Chapter 2

Now, there happened to be at that time residing in Glyndewi an old lady, "of the name and cousinage" of Phillips, who, though an old maid, was one of those unhappily rare individuals who do not think it necessary to rail against those amusements which they are no longer in a situation to enjoy. She was neither as young, nor as rich, nor as light-hearted, as she had been; but it was difficult to imagine that she could ever have been more truly cheerful and happy than she seemed now. So, instead of cutting short every sally of youthful spirits, and every dream of youthful happiness, by sagacious hints of cares and troubles to come, she rather lent her aid to further every innocent enjoyment among her younger friends; feeling, as she said, that the only pity was, that young hearts grew old so soon. The consequence was, that instead of exacting a forced deference from her many nephews and nieces, (so are first cousins' children called in Wales,) she was really loved and esteemed by them all, and while she never wished to deprive them of an hour's enjoyment, they would willingly give up a pleasant party at any time to spend an evening with the old lady, and enliven her solitude with the sounds she best loved--the music of youthful voices.

All among her acquaintance, therefore, who were going to the ball in fancy costume, had promised to call upon her, whether in or out of their way, to "show themselves," willing to make her a partaker, as far as they could, of the amusement of the evening. Captain Phillips had asked us if we would oblige him, and gratify a kind old woman, by allowing him to introduce us in our fancy dresses. I had none, and therefore did not form part of the exhibition; but Dick Turpin and the cornet of lancers, with Branling in a full hunting costume, (which always formed part of his travelling baggage,) walked some fifty yards to the old lady's lodgings. Mr Plympton, always polite, accepted Captain Phillips's invitation to be introduced at the same time. Now Mr Plympton, as was before recorded, was a remarkably dapper personage; wore hair powder, a formidably tall and stiff white "choker," and upon all occasions of ceremony, black shorts and silks, with gold buckles. Remarkably upright and somewhat pompous in his gait, and abominating the free-and-easy manners of the modern school, his bow would have graced the court of Versailles, and his step was a subdued minuet. Equipped with somewhat more than his wonted care, the rev. junior bursar of Oriel was introduced into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the stranger to enter the doors of Madame Tussaud's wax exhibition; not daring to bow for fear of losing his beloved shako, but turning his head from side to side as slowly, and far less naturally, than the waxen gentleman aforementioned. All, in their several ways, were worthy of admiration, and all did she seem to admire; but it was when her eye rested at last on the less showy, but equally characteristic figure in black, who stood bowing his acknowledgments of the honour of the interview, with an _empressement_ which fully made up for Dawson's forced _hauteur_--that her whole countenance glistened with intense appreciation of the joke, and the very spectacles danced with glee. Again did she make the stranger her most gracious curtsy; again did Mr Plympton, as strongly as a bow could do it, declare how entirely he was at her service: he essayed to speak, but before a word escaped his lips, the old lady fairly burst out into a hearty laugh, clapped her hands, and shouted to his astonished ears, "Capital, capital! do it again! oh, do it again!" For a moment the consternation depicted upon Mr Plympton's countenance at this remarkable reception, extended to the whole of his companions; but the extraordinary sounds which proceeded from Captain Phillips, in the vain attempt to stifle the laugh that was nearly choking him, were too much for the gravity of even the polite Mr Dawson; and it was amidst the violent application of pocket-handkerchiefs in all possible ways, that the captain stepped forward with the somewhat tardy announcement, "My dear aunt, allow me to present the Rev. Mr Plympton, Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College." This was accompanied by a wink and an attempt at a frown, intended to convey the strongest reprobation of the old lady's proceedings; but which, upon the features of the good captain, whose risible muscles were still rebellious, had any thing but a serious effect. "Indeed!" said she, curtsying yet more profoundly in return for another bow. "How do you do, sir? Oh, he is beautiful, isn't he?" half-aside to Willingham, who was swallowing as much as he could of the butt of his whip. Poor Mr Plympton looked aghast at the compliment. Branling fairly turned his back, and burst from the room, nearly upsetting Hanmer and myself; who, having waited below some time for our party to join us, had made our way upstairs to ascertain the cause of the unusual noises which reached us from the open door of the drawing-room. Dawson was shaking with reckless disregard of the safety of his head-dress, and the captain in an agony between his natural relish for a joke and his real good breeding. "Aunt Martha, this is a clergyman, a friend of Mr Hanmer's, who is on a visit here, and whom I introduce to you, because I know you will like him." Mr Plympton commenced a fresh series of bows, in which there was, perhaps, less gallantry and more dignity than usual, looking all the time as comfortable as a gentleman might do who was debating with himself whether the probabilities, as regarded the old lady's next movements, lay on the side of kissing or scratching. Mrs Martha Phillips herself commenced an incoherent apology about "expecting to see four young gentlemen in fancy dresses;" and Hanmer and the captain tried all they could to laugh off a _contretemps_, which to explain was impossible. What the old lady took Mr Plympton for, and what Mr Plympton thought of her, were questions which, so far as I know, no one ventured to ask. He left Glyndewi the next morning, but the joke, after furnishing us with a never-failing fund of ludicrous reminiscence for the rest of our stay, followed him to the Oriel common-room, and was an era in the dulness of that respectable symposium.

