"There never was a more restlessly active man than the king. He was the very type of choleric temper; not the slightest touch of phlegm in him. Being himself so passionately given to busying himself, it came quite natural to him to thrash now and then one of those Berlin lazzaroni, the 'Eckensteher' (ticket-porters standing at the street corners), if he happened to see any one idly lounging about. A no less vigorous application of the same gentle persuasion was bestowed upon the lazy keeper of the Potsdam gate; who, having during his morning slumbers made the country people wait outside the gate, was awakened by his Majesty saluting him with his royal cane, and with 'Good morning, Master Gatekeeper.'

"It was a very awkward thing to meet the king in the street. Whenever he was struck by the appearance of any one, he rode up to him so closely, that the head of his horse touched the man's chest. Then followed the usual question, 'Who are you?' Those whom he took for Frenchmen were sure to be stopped by him One of them being asked, 'Qui êtes vous ?" very wisely answered in German, I do not understan French.' Even the French preachers were stopped, and every time asked whether they had read Molière, as an inuendo that he did not consider them as much better than comedians. The son of the celebrated Beausobre once answered to this Molière question, Out, sire, et surtout l'Avare.' Such ready answers pleased the monarch, and fortunate were those who were able to give them. Those, on the other hand, fared worst who tried to fly from him. It happened one day that a Jew, seeing the king at a distance, took to his heels; but being soon overtaken by him, the poor fellow confessed that he had been afraid. The king immediately began to cudgel him, with the words, Love me, love me you shall, and not fear!

FINE ARTS.

THE Edinburgh Lectures of Ruskin, on Architecture and Painting, which have been so severely handled in Blackwood, have been republished in New York by John Wiley, and we learn from then, that it will be a long time before the great critic of art will again publish any thing on the subject of architecture. What he intends doing in the meanwhile he gives no hint of, but such an active and belligerent mind must be doing something; and we wish he might be induced to come over here, and lecture to us in the same spirit in which he has been lecturing the good people of Edinburgh. We need his instructions quite as much, and he would find more objects here to exercise his critical faculty than he found in the Northern capital. Two of his lectures were confined to the architecture of that city, and the other two to Turnerism, and Pre-Raphaelitism, and though they do but repeat the principles which are contained in the Seven Lamps and his other writings, yet they so abound in special applications and new examples, that they are full of freshness and novel

ty, even to those who are familiar with his previous publications. Even those who cannot comprehend his radical philosophy of the true aims of art, and of course wholly differ from his conclusions, must still be entertained by his originality of thought, and improved by his vigorous and fearless expression of opinions. He often gives utterance to ideas that are most amusingly absurd to those who are not thoroughly imbued with his principles. In a brief episode in one of his lectures on the meaning of Romance and Utopianism, he names an author whom he accuses of having done more to degrade the human mind and paralyze its divine nature, than any other man who has lived in the tide of time. We would like to bet our gold pen, that there is not a moralist living shrewd enough to surmise who that pernicious author is. It is not Voltaire, nor Rousseau, nor any German philosopher, nor English infidel, nor French moralist, nor American democrat, but the immortal Cervantes, whose dire and malignant production is Don Quixote.

Mr. Ruskin's attacks on Greek architecture and the old landscape painters, must appear to the majority of readers very much like Don Quixote's battle with the windmills, and the onslaught upon an innocent flock of sheep; and he doubtless entertains a very warm feeling of sympathy for that mad knight-errantry which has been made the subject of immortal mirth by Cervantes. It would not be a difficult matter to run a very striking parallel between Don Quixote and Mr. Ruskin, and his vehement denunciation of the creator of that marvel of wit, is almost a confession that the Oxford graduate is himself sensible of the likeness which he bears to the knight of La Mancha. The difference between them is, that while the author of the Seven Lamps seems mad only to those who cannot comprehend him, the Don is mad to every body but himself.

The Edinburgh people have long boasted of their architectural splendors, and have absurdly called their small town the Northern Athens; but Mr. Ruskin, with that amusing indifference to the personal feelings and prejudices of his audience, which is characteristic of all earnest and zealous reformers, lectures them in the plainest and most convincing manner with special reference to their weakness, and proves beyond the possibility of dissent, that their architecture is a disgrace to their taste, and that they are destitute of artistic feeling and discrimination. It is not to be wondered at that Blackwood is angry

with the great critic; for, with a few quiet words he has completely demolished the pretensions of Edinburgh to be considered a fine city, and at a few blasts of his critical ram's horn the architectural glories of the New Town have fallen. If the force of his criticisms had not been felt, we should not have seen such an angry reply to them in Blackwood. The two radical principles of the Ruskinian theory of art are that mind is better than machinery, and that truth is better than falsehood. These two ideas lie at the bottom of all of the criticisms and dogmatisins of the Oxford graduate, and it is because the very bases of all his remarkable and startling theories have either been lost sight of, or never comprehended, that he has been so generally misunderstood, ridiculed and abused. But, though we do not anticipate an immediate revolution in architecture, painting, and sculpture, it is not possible that his remarkable writings should fail to give an entirely new direction to the artistic operations of the next generation. The old men will persevere in their old ways; but the new men, who have a career to make, will profit by the profound and sagacious theories which the author of the Stones of Venice has elucidated in his various writings. According to him, and we cannot dissent from his opinions, architecture has been a lost art during the past two hundred years. In all that time there has been an immense deal of costly building in Christendom, but nothing that deserves the name of noble architecture.

But, it is not as an expounder of the true theory of art that he is alone entitled to admiration; for even though all he had written on art were false and worthless, there would be enough remaining, interWoven among his criticisms, on the moralities of life, and the religious responsibilities of our nature, to place his writings among the most remarkable and profitable that the century has produced. In one of his Edinburgh lectures on Architecture there is a passage in relation to purchases of works of art, so full of noble thought, and the refined essence of Christian feeling, that we copy it, as much for its intrinsic beauty as, the novel and subtle principle which it evolves.

"There is, assuredly, no action of our social life, however unimportant, which, by kindly thought, may not be made to have a beneficial influence upon others; and, it is impossible to spend the smallest

sum of money, for any not absolute purpose, without a grave responsibility attaching to the manner of spending it. The object we ourselves covet, may, indeed, be desirable and harmless, so far as we are concerned, but the providing us with it may, perhaps, be a very prejudicial occupation to some one else; and then it becomes instantly a moral question, whether we are to indulge ourselves in it or not. Whatever we wish to buy, we ought first to consider not only if the thing be fit for us, but if the manufacture be a wholesome and happy one; and if, on the whole, the sum we are going to spend, would do as much good spent in this way as it would if spent in any other way. It may be said we have not time to consider all this before we make a purchase. But no time could be spent in a more important duty; and God never imposes a duty without giving the time to do it. Let us, however, only acknowledge the principle;-once make up your mind to allow the consideration of the effect of your purchases, and you will soon easily find grounds enough to decide upon. Now let us remember, that every farthing we spend on objects of art has influence over men's minds and spirits, far more than over their bodies. By the purchase of every print which hangs on your walls, of every cup out of which you drink, and every table off which you eat your bread, you are educating a mass of men in one way or another. You are either employing them healthily or unwholesomely; you are making them lead happy or unhappy lives; you are leading them to look at nature and to love her to think, to feel, to enjoy; or you are blinding them to nature and keeping them bound, like beasts of burden, in mechanical and monotonous employments. We shall all be asked one day why we did not think more of this."

The particular application which Mr. Ruskin makes of this principle is, that it is better for the cause of art and humanity to purchase a cheap, original watercolor painting, than a high-priced engraving, an opinion from which no man with a heart in his bosom, or a sound idea in his head, will dissent. But if this principle be true in the morals of trade, and we do not see how it can honestly be gainsaid, with what force can it be applied to the case of literary purchases in this country.

FOREIGNERS complain that they can

not easily understand our political parties, and we do not wonder at it, because those parties do not always understand themselves. Their controversies like the old homoousian disputes of the church, often turn upon such niceties of distinction, that to discern their differences requires optics as sharp as those of Butler's hero, who could

"Sever and divide

Betwixt north-west and north-west side."

What with whigs, democratic whigs, democrats, true democrats, barnburners, hunkers, silver grays, woolly heads, soft shells, hard shells, national reformers, fire-eaters, and filibusteros, it is not difficult to imagine how the exotic intellect should get perplexed! Even to our native and readier apprehensions, the diversity of principle hidden under the diversity of names, is not always palpable; while it must be confessed, that our parties are not universally so consistent with themselves as to enable us to write their distinctive creeds in a horn-book.

Yet, on a closer survey, it is found that parties here are very much the same, in their characteristic tendencies and aims, as parties elsewhere. They originate in that human nature, which is the same everywhere (modified by local circumstances only), and they exhibit under the various influences of personal constitution, ambition, interest, &c., the same contrasts of selfishness and virtue, 'of craft, audacity, genius, falsehood, wisdom and folly. It is true that our differences are not seemingly so fundamental and well-pronounced as those of older

VOL. IV.-16.

nations. We have no contests here as the elementary principles of government. A monarchist is perhaps not to be found from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, any more than a rhinoceros or lammergeyer. We are all republicans; we all believe in the supremacy of the people; and our convictions, as to the general nature and sphere of legislation, are as uniform as if they had been produced by a process of mental stereotype.

But within the range prescribed by this more general unanimity, there has been ample room and verge enough, for the evolution of many heated and dis-tempered antagonisms. We have agreed that our governments should be republican, but as to what functions they should exercise and what they should leave to the people, we have not always agreed; we have agreed that the separate States should be sovereign and independent, but to what extent they might carry that sovereignty and independence we have not agreed; we have agreed that the benefits of the federal union should be, from time to time, extended to new territories, but on what terms they should be extended, we have not agreed; we have agreed to keep aloof from the domestic affairs of other nations, but as to the details of foreign policy inside of this salutary rule, we have not agreed. There has been among us always, there-fore, radical dissents and oppositions. We have had parties of many stripes and calibres, some which favored, and some which opposed a large concentration of power in the federal government; some which have proposed to accomplish their social objects by legislative and others by voluntary action; some which have