third class of the railways, exhibiting a coarser kind of model, but moving all together-all running on the same track-all dragged by the same noisy, puffing, hurrying locomotive at their head; and crowded with a living cargo, who have neither share in the secret nor in the steerage, and whose only business is to sit still. Those are the of oλo of legislature, the back benchmen, the honest tribe of whose public existence nobody knows anything, but by their vote.

But these volumes have more than the merit of interesting narrative: they give a large insight into some of the most important, yet intricate transactions of perhaps the most important Ministerial period of the century that period in which the Cabinet system of Pitt gave way before the new shape of popular influence, which has since, more or less, moulded every Ministry. We see passing before us the forms of the able men, who have since successively sunk into the tomb; and see them with the distinctness belonging to daily intercourse and official experience. We have in our hands that telescope, one end of which shows objects in their largest dimensions, and the other in their smallest, but in both with equal clearness. Between diaries, letters, and conversation, we know nothing more lucid, or more real, than the first volume of The Life of Robert Plumer Ward.

We owe Mr Ward to Gibraltar. He was the sixth son of John Ward, who resided in Gibraltar, and com

bined the comfortable office of chief Iclerk to the Ordnance with his trade as a Spanish merchant. This John Ward married a Spanish Jewess, with the compound and characteristic name of Rebecca Raphael. Yet, though Mr Ward's parents had been domiciled in Gibraltar for two generations, it happened that he himself was a Londoner, being born in the metropolis in 1765, in one of the occasional visits of his parents to England; and his physiognomy and hue bore no semblance of this double claim to southern blood. Though Spanish on the one side, and Jewish on the other, his countenance was thoroughly English-broad and blue-eyed. His figure, instead of the general littleness of the south, was tall and manly; indeed, he was altogether a good specimen of the Briton.

But, within

From the beginning of his life, Robert Ward seemed to be under a fortunate star. On the death of his mother (who died within three years of his birth) he became an object of kindness to the Honourable Mrs Cornwallis, the wife of General Cornwallis, then Governor of Gibraltar. Having no children of their own, and pleased with the animation of the boy, who very early showed some literary turn, and at the age of eight recited Milton with " great applause," both seem to have taken charge of his education, as they would not improbably of his fortune. three years those two amiable people died, and he was sent to England to school, where he was put under the care of one Macfarlane, who kept an academy. The choice was a singular one; for this teacher of men and manners happened to be a violent democrat, whose practical notions of equality finally induced him to marry his cook, utterly ruined his school, and ultimately cost him his life; for, in the riots at Brentford, in the contested election of Byng and Burdett, the luckless democrat, whose folly seems to have been beyond the power of time to cure, was killed in the melée.

Biographers are fond, and often fruitlessly fond of discovering the talents of statesmen in the whims of schoolboys. The future lucubrations of Ward are thus predicted in his