Dancing had begun in good earnest when we arrived at the ballroom. There was the usual motley assemblage of costumes of all nations under the sun, and some which the sun, when he put down the impudence of the wax-lights upon his return the next morning, must have marvelled to behold. Childish as it may be called, a fancy ball is certainly, for the first half-hour at all events, an amusing scene. Willingham and myself stood a little inside the doorway for some moments, he enjoying the admiring glances which his tine figure and picturesque costume were well calculated to call forth, and I vainly endeavouring to make out Clara's figure amidst the gay dresses, and well-grown proportions, of the pretty Cambrians who flitted past. Sounds of expostulation and entreaty, mingled with a laugh which we knew to be Branling's, in the passage outside, disturbed both our meditations, and at last induced me to turn my eyes unwillingly to the open door. Branling was leaning against it in a fit of uncontrollable mirth, and beckoned us earnestly to join him. Outside stood Dawson, stamping with vexation, and endeavouring to undo the complex machinery which had hitherto secured his shako in an erect position. He was in the unfortunate predicament of Dr S----'s candelabrum, which, presented to him as a testimony of respect from his grateful pupils, was found by many feet too large to be introduced into any room in the Dr's comparatively humble habitation, and stood for some time in the manufacturer's show-room in testimony of the fact, that public acknowledgments of merit are _sometimes_ made on too large a scale. Architects who give measurements for ordinary doorways, do not contemplate such emergencies as testimonial candelabrums or irremoveable caps and plumes: and the door of the Glyndewi ballroom had no notion of accommodating a lancer in full dress who could not even be civil enough to take off his hat. So there stood our friend, impatient to display his uniform, and unwilling to lessen the effect of his first appearance by doffing so important a part of his costume: to get through the door, in the rigid inflexibility of head and neck which he had hitherto maintained, was a manifest impossibility: Branling had suggested his staying outside, and he would undertake to bring people to look at him: but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, by main force, the complication of knots which we had woven with some dim hope of the result. In vain did we exhort him to take it patiently, and remind him how preposterous it was to expect, that what had taken our united ingenuity half an hour to arrange "to please him," could be undone in a minute. "Cut the cursed things, can't you?" implored he. No one had a knife. "I do believe Branling, you are tying that knot tighter: I had much rather not have your assistance." Branling protested his innocence. At last we did release him, and he entered the room with a look most appropriately crest-fallen, shako in hard, solacing himself by displaying its glories as well as could be effected by judicious changes of its position.

I soon found Clara, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever I had seen her, in a sweet dress of Stuart tartan. I had to make my apologies, which were most sincerely penitent ones, for not being in time to claim my privilege of dancing the first quadrille with her. She smiled at my evident earnestness, and good-humouredly added, that the next would be a much more pleasant dance, as the room was now beginning to fill. It was a pleasant dance as she said: and the waltz that followed still more delightful: and then Clara, with a blush and a laugh, declined my pressing entreaties until after supper at all events. I refused her good-natured offer of an introduction to "that pretty girl in blue" or any other among the stars of the night: and sat down, or leant against the wall, almost unconsciously watching her light step, and sternly resisting all attempts on the part of my acquaintances to persuade me to dance again. Of course all the dancing characters among our party were Clara's partners in succession; and both Gordon and Dawson, who came to ask what had put me into the sulks, were loud in their encomiums on her beauty and fascination; even Branling, no very devoted admirer of the sex, (he saw too much of them, he said, having four presentable sisters,) allowed that she was "the right sort of girl;" but it was not until I saw her stand up with Willingham, and marked his evident admiration of her, and heard the remarks freely made around me, that they were the handsomest couple in the room, that I felt a twinge of what I would hardly allow to myself was jealousy: when, however, after the dance, they passed me in laughing conversation, evidently in high good humour with each other, and too much occupied to notice any one else, I began to wonder I had never before found out what a conceited puppy Willingham was, and set down poor Clara as an arrant flirt. But I was in a variable mood, it seemed, and a feather--or, what some may say is even lighter, a woman's word--was enough to turn me. So when I found myself, by some irresistible attraction, drawn next to her again at supper, and heard her sweet voice, and saw what I interpreted into a smile of welcome, as she made room for me beside her, I forgave her all past offences, and was perfectly happy for the next hour: nay, even condescended to challenge Willingham to a glass of _soi-disant_ champagne. The Tiger, who was, according to annual custom, displaying the tarnished uniform of the 3d Madras N. I., and illustrating his tremendous stories of the siege of Overabad, or some such place, by attacks on all the edibles in his neighbourhood, gave me a look of intelligence as he requested I would "do him the honour," and shook his whiskers with some meaning which I did not think it necessary to enquire into. What was it to him if I chose to confine my attentions to my undoubtedly pretty neighbour? No one could dispute my taste, at all events; for Clara Phillips was a universal favourite, though I had remarked that none of the numerous "eligible young men" in the room appeared about her in the character of a dangler. She was engaged to Willingham for the waltz next after supper, and I felt queerish again, till she willingly agreed to dance the next set with me, on condition that I would oblige her so far as to ask a friend of hers to be my partner in the mean time. "She is a very nice girl, Mr. Hawthorne, though, perhaps, not one of the _belles_ of the room, and has danced but twice this evening, and it will be so kind in you to ask her--only don't do it upon my introduction, but let Major Jones introduce you as if at your own request." Let no one say that vanity, jealousy, and all those pretty arts by which woman wrongs her better nature, are the rank growth necessarily engendered by the vitiated air of a ballroom; rooted on the same soil, warmed by the same sunshine, fed by the same shower, one plant shall bear the antidote and one the poison: one kind and gentle nature shall find exercise for all its sweetest qualities in those very scenes which, in another, shall foster nothing but heartless coquetry or unfeminine display. Never did Clara seem so lovely in mind and person as when she drew upon her own attractions to give pleasure to her less gifted friend; and I suppose, I must have thrown into the tone of my reply something of what I felt; for she blushed, uttered a hasty "I thank you," and told Willingham it was time to take their places. I sought and obtained the introduction, and endeavoured, for Clara's sake, to be an agreeable partner to the quiet little girl beside me. One subject of conversation, at all events, we hit upon, where we seemed both at home; and if I felt some hesitation in saying all I thought of Clara, my companion had none, but told me how much every body loved her, and how much she deserved to be loved. It was really so much easier to draw my fair partner out on this point than any other that I excused myself for being so eager a listener; and, when we parted, to show my gratitude in what I conceived the most agreeable way, I begged permission to introduce Mr. Sydney Dawson, and thus provided her with what, I dare say, she considered a most enviable partner. I had told Dawson she was a very clever girl; (he was fond of what he called "talented women," and had a delusive notion that he was himself a genius:) he had the impertinence to tell me afterwards he found her rather stupid; I ought, perhaps, to have given him the key-note. During the dance which followed, I remember I was silent and _distrait_; and when it was over, and Clara told me she was positively engaged for more sets than she should dance again, I left the ballroom, and wandered feverishly along the quay to our lodgings. I remember persuading myself, by a syllogistic process, that I was not in love, and dreaming that I was anxiously reading the class-list, in which it seemed unaccountable that my name should be omitted, till I discovered, on a second perusal, that just about the centre of the first class, where "Hawthorne, Franciscus, e. Coll--" ought to have come in, stood in large type the name of "CLARA PHILLIPS."

The races, which occupied the morning of the next day, were as stupid as country races usually are, except that the Welshmen had rather more noise about it. The guttural shouts and yells from the throats of tenants and other dependents, as the "mishtur's" horse won or lost, and the extraordinary terms in which they endeavoured to encourage the riders, were amusing even to a stranger, though one lost the point of the various sallies which kept the course in one continued roar. As to the running, every body--that is, all the sporting world--knew perfectly well, long before the horses started, which was to win; that appearing to be the result of some private arrangement between the parties interested, while the "racing" was for the benefit of the strangers and the ladies. Those of the latter who had fathers, or brothers, or, above all, lovers, among the knowing ones, won divers pairs of gloves on the occasion, while those who were not so fortunate, lost them.

I fancied that Clara was not in her usual spirits on the race-course, and she pleaded a headach as an excuse to her sister for ordering the carriage to drive home long before the "sport" was over. If I had thought the said sport stupid before, it did not improve in attraction after her departure; and, when the jumping in sacks, and climbing up poles, and other callisthenic exercises began, feeling a growing disgust for "things in general," I resisted the invitation of a mamma and three daughters, to join themselves and Mr Dawson in masticating some sandwiches which looked very much like "relics of joy" from last night's supper, and sauntered home, and sat an hour over a cigar and a chapter of ethics. As the clock struck five, remembering that the Ordinary hour was six, I called at the Phillips' lodgings to enquire for Clara. She was out walking with her sister; so I returned to dress in a placid frame of mind, confident that I should meet her at dinner.

For it was an Ordinary for ladies as well as gentlemen. A jovial Welsh baronet sat at the head of the table, with the two ladies of highest "consideration"--the county member's wife and the would-have-been member's daughter--on his right and left; nobody thought of politics at the Glyndewi regatta. Clara was there; but she was escorted into the room by some odious man, who, in virtue of having been made high-sheriff by mistake, sat next Miss Anti-reform on the chairman's left. The natives were civil enough to marshal us pretty high up by right of strangership, but still I was barely near enough to drink wine with her.

If a man wants a good dinner, a hearty laugh, an opportunity of singing songs and speech-making, and can put up with indifferent wine, let him go to the race Ordinary at Glyndewi next year, if it still be among the things which time has spared. There was nothing like stiffness or formality: people came there for amusement, and they knew that the only way to get it was to make it for themselves. There seemed to be fun enough for half-a-dozen of the common run of such dinners, even while the ladies remained. It was, as Hanmer called it, an _extra_-ordinary. But it was when the ladies had retired, and Hanmer and a few of the "steady ones" had followed them, and those who remained closed up around the chairman, and cigars and genuine whisky began to supersede the questionable port and sherry, and the "Vice" requested permission to call on a gentleman for a song, that we began to fancy ourselves within the walls of some hitherto unknown college, where the "levelling system" had mixed up fellows and under-graduates in one common supper-party, and the portly principal himself rejoiced in the office of "arbiter bibendi." Shall I confess it? I forgot even Clara in the uproarious mirth that followed. Two of the young Phillipses were admirable singers, and drew forth the hearty applause of the whole company. We got Dawson to make a speech, in which he waxed poetical touching the "flowers of Cambria," and drew down thunders of applause by a Latin quotation, which every one took that means of showing that they understood. I obtained almost unconsciously an immortal reputation by a species of flattery to which the Welsh are most open. I had learnt, after no little application, a Welsh toast--a happy specimen of the language; it was but three words, but they were truly cabalistic. No sooner had I, after a "neat and appropriate" preface, uttered my triple Shibboleth, (it ended in _rag_, and signified "Wales, Welshmen, and Welshwomen,") than the whole party rose, and cheered at me till I felt positively modest. My pronunciation, I believe, was perfect, (a woman's lips and an angel's voice had taught it to me:) and it was indeed the Open Sesame to their hearts and feelings. I became at once the intimate friend of all who could get near enough to offer me their houses, their horses, their dogs--I have no doubt, had I given a hint at the moment, I might have had any one of their daughters. "Would I come and pay a visit at Abergwrnant before I left the neighbourhood? Only twenty-five miles, and a coach from B----!" "Would I, before the shooting began, come to Craig-y-bwldrwn, and stay over the first fortnight in September?" I could have quartered myself, and two or three friends, in a dozen places for a month at a time. And, let me do justice to the warm hospitality of North Wales--these invitations were renewed in the morning: and were I ever to visit those shores again, I should have no fear of their having been yet forgotten.

Captain Phillips had told us, that when we left the table, "the girls" would have some coffee for us, if not too late; and Willingham and myself, having taken a turn or two in the moonlight to get rid of the excitement of the evening, bent our steps in that direction. There were about as many persons assembled as the little drawing-room would hold, and Clara, having forgotten her headach, and looking as lovely as ever, was seated at a wretched piano, endeavouring to accompany herself in her favourite songs. Willingham and myself stood by, and our repeated requests for some of those melodies which, unknown to us before, we had learnt from her singing to admire beyond all the fashionable trash of the day, were gratified with untiring good-nature. Somehow I thought that she avoided my eye, and answered my remarks with less than her usual archness and vivacity. I could bear it on this evening less than ever; a hair will turn the scale, and I had just been, half ludicrously, half seriously, affected by Welsh nationality. One cannot help warming towards a community which are so warm-hearted among themselves. Visions of I know not what--love and a living, Clara and a cottage--were floating dreamlike before my eyes, and I felt as if borne along by a current whose direction might be dangerous, but which it was misery to resist. Willingham had turned away a minute to hunt for some missing book, which contained one of his favourites; and, leaning over her with my finger pointing to the words which she had just been singing, I said something about there being always a fear in happiness such as I had lately been enjoying, lest it might not last. For a moment she met my earnest look, and coloured violently; and then fixing her eyes on the music before her, she said quickly, "Mr Hawthorne, I thought you had a higher opinion of me than to make me pretty speeches; I have a great dislike to them." I began to protest warmly against any intention of mere compliment, when the return of Willingham with his song prevented any renewal of the subject. I was annoyed and silent, and detected a tremor in her voice while she sang the words, and saw her cheek paler than usual. The instant the song was over, she complained with a smile of being tired, and without a look at either of us, joined a party who were noisily recounting the events of the race-course. Nor could I again that evening obtain a moment's conversation with her. She spoke to me, indeed, and very kindly; but once only did I catch her eye, when I was speaking to some one else--the glance was rapidly withdrawn, but it seemed rather sorrowful than cold.

I was busy with Hanmer the next morning before breakfast, when Dick Phillips made his appearance, and informed us that the "strangers" had made up an eleven for the cricket match, and that we were to play at ten. He was a sort of live circular, dispatched to get all parties in readiness.

"Oh! I have something for you from Clara," said he to me, as he was leaving; "the words of a song she promised you, I believe."

I opened the sealed envelope, saw that it was not a song, and left Hanmer somewhat abruptly. When I was alone, I read the following:--

"DEAR MR HAWTHORNE,--Possibly you may have been told that I have, before now, done things which people call strange--that is, contrary to some arbitrary notions which are to supersede our natural sense of right and wrong. But never, until now, did I follow the dictates of my own feelings in opposition to conventional rules, with the painful uncertainty as to the propriety of such a course, which I now feel. And if I had less confidence than I have in your honour and your kindness, or less esteem for your character, or less anxiety for your happiness, I would not write to you now. But I feel, that if you are what I wish to believe you, it is right that you should be at once undeceived as to my position. Others should have done it, perhaps--it would have spared me much. Whether your attentions to me are in sport or earnest, they must cease. I have no right to listen to such words as yours last night--my heart and hand are engaged to one, who deserves better from me than the levity which alone could have placed me in the position from which I thus painfully extricate myself. For any fault on my part, I thus make bitter atonement. I wish you health and happiness, and now let this save us both from further misunderstanding.

"C."

Again and again did I read these words. Not one woman in a hundred would have ventured on such a step. And for what? to save me from the mortification of a rejection? It could be nothing else. How easy for a man of heartless gallantry to have written a cool note in reply, disclaiming "any aspiration after the honour implied," and placing the warm-hearted writer in the predicament of having declined attentions never meant to be serious! But I felt how kindly, how gently, I had been treated--the worst of it was, I loved her better than ever. I wrote some incoherent words in reply, sufficiently expressive of my bitter disappointment, and my admiration of her conduct; and then I felt "that my occupation was gone." She whom I had so loved to look upon, I trembled now to see. I had no mind to break my heart; but I felt that time and change were necessary to prevent it. Above all, Glyndewi was no place for me to forget _her_ in.

In the midst of my painful reflections on all the happy hours of the past week, Gordon and Willingham broke in upon me with high matter for consultation relative to the match, In vain did I plead sudden illness, and inability to play: they declared it would knock the whole thing on the head, for Hanmer would be sure to turn sulky, and there was an end of the eleven; and they looked so really chagrined at my continued refusals, that at length I conquered my selfishness, (I had had a lesson in that,) and, though really feeling indisposed for any exertion, went down with them to the ground. I was in momentary dread of seeing Clara arrive, (for all the world was to be there,) and felt nervous and low-spirited. The strangers' eleven was a better one than we expected, and they put our men out pretty fast. Hanmer got most unfortunately run out after a splendid hit, and begged me to go in and "do something." I took my place mechanically, and lost my wicket to the first ball. We made a wretched score, and the strangers went in exultingly. In spite of Hanmer's steady bowling, they got runs pretty fast; and an easy catch came into my hands just as Clara appeared on the ground, and I lost all consciousness of what I was about. Again the same opportunity offered, and again my eyes were wandering among the tents. Hanmer got annoyed, and said something not over civil: I vas vexed myself that my carelessness should be the cause of disappointment twice, and yet more than half-inclined to quarrel with Branling, whom I overheard muttering about my "cursed awkwardness." We were left in a fearful minority at the close of the first innings, when we retired to dinner. The Glyndewi party and their friends were evidently disappointed. I tried to avoid Clara; but could not keep far from her. At last she came up with one of her brothers, spoke and shook hands with me, said that her brother had told her I was not well, and that she feared I ought not to have played at all. "I wish you could have beat them, Mr Hawthorne--I had bet that you would; perhaps you will feel better after dinner, those kind of headachs soon wear off," she added with a smile and a kind look, which I understood as she meant it. I walked into the tent where we were to dine: I sat next a little man on the opposite side, an Englishman, one of their best players, as active as a monkey, who had caught out three of our men in succession. He talked big about his play, criticised Willingham's batting, which was really pretty, and ended by discussing Clara Phillips, who was, he said, "a demned fine girl, but too much of her." I disliked his flippancy before, but now my disgust to him was insuperable. I asked the odds against us, and took them freely. There was champagne before me, and I drank it in tumblers. I did what even in my under-graduate days was rarely my habit--I drank till I was considerably excited. Hanmer saw it, and got the match resumed at once to save me, as he afterwards said, "from making a fool of myself." I insisted, in spite of his advice "to cool myself," upon going in first. My flippant acquaintance of the dinner-table stood _point_, and I knew, if I could but see the ball, and not see more than one, that I could occasionally "hit square" to some purpose. I had the luck to catch the first ball just on the rise, and it caught my friend _point_ off his legs as if he had been shot. He limped off the ground, and we were troubled with him no more. I hit as I never did before, or shall again. At first I played wild; but as I got cool, and my sight became steady, I felt quite at home. The bowlers got tired, and Dick Phillips, who had no science, but the strength of a unicorn, was in with me half-an-hour, slashing in all directions. It short, the tide turned, and the match ended in our favour.

I was quite sober, and free from all excitement, when I joined Clara, for the last time after the game was over. "I am so glad you played so well," said she, "if you are but as successful at Oxford as you have been at the boat-race and the cricket, you will have no reason to be disappointed. Your career here has been one course of victory." "Not altogether, Miss Phillips: the prize I shall leave behind me when I quit Glyndewi to-morrow, is worth more than all that I can gain." "Mr Hawthorne," said she kindly, "one victory is in your own power, and you will soon gain it, and be happy--the victory over yourself."

I made some excuse to Hanmer about letters from home, to account for my sudden departure. How the party got on after I left them, and what was the final result of our "reading," is no part of my tale; but I fear the reader will search the class-lists of 18-- in vain for the names of Mr Hanmer's pupils.

HAWTHORNE.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Fact.]

CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY.

No. X.

THE SECOND SIEGE OF VIENNA.

The Ottoman empire, exhausted by its strenuous and long-continued efforts in the death-struggle of Candia, had need of peace and repose to recruit its resources; but the calm was not of long duration. A fresh complication of interests was now arising in the north, which, by involving the Porte in the stormy politics of Poland and Russia, led to consequences little foreseen at the time, and which, even at the present day are far from having reached their final accomplishment. Since the ill-judged and unfortunate invasion by Sultan Osman II., in 1620 the good understanding between Poland and the Porte had continued undisturbed, save by the occasional inroads of the Crim Tartars on the one side, and the Cossacks of the Dniepr on the other, which neither government was able entirely to restrain. But the oppression to which the Polish nobles attempted to subject their Cossack _allies_, whom they pretended to regard as serfs and vassals, was intolerable to these freeborn sons of the steppe; and an universal revolt at length broke out, which was the beginning of the evil days of Poland. For nearly twenty years, under the feeble rule of John Casimer, the country was desolated with sanguinary civil wars; the Czar Alexis Mikhailowitz, eager to regain the rich provinces lost by Russia during the reign of his father, at length appeared in the field as the protector of the Cossacks; and, in 1656, the greater part of their body, with the Ataman Bogdan Khmielniçki at their head, formally transferred their allegiance to the Russian sceptre. This fatal blow, which in effect turned the balance of power, so long fluctuating between Poland and Russia, in favour of the latter, failed, however, to teach moderation to the Polish aristocracy; and the remainder of the Cossacks, who still continued in their ancient seats under the Ataman Doroszenko, finding themselves menaced by a fresh attack, embraced the resolution of "placing themselves under the shadow of the horsetails," by becoming the voluntary vassals of the Porte, of which they had so long been the inveterate enemies. In spite of the violent reclamations of the Polish envoy Wizoçki, the offer was at once accepted, and a mace and kaftan of honour sent to the ataman as ensigns of investiture, while the Poles were warned to desist from hostilities against the subjects of the sultan. The refusal to accede to this requisition produced an instant declaration of war, addressed in an autograph letter from Kiuprili to the grand chancellor of Poland, and followed up, in the spring of 1672, by the march of an army of 100,000 men for Podolia. The sultan himself took the field for the first time, attended by Kiuprili and the other vizirs of the divan, and carrying with him his court and harem, and the whole host, after a march of four months from Adrianople, crossed the Dniester in the first days of August.

The distracted state of Poland, where the helpless Michael Coribut Wieçnowiçki bore but the empty title of king, precluded the possibility of even an attempt at resistance, and the grand marshal of the kingdom, the heroic John Sobieski, who, with only 6000 men, had held his ground against the Cossacks, Turks, and Tartars, through the preceding winter, was compelled to withdraw from Podolia. The whole province was speedily overrun; the fortresses of Kaminiec and Leopol were yielded almost without defence; and the king, terrified at the progress of the invaders, sued for peace, which was signed September 18, 1672, in the Turkish camp at Buczacz. Kaminiec, Podolia, and the Cossack territory, were by this act ceded to the Porte, besides an annual tribute from Poland of 220,000 ducats; and Mohammed, having caused proclamation to be made by the criers that "pardon for his offences had been granted to the rebel _kral_ of the _Leh_,"[B] (Poles,) returned in triumph to Adrianople, leaving his army in winter quarters on the Danube.

The Diet, however, indignantly refused either to ratify the treaty or pay the tribute; and hostilities were resumed the next year with increased inveteracy on both sides. The sultan accompanied his army only to the Danube, where he remained engrossed with the pleasures of the chase at Babataghi; while Sobieski, who had accommodated for the time his differences with his colleague and rival Paç, hetman of Lithuania, and was at the head of 50,000 men, boldly anticipated the tardy movements of the Turks, who were advancing in several separate _corps d'armée_, by crossing the Dniester early in October. He was forthwith joined by Stephen, waiwode of Moldavia, with great part of the Moldavian and Wallachian troops, who unexpectedly deserted the standards of the crescent; and, after several partial encounters, a general engagement took place, November 11, 1673, between the Polish army and the advanced divisions of the Ottomans under the serasker Hussein, pasha of Silistria, who lay in an intrenched camp on the heights near Choczim. A heavy fall of snow during the night, combined with a piercing north wind had benumbed the frames of the Janissaries, accustomed to the genial warmth of a southern climate; and the enthusiastic valour of the Poles, stimulated by the exhortations and example of their chief, made their onset irresistible. The Turkish army was almost annihilated: 25,000 men, with numerous begs and pashas, remained on the field of battle, or perished in the Dniester from the breaking of the bridge: all their cannon and standards became trophies to the victors: and the green banner of the serasker was sent to Rome by Sobieski, in the belief that it was the _Sandjak-shereef_, or sacred standard of the Prophet--the oriflamme of the Ottoman empire. Never had a defeat nearly so disastrous, with the single exception of that of St. Gotthard, ten years before, befallen the Turkish arms in Europe; and the other corps, under the command of the grand-vizir and of his brother-in-law, Kaplan-pasha of Aleppo, which were marching to the support of Hussein, fell back in dismay to their former, ground on the right bank of the Danube. The Poles, however, made no further use of their triumph than to ravage Moldavia, and the death of the king, on the same day with the victory at Choczim, recalled Sobieski to Warsaw, in order to become a candidate for the vacant crown. On his election by the Diet, in May 1674, he made overtures for peace to the Porte, but they were rejected, and the contest continued during several years, without any notable achievement on either side, the war being unpopular with the Turkish soldiery; while the civil dissensions of his kingdom, with his consequent inferiority of numbers, kept Sobieski generally on the defensive. In his intrenched camp at Zurawno, with only 15,000 men, he had for twenty days kept at bay 100,000 Turks under the serasker Ibrahim, surnamed Shaïtan or _the devil_, when both sides, weary of the fruitless struggle, agreed upon a conference, and peace was signed October 27, 1676. The humiliating demand of tribute was no longer insisted upon; but Kaminiec, Podolia, and great part of the Ukraine, were left in possession of the Turks, whose stubborn perseverance thus succeeded, as on many occasions, in gaining nearly every object for which the war had been undertaken.

Before the news, however, of the pacification with Poland had reached Constantinople, Ahmed-Kiuprili had closed his glorious career. He had long suffered from dropsy, the same disease which had proved fatal to his father, and the effects of which were in his case, aggravated by too free an indulgence in wine, to which, after his return from Candia, he is said to have become greatly addicted. He had accompanied the sultan, who had for many years remained absent from his capital, on a visit, during the summer months, to Constantinople, but, on the return to Adrianople, he was compelled, by increasing sickness, to halt on the banks of the Erkench, between Chorlu and Demotika, where he breathed his last in a _chitlik_, or farm-house, called Kara-Bovir, October 30, at the age of forty-seven, after having administered the affairs of the empire for a few days more than fifteen years. His corpse was carried back to Constantinople, and laid without pomp in the mausoleum erected by his father, amid the lamentations of the people, rarely poured forth over the tomb of a deceased grand vizir. The character of this great minister has been made the theme of unmeasured panegyrics by the Turkish historians; and Von Hammer-Purgstall (in his _History of the Ottoman Empire_) has given us a long and elaborate parallel between the life and deeds of Ahmed Kiuprili and of the celebrated vizir of Soliman the Magnificent and his two successors, Mohammed-Pasha Sokolli; but we prefer to quote the impartial and unadorned portrait drawn by his contemporary Rycaut:--"He was, in person, (for I have seen him often, and knew him well,) of a middle stature, of a black beard, and brown complexion;[C] something short-sighted, which caused him to knit his brows, and pore very intently when any strange person entered the presence; he was inclining to be fat, and grew corpulent towards his latter days. If we consider his age when he first took upon him this important charge, the enemies his father had created him, the contentions he had with the Valideh-sultana or queen-mother, and the arts he had used to reconcile the affections of these great personages, and conserve himself in the unalterable esteem of his sovereign to the last hour of his death, there is none but must judge him to have deserved the character of a most prudent and politic person. If we consider how few were put to death, and what inconsiderable mutinies or rebellions happened in any part of the empire during his government, it will afford us a clear evidence and proof of his greatness and moderation beyond the example of former times: for certainly he was not a person who delighted in blood, and in that respect far different from the temper of his father; he was generous, and free from avarice--a rare virtue in a Turk! He was educated in the law, and therefore greatly addicted to all the formalities of it, and in the administration of justice very punctual and severe: and as to his behaviour towards the neighbouring princes, there may, I believe, be fewer examples of his breach of faith, than what his predecessors have given in a shorter time of rule. In his wars abroad he was successful, having upon every expedition enlarged the bounds of the empire: he overcame Neuhausel, with a considerable part of Hungary, he concluded the long war with Venice by an entire and total subjugation of the Island of Candia, having subdued that impregnable fortress, which by the rest of the world was considered invincible; and he won Kemenitz (Kaminiec,) the key of Poland, where the Turks had been frequently baffled, and laid Ukraine to the empire. If we measure his triumphs, rather than count his years, though he might seem to have lived but little to his prince and people, yet certainly to himself he could not die more seasonably, nor in a greater height and eminency of glory."

The deceased vizir left no children: and the sultan is said to have offered the seals, in the first instance, as if the office had become in fact hereditary in the family, to Mustapha, another son of Mohammed-Kiuprili, a man of retired and studious habits, who had the philosophy to decline the onerous dignity.[D] However this may have been, (for the story appears to rest on somewhat doubtful authority,) within seven days of the death of Ahmed, the vizirat had been conferred on Kara-Mustapha Pasha, who then held the office of kaimakam, and had for several years been distinguished by the special favour and confidence of the sultan. The new minister was connected by the ties both of marriage and adoption with the house of Kiuprili. His father Oroudj, a spahi, holding land at Merzifoun, (a town and district in Anatolia contiguous to Kiupri,) had fallen at the siege of Bagdad, under Sultan Mourad-Ghazi in 1638: and the orphan had been educated in the household of Mohammed-Kiuprili as the companion and adopted brother of his son Ahmed, one of whose sisters he in due time received in marriage. The elevation of his patron to the highest dignity of the empire, of course opened to Kara-Mustapha the road to fortune and preferment--from his first post of deputy to the _meer-akhor_, or master of the horse, he was promoted to the rank of pasha of two tails--and after holding the governments successively of Silistria and Diarbekr was nominated capitan-pasha in 1662 by his brother-in-law Ahmed; but exchanged that appointment in the following year for the office of kaimakam, in which capacity he was left in charge of the capital on the departure of the vizir to the army in Hungary. His duties in this situation, as lieutenant of the grand-vizir during his absence, gave him constant access to the presence of the sultan: and being (as he is described by the contemporary writer above quoted) "a wise and experienced person, of a smooth behaviour, and a great courtier," he so well improved the opportunities thus afforded him, as to obtain a place in the monarch's favour second only to that of Kiuprili himself. This excessive partiality was, however, scarcely justified by the good qualities of the favourite; for though the abilities of Kara-Mustapha were above mediocrity, his avarice was so extreme as to lay him open to the suspicion of corruption: and his sanguinary cruelty, when holding a command in Poland in the campaign of 1674, drew down on him the severe reprobation of his illustrious brother in-law. The predilection of the sultan for his society continued, however, unabated:--and during the visit of the court to Constantinople in 1675, he was still further exalted by becoming, at least in name, son-in-law to his sovereign, being affianced to the Sultana Khadidjeh, then only three years old. The fêtes of the betrothal, which were celebrated at the same time as those for the circumcision of the heir-apparent, (afterwards Mustapha II.,) were unrivalled for splendour in a reign distinguished for magnificence:--and on the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili in the following year, this fortunate adventurer found little difficulty in stepping, as we have seen, into the vacated place.

The first cares of the new vizir were on the side of the newly acquired frontier in the Ukraine; for, though all claim to that part of the Cossack territory had been expressly resigned by Poland at the treaty of Durawno, the Czar of Muscovy had never ceased to assert his pretensions to the whole Ukraine, in virtue of the convention of 1656 with Khmielniçki; and during the Polish campaign of 1674, his troops on the border, under a general named Romanodoffski, had several times come into collision with the Turks--an era deserving notice as the first hostile encounter between these two great antagonist powers. The defection of Doroszenko, who had gone over to the Russians at the end of 1676, and surrendered to them the important fortress of Czehryn, the capital and key of the Ukraine, and the repulse of the serasker Ibrahim before its walls in the following year, showed the necessity of vigorous measures: and, in 1678, the grand vizir in person appeared at the head of a formidable force in the Ukraine, bringing with him George Khmielniçki, son of the former ataman, who had long been confined as a state prisoner in the Seven Towers, but was now released to counteract, by his hereditary influence with the Cossacks, the adverse agency of Doroszenko. Czehryn, after a close investment of a month, was carried by storm, the garrison put to the sword, and the fortifications razed. But though the war was continued through another campaign, it was obviously not the interest of the Divan to prolong this remote and unprofitable contest at a juncture when the state of parties in Hungary bid fair to present such an opportunity as had never before occurred, for definitively establishing the supremacy of the Porte over the whole of that kingdom. Negotiations were accordingly opened on the Dniepr between the Muscovite leaders and the Khan Mourad-Gherni; and a peace was signed at Radzin, Feb. 12, 1681, by which the frontiers on both sides were left unaltered, while the Porte expressly renounced all claim to Kiow and the Russian Ukraine, which had been in the possession of the Czar since 1656. The ratification of the treaty was brought to Constantinople in the following September by an envoy, whose gifts of costly arctic furs, and ivory from the tusks of the walrus, might have unfolded to the Turks the wide extent of the northern realms ruled by the monarch whom they even yet regarded only as a tributary of their own vassal the Khan of the Tartars, and scarcely deigned to admit on equal terms to diplomatic intercourse.

Though the truce for twenty years, concluded between the Porte and the Empire after the defeat of Ahmed-Kiuprili at St Gotthard in 1564, had not yet expired by nearly three years, the political aspect of Hungary left little doubt that the resumption of hostilities would not be so long delayed. To understand more clearly the extraordinary complication of interests of which this country was now the scene, it will, however, be necessary to take a retrospective glance at its history during the seventeenth century, after the treaty of Komorn with the Porte, in 1606, had terminated for the time the warfare of which it had almost constantly been the theatre since the occupation of Buda by Soliman the Magnificent in 1541, ad had, in some measure, defined the boundaries of the two great powers between which it was divided. The Emperors of the House of Hapsburg, indeed, styled themselves Kings of Hungary, and Diets were held in their name at Presburg; but the territory actually under their sway amounted to less than a third of the ancient kingdom, comprehending only the northern and western districts; while all the central portion of Hungary Proper, as far as Agria on the north, and the Raab and the Balaton Lake on the west, was united to the Ottoman Empire, and formed the pashaliks of Buda and Temeswar, which were regularly divided into sandjaks and districts, with their due quota of spahis and timariots, who had been drawn from the Moslem provinces of Turkey, and held grants of land by tenure of military service. The principality of Transylvania, (called _Erdel_ by the Turks,) which had been erected by Soliman in favour of the son of John Zapolya, comprehended nearly one-fourth of Hungary, and (though its suzerainté was claimed by Austria in virtue of a reversionary settlement executed by that prince shortly before his death,) was generally, in effect, dependent on, and tributary to the Porte, from which its princes, elected by the Diet at Klaucenburg, received confirmation and investiture, like the waiwodes of the neighbouring provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. During the interval between the death of John Sigismond Zapolya in 1571, and the election of Michael Abaffi in 1661, not fewer than thirteen princes, besides nearly as many ephemeral pretenders, had occupied the throne; and, though at one time the family of Batthori, and, subsequently, that of Racoczy, established a kind of hereditary claim to election, their tenure was always precarious; and, on more than one occasion, the prince was imposed on the states by the Turks or Austrians, without even the shadow of constitutional forms.

This modified independence of Transylvania, however, often gave its princes great political importance, during the endless troubles of Hungary, as the assertors of civil and religions liberty against the tyranny and bad faith of the Austrian cabinet; which, with unaccountable infatuation, instead of striving to attach to its rule, by conciliation and good government, the remnant of the kingdom still subject to its sceptre, bent all its efforts to destroy the ancient privileges of the Magyars, and to make the crown formally, as it already was in fact, hereditary in the imperial family. The extirpation of Protestantism was another favourite object of Austrian policy: and the cruelties perpetrated with this view by George Basta and the other imperial generals at the beginning of the century was such, that a general rising took place under Stephen Boczkai, then waiwode of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, who extorted from the Emperor Rodolph, in 1607, the famous _pacification of Vienna_, which was guaranteed by the Porte, and which secured to the Hungarians full liberty of conscience, as well as the enjoyment of all their ancient rights. This agreement was soon violated; but the Protestants again found a protector in a Transylvanian prince, the celebrated Bethlen-Gabor;[E] who, assuming the royal title, occupied Presburg and Neuhausel in 1619, formed an alliance with the Bohemian revolters under Count Thurn, and was narrowly prevented from forming a junction with them under the walls of Vienna, which, if effected, would probably have overthrown the dynasty of Hapsburg. He is said to have entertained the design of uniting all Hungary east of the Theiss, with Transylvania and Wallachia, into a modern _kingdom of Dacia_, leaving the west to the Turks as a barrier against Austrian aggression--but his want of children left his schemes of aggrandizement without a motive, and at his death in 1630 they all fell to the ground. The Thirty Years' War procured the Hungarian subjects of Austria a temporary respite; but Leopold, who was elected king in 1655, and succeeded his father Ferdinand in the empire three years later, stimulated by the triumph of his predecessor over the liberties of Bohemia, resumed with fresh zeal the crusade against the privileges of the Magyars. Not only was the persecution of the Protestants recommenced, but the excesses of the ill-paid and licentious German mercenaries, who were quartered on the country in defiance of the constitution after the twenty years' truce, under the pretence of guarding against any fresh attack from the Turks, were carried to such a height that disaffection became universal even among those who had hitherto constantly adhered to the Austrian interest, so that (in the words of a writer[F] of the time,) "they began to contrast their own condition with that of the Transylvanians, who are not forced to take the turban but live quietly under the protection of the Turk--while we (as they say) are exposed to the caprices of a prince under the absolute dominion of the Jesuits, a far worse sort of people than the Dervishes!" As early as 1667, a secret communication had been made to the Porte through the envoy of Abaffi; but Kiuprili, who was then on the point of departure for Candia, and was unwilling to risk a fresh rupture with the empire in his absence, gave little encouragement either to these overtures, or to the more advantageous propositions received in 1670 from Peter Zriny, Ban of Croatia, and previously a famous partisan-leader against the Moslems; in which the malecontents offered, as the price of Ottoman aid and protection, to cede to the sultan all the fortified towns which should be taken by his arms, and to pay an annual tribute of 30,000 ducats. The conspiracy had, however, become known at Vienna; and instant measures were taken for seizing Zriny and his Croatian confederates, Nadasti, Tattenbach, and Christopher Frangipani, who were all executed in the course of the following year. The Emperor, now considering Hungary as a conquered country, formally abolished the dignity of Palatine, and nominated Gaspar Von Ampringham, grand master of the Teutonic knights, to be viceroy of the kingdom; while the Protestants were persecuted with unheard-of rigour, and many of their ministers imprisoned in the fortresses, or sent in chains to the galleys at Naples.

The confederates of Upper Hungary had been better on their guard: and on the news of the fate of Zriny and his associates, they forthwith assembled in arms at Kaschau or Cassovia, and electing Francis Racoczy, son of the late prince of Transylvania, and son-in-law of Zriny, as their leader, bade defiance to the Emperor. The civil war continued several years without decisive success on either side; till on the death, in 1676, of Racoczy, (who had previously abandoned the popular cause,) the famous Emeric Tekoeli, then only twenty years of age, was chosen general. He was the hereditary enemy of the Austrians; his father Stephen, Count of Kersmark, having been besieged in his castle by the Imperialists at the time of his death; and while he pressed the Germans in the field with such vigour as to deprive them of nearly all the fortified places they still held in Upper Hungary, the negotiation with the Porte for aid was renewed, and being backed by the diplomatic influence of France, then at war with the empire, was more favourably received by Kara-Mustapha than the former advances of the malcontents had been by his predecessor. The war with Russia, however, prevented the Turks for the present from interfering with effect, but Abaffi was authorized to support the insurgents in the mean time, while Leopold, fearing the total loss of Hungary, summoned a diet at Oedenburg (in 1681) for the redress of grievances, in which most of the ancient privileges of the kingdom were restored, full liberty of conscience promised to the Lutherans and Calvinists, and Paul Esterhazy named Palatine. But these concessions, wrung only by hard necessity from the Cabinet of Vienna, came now too late. Tekoeli replied to the amnesty proclaimed by the Emperor, by the publication of a counter-manifesto, in which were set forth a hundred grievances of the Hungarians; and, having obtained a great accession of strength by his marriage (June 1682) to Helen Zriny, the widow of Racoczy, whereby he gained all the adherents of those two powerful houses, he summoned a rival diet at Cassovia, where he openly assumed the title of sovereign prince of Upper Hungary, exercising the prerogatives of royalty, and striking money in his own name, which bore his effigy on the obverse, and on the reverse the motto inscribed on his standards--"Pro Deo, Patria, et Libertate."

Though Tekoeli professed to act by the authority of the Porte, from which he had received a firman of investiture with the usual ensigns of sovereignty, no formal declaration of war had yet been issued from Constantinople; and many of the Ulemah protested against such a measure, at least till the twenty years' truce, concluded in 1664, should have expired. The aid openly afforded, however, to Tekoeli by Abaffi and the pasha of Buda, as well as the constant march of large bodies of troops to the Danube, afforded sufficient indication that an attack would not be long delayed; and Leopold, disquieted at the prospect of having at once to contend against his own revolted subjects, and the mighty force of the Ottoman empire, sent Count Caprara on a mission to Constantinople, in the hope of averting the storm; while, at the same time, he made overtures for an alliance with Poland, still smarting under her losses in the late Turkish war. The mission of Caprara led to