ness of a despicable old Hunks, who starves himself and his cat, and spends his whole time in counting rouleaus. A sentimental old clothesman or pawnbroker is a being whom we can by no means admit into our world of imaginative existence. He is as completely and manifestly an ens meræ rationis, as any of the new species to which the human naturalist is introduced in the dangerous and delusive horti sicci of the circulating library.

But the Polish Jews are a very different kind of people from our ones. They form a population of several hundred thousands, and occupy whole towns, villages, and tracts of territory by themselves. Here they live in a state of great simplicity and honesty, cultivating the soil, and discharging all the healthful duties of ordinary citizenship. Above all, they are distinguished from their brethren in Germany and elsewhere, by a rigid observance of the laws of their religion. In short, they are believers in the Old Testament, and still expect, with sincere devotion, the coming of their Messiah. The respect which a Polish Jew meets with all over the continent, so strongly contrasted with the utter contempt heaped upon all the other children of his race, is primarily, of course, the fruit of that

long experience which has established the credit and honour of his dealings; but it is certainly very much assisted and strengthened by that natural feeling of respect with which all men regard those who are sincere in what they seem. The character of these Polish Jews, with their quiet and laborious lives, with their firm attachment to the principles of honesty, with their benevolence and their hospitality, and, above all, with their fervid and melancholy love for their old Faith-a love which has outlived so many centuries of exile, disappointment, and wretchedness-this character, whatever may be thought of it in other respects, cannot surely be denied to be a highly poetical one. Mr Allan, who has enjoyed so many opportunities of contemplating the working of human thoughts and passions under so many different shapes, has seen this character, and the manners in which it is bodied forth, with the eye of a poet and a painter; and I would hope the Merry-Making may not be the only glimpse of both with which he may favour us.

But there would be no end of it, were I to think of acting Cicerone through the whole of his gallery, in a letter such as this: And be sides, these are not pictures whose merits can be even tolerably interpreted through the medium of words. They are everywhere radiant with an expression of pathos, that is entirely peculiar to the art of which they are specimens. They cannot be comprehended unless they be seen; and it is worth while going a long journey, were it only to see them. It is not, on a first view, that the faults of pictures possessing so much merit, can be at all felt by persons capable of enjoying their beauties. But I shall enter upon these in my next; I shall also say something of the pictures which Mr Allan has painted more lately, and the scenes of which are laid nearer to ourselves. Wide as is the field of the East, and delicious as is the use he has made of that untrodden field-I am glad to find that he does not mean to confine himself to it.

The pictures he

has painted of oriental subjects, are rich in the expression of feelings, gathered during his wanderings among the regions to which they belong. But there are other feelings, and more powerful ones, too, which ought to fix, and I think it pro

bable they will do so, the matured and once

more domesticated mind of such a painter as Mr

Allan

P. M.

249

LETTER XLVIII.

TO THE SAME.

THE largest and most finished picture, which Mr Allan has painted upon any subject not oriental, (or at least not partaking of an oriental character,) is that of the Press-Gang. The second time that I went to his house, he was in the act of superintending the packing up of this fine piece, for being sent into the country;* so that I was lucky in having a view of it at all— for I certainly was not allowed time to contemplate it in so leisurely a manner as I could have wished. It is of about the same dimensions as the Circassian Siaves, and the canvass, as in it, is

* The picture belongs to Mr Horrocks of Tillihewan Castle, Dumbartonshire.