most happily chosen incident in the early struggles of her noblest confessors. The handling of this picture, and the management of all its accessories, are peculiarly satisfactory. All this painter's works manifest that patient subjection of the powers of genius to the most studied execution of its fine firstthoughts. We know no living painter who surpasses him in the judicious treatment of details. Every portion of the painting is finished with the utmost care; yet no well executed copy of still life ever betrays him into the vulgar error of sacrificing the prominence of more important features to such meretricious excellences. The head of the Sheriff of London, good old Humphrey Monmouth, is particularly beautiful, and the whole treatment of Ann Askew-noblest of England's daughters-is worthy of such a subject. We have already spoken of this picture in an earlier number, when we had an opportunity of inspecting an unfinished proof of the engraving. A careful study of the painting has since confirmed all our previous admiration of this most beautiful work of art, which we doubt not will wake as keen a sympathy in the hearts of thousands in England, as his earlier works have done among his northern countrymen. The engraving we have had the high gratification of inspecting since it was finished; we doubt not that Mr. Graves will be well content that his previous works should be forgot, while his name is preserved as the engraver of this truly national work.

The gazer finds himself beneath the massive arches of the crypt of Old St. Paul's, and his eye is at once arrested by a group assembled around a man of grave and earnest deportment. It is John Porter, one of the bravest of England's martyrs, who reads aloud from the sacred page, while the eager listeners-the wealthy Sheriff, Lady Anne, with the reverend priest, and the blind old beggar, whose ear is arrested while plying his vocation, by the proffer of a better alms in the word of life'-are all hanging on his words, which proclaim to them anew the advent of the promised Saviour.

The picture is rich with the most pregnant associations. We could fill pages without exhausting the comments it suggests. Dimly seen, amidst the shadows of a neighbouring aisle, Bonner looks on, with ill-suppressed indignation, at the scene; while a malignant monk, with crucifix in hand, urges him to quench the heresy in blood. Afar, in the long drawn aisles, we trace the evidences of a ceremonial worship still dominant, and the whole scene is fraught with suggestive touches, vividly calling up those times when might and right battled for the mastery in

England, and truth slowly and painfully won the vantage ground.

Pictures like this are calculated to revive the hopes of the least sanguine as to the creation of a British school of painting, such as may challenge comparison with any in Europe. While one class of our artists, including men of undoubted talent, are wasting their energies in a vain struggle for national encouragement, and sickening under hope deferred; we trust to see our men of true genius, guided by a better spirit of independent self-reliance, emulating the earlier painters of every school, and begetting the only patronage that is alike safe, and healthy, and honourable to all-that admiration which genius compels by the inherent beauty of its productions.

ART. IX.-The Times. June and July, 1846.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL is a person of much more bravery than that small spare presence of his would indicate. But Sir Robert Peel, who has always been a match for his lordship in caution, has now shown himself at least his equal in moral Courage. We are not among those who think that Lord John Russell might not have passed the Corn Bill, when attempting to form a cabinet in December last, had he given himself resolutely to the object. An order in council, at that juncture, would have sufficed to place the existing corn law in abeyance; and once reduced to that condition, its prestige would have passed away, and a fight to keep it out, would have been a much more hopeful business than a fight to put it out.

Sir Robert Peel was as much committed to his measure then as since. His power, indeed, might have been somewhat less out of office than in, both in the Upper and the Lower House; but the struggle would still have been betwixt such force as the protectionists have been able to bring into the field on the one side, and the united forces of Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell on the other. No doubt, the conflict, in that case, would have been more difficult and perilous; but the large views which should characterize the statesman, and the sort of courage which only strengthens as the battle thickens, must have led to a successful issue. It is true, we are told there was division in the liberal camp itself, partly on personal grounds, and partly in reference to the principle of the policy proposed. Of those differences we must not of course affect to possess any certain

information. They may have been such as to have warranted a course on the part of Lord John Russell, different from what we should otherwise have expected from him. But if things were so, we hope it will not be forgotten in future, that the party wanting in magnanimity must be a party wanting in power, and that men who learn very slowly often learn too late. The Whigs, however, are in, whether from good fortune or high desert we shall not now attempt to determine. We wish them well-we are of them-and our only fear is, lest their noble principles, which have seemed at times to become somewhat stiffened with age, should still betray too much of that kind of infirmity. It is this fear-a fear which springs from the sincerity of our attachment to the present government, that prompts us, just now, to speak more in the language of caution than in that of congratulation.

It will be a great mistake on the part of our Whig friends, if they suppose that their accession to office as Whigs, is an event in which the country feels a deep interest. It is time they should be well apprised that scarcely any trace of that old party feeling is left among the English people. Liberal principles were never so thoroughly appreciated among us; but in relation to those principles, the Whig party is felt to have been an historical accident. It is not to the Whigs as a party, but to the salutary policy to be expected from men of such professions, that the country is now looking. To count upon the past glories of Whiggism would be to lean upon a shadow. Its failures in more recent times are too fresh in men's memories. To halt in the principles which gave that party its place in history, would be to extend the maxims of childhood to the condition of manhood. The Whig of the old school was a highly respectable person in the old time; but we no more think and feel after the manner of our great-grandfathers in respect to public affairs, than we think of appearing in the street with the sword and ruffles worn by those venerable personages. is well, indeed, to feel that our principles are not of yesterday, and to give them such remote and historical association as we may; but our boastings of the good old cause' will avail us little, if that cause should prove to be so old, as to fail of bearing the kind of fruit demanded by the new exigencies of the times which have opened upon it. It may not be pleasant to fine chivalrous Whigs, such as we who here write assuredly are, to see all the poetry of our party exploits so readily forgotten; but if the fact be so, we must even shape ourselves to it, and endeavour to secure some hold on the future simply by deserving it-by doing that future some real service. The at

It

tempts made in the formation of the present ministry, to introduce into it such names as those of Villiers and Gibson, Dalhousie, Lincoln, and Herbert, bespeak some perception in high places of that break-up of the old party landmarks which has taken place so widely lower down. But with us, the order of nature seems destined to be inverted-the light commonly finding its way far along the valleys before it is seen to gild the summit of the mountains. The men who have governed England, have too commonly been among the last to discern the changes which have taken place from time to time among its people. The governing have almost always learnt their maxims from the governed. In a sense not very gratifying to their pride, they have stooped to conquer.'

On the recent conduct of Sir Robert Peel, every sort of judgment has been pronounced. The extreme section of the protectionists denounce him as a traitor. Many of the liberals still question his sincerity, and some do not scruple to speak of him as one of the most profligate ministers that have ever governed a free country. We are not ourselves believers in any of these representations. We scarcely need say, that Sir Robert Peel has never been a favourite with us. The systematic manner in which he availed himself of all sorts of expedients to recover the power of which the liberal party had deprived him cannot cease to be a part of his history. In office and out of office, he has been greatly wanting in frank and honourable feeling, and in the elevation and magnanimity necessary to the great statesman. Cold, cautious, reserved, uncertain, he has passed through the highest stations in the greatest empire of the world as a man without friends, and, with all his power, as a man singularly distrusted and distrusting. The bond between him and his party has always been a bond of selfishness, rather than the fresh and generous feeling that should bind leader and follower. Still we account him a man of substantially honest purposes. He began in a bad school, and it has been the business of his life to unlearn the lessons there taught him. Had he been the dishonest man he is sometimes said to have been, he never would have unlearnt them. It is, in our opinion, a characteristic of his mind, that he should be as open to new impressions from new circumstances at sixty as he was at sixand-twenty. His genius is eminently practical. His only world is the world of experiment. He is at the farthest possible remove from everything ideal and transcendental. He is never fascinated by an abstract principle, except as he can find some department where it may be put into safe and productive action. His great maxim appears to be, that the best laws are

for the best condition of society. Give him an improved people, and he will be found at once ripe for an improved legislation. Or give him new circumstances, and he is prepared to diffuse a new temperament into his administration. In this respect, his mind has always been greatly more free from the thraldom of party than that of Lord John Russell. With the latter, the maxims of our great Whig statesmen have been too much as texts from Holy Writ. But the pride of consistency may be as fatal to ingenuousness as the love of power. It may be a man's strength, and not his weakness-his honesty, and not his baseness, which disposes him to change. Your fools are not unfrequently obstinate; and your base men often cling to the elements of power, cost them what it may. We do not think that the enemies of Sir Robert Peel will take anything by attributing his recent course of proceeding to disreputable motives. Their wiser policy will be, to give the ex-premier credit for those intentions which the country is willing to ascribe to him. The people of England will not be found to sympathize with any course less generous.

Had the ambition of Sir Robert Peel been more personal than patriotic, he might still have been in office, and might long have retained it. His power in the present House of Commons must not be judged of by the hundred members from among his old friends who voted with him on the Corn Bill. There was a much larger number on that side of the House, who were prepared to sustain him in his new policy, though they were not at liberty to vote in favour of that initiatory measure. Indeed, of his whole party, there were not above sixty-the sixty who, in the midst of their late wordy warfare, are said to have disposed of nearly two hundred bottles of wine at a sitting -that could be regarded as thoroughly and hopelessly at issue with him. Such a loss would soon have been much more than repaired by accessions from the ranks of the liberals. Even at the last, had the minister consented to relinquish, or even to modify his Coercion Bill, and had he appealed to the country on the basis of his commercial policy, and of such a policy towards Ireland as he is now pledged to sustain, it is hardly to be doubted that the country would have installed him in office for the next seven years. We admit, at once, that he has pursued a more patriotic and a more honourable course. But we have known the time when neither Whig nor Tory would have relinquished office with such chances before him of escaping from that catastrophe. The battle to which Sir Robert Peel has dared to front himself, and the sacrifices he has made, have few parallels in the history of our statesmen. He undertook to