and pale-all its throbbings over for a time, even as if the finger of death had been there to appease them. Her beautiful lips are tinged with an envious livid stain, and her sunken eye-lids are black with the rush of recoiling blood, amidst the melancholy marble of her cheeks and forehead. One cannot look upon her without remembering the story of Crazy Jane, and thinking that here too is a creature whose widowed heart can never hope for peace-one to whom some poet of love might hereafter breathe such words as those already breathed by one of the truest of poets :—

"But oh! when midnight wind careers,
And the gust pelting on the out-house shed,
Makes the cock shrilly in the rain-storm crow,
To hear thee sing some ballad full of wo,
Ballad of ship-wrecked sailor floating dead,
Whom his own true-love buried in the sands!
Thee, gentle Woman-for thy voice re-measures
Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures
The things of Nature utter—birds or trees,

Or moan of ocean gale in weedy caves,

Or where the stiff grass 'mid the heath-plant waves,
Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze."

*

*

As I am not one of those who walk round a whole gallery of pictures in a single morning, and think themselves entitled to say they have seen them—and even to make criticisms upon their merits and demerits, I by no means thought of perplexing my feeling of the power of the Press-Gang, by looking at any other of Mr. Allan's pictures on the same day; I have often gone back since, however, and am now quite familiar with all the pictures still in his own possession. Those painted on domestic British subjects, are all filled with the same deep and tender tastefulness, which the Press-Gang so eminently discovers; but none of them are so happily conceived in point of arrangement, nor, perhaps, is the colouring of the artist seen to the same advantage in any one of them. In

deed, in comparing the Press-Gang itself with the Circassian Slaves, the Jewish Family, and some of the earliest pieces, I could not help entertaining a suspicion, that in this great department the artist has rather retrograded than advanced, since his return to Britain. It may be that his eyes had been so long accustomed to light, shade, and colour, as exhibited in oriental regions, that his mode of painting had become imbued and penetrated with the idea of representing these effects alone and that so the artist may not yet have entirely regained the eyes, without which, it is certain, he cannot possess the hand, of a British painter. It is very obvious, that this is a failing which, considering what master-pieces of colouring some of his older pictures are, cannot possibly continue long to lessen the power and beauty of his performances. I speak of the general colouring of his pieces-I have no doubt they may have lesser and more particular faults offensive to more scientific eyes, and perhaps not quite so likely to be got rid of. Almost all the artists, with whom I have conversed on the subject of his pictures, seem to say, that they consider him somewhat defective in his representation of the colour of the naked flesh. And I do think, (although I should scarcely have made the discovery for myself,) that he does make it rather dead and opaque, and gives it too little relief. But, perhaps, the small size of his pictures, and the multiplicity of figures which they contain, are circumstances unfavourable to this species of excellence. If his objects were less numerous, and presented larger surfaces, he would find it more easy to make them vivid, transparent, and beautiful, and to give them a stronger relief by finer gradations of shadow. A small canvass, occupied with so many figures, never has a broad and imposing effect at first sight. The first feeling it excites is curiosity about what they are engaged with, and we immediately go forward to pry into the subject, and spell out the story. A piece, with larger and fewer figures, if the subject be well chosen, is understood at once; and nothing tells more strongly on the imagination, or strikes us with

a more pleasing astonishment, than a bold effect of light and shadow, seen at a convenient distance.

The execution of a picture, however, is a thing of which I cannot venture to speak, without a great feeling of diffidence. The choice of subjects is a matter more within the reach of one that has never gone through any regular apprenticeship of Gusto'; and much as I have been delighted with Mr. Allan's pictures, and much as I have been delighted with the subjects, too,-I by no means think, that his subjects are, in general, of a kind much calculated to draw out the highest parts of his genius, or to affect mankind with the same high and enduring measure of admiration and delight, which his genius, otherwise directed, might, I nothing question, enable him to command. In this respect, indeed, he only errs (if error there be) along with almost all the great artists, his contemporaries-nay, it is perhaps but too true, that he and they have alike been compelled to err by the frivolous spirit of the age in which they have been born. I fear, I greatly fear, that, in spite of all the genius which we see every day breaking out in different departments of this delightful art, the day of its loftiest and most lasting triumphs has gone by. However, to despair of the human mind in any one of its branches of exertion, is a thing very repugnant to my usual feelings.

P. M.

P. S. Before quitting Mr. Allan's atelier, I must tell you, that I have seen an exquisite sketch of the murder of Archbishop Sharpe, which he has just executed. The picture will, I doubt not, be his domestic masterpiece. The idea of painting a picture on this subject may probably have been suggested to him by a piece of business in which he is just about to engage, viz. making designs for the illustration of Waverley, and the other novels of the same author. What a field is here! I have seen none of his designs; but he will doubtless make them in a manner worthy of himself; and if he does so, his name will descend for ever in glorious companionship with that of the most original author of our days, and

the most powerful author that Scotland ever has produced,

Q. F. F. Q. S, quoth

LETTER XLIX.

TO THE SAME.

P. M.

I KNOW of no painter, who shows more just reflection and good judgment in his way of conceiving a subject, and arranging the parts of it, than Allan. His circumstances are always most happily chosen, and the characters introduced are so skilfully delineated, as to prove that the painter has been an excellent observer of life. His pictures are full of thought, and show a most active and intelligent mind. They display, most graphically, the fruits of observation; and the whole of the world which they represent, is suffused over with a very rare and precious breathing of tenderness and delicacy of feeling. In short, were his subjects taken from the highest field of his art, and had they any fundamental ideas of permanent and lofty interest at the bottom of them, I do not see why Mr. Allan should not be truly a Great Painter. But his genius has, as yet, been cramped and confined by a rather over-stretched compliance with the taste of the times.

The highest purpose to which painting has ever been applied, is that of expressing ideas connected with Religion; and the decay of the interest attached by mankind to ideas of that class, is evinced by nothing in a more striking manner, than by the nature of the subjects now (in preference to them) commonly chosen for painting, and most relished by the existing generation. It would seem, indeed, as if the decay of interest in great things and great ideas, had not shown itself in regard to religion alone. Even subjects taken from national history, seem to be scarcely so familiar to the imaginations and associations of ordinary spectators, as to be much

relished or deeply felt in any modern exhibition room. It is probable, that subjects like those chosen by Wilkie, (and, of late, by Allan also,) come most home now-a-days to the feelings of the multitude. They pre-suppose no knowledge of the past-no cherished ideas habitually dwelt on by the imagination-no deep feeling of religion-no deep feeling of patriotism-but merely a capacity for the most common sympathies and sensibilities of human nature. The picture makes no demand on the previous habits or ideas of the spectatorit tells its own story, and it tells it entirely-but exactly in proportion as it wants retrospective interest, I am inclined to think it wants endurance of interest. I think Wilkie's species of painting may be said to bear the same relation to the highest species, which sentimental comedies and farces bear to regular tragedies. But in all this, as I have already hinted, it is probable the public is most to blame-not the painter. Indeed, the very greatest artists, were they to go on making creations either in painting, poetry, or any other art, without being guided by the responses of public enthusiasm, would run a sad risk of losing their way. The genius of a gifted individual-his power of inventing and conceivingis an instrument which he himself may not always have the judgment to employ to the best advantage, and which is more safely directed to its mark by the aggregated feelings, I will not say, of the multitude, but at least of numbers. Even the scattered suffrages of amateurs, who, by artificial culture, have acquired habits of feeling different from those of the people about them, must always be a very trifling stimulus, when compared with the trumpet-notes of a whole nation, haling an artist for having well expressed ideas alike interesting to them all. There is no popular sympathy in these days with those divinest feelings of the human soul, which formed the essence of interest in the works of the sculptors of Greece-still more in those of the painters of modern Italyand the expression of which was rewarded in both cases by the enthusiasm, boundless and grateful, of those by whom these artists were habitually surrounded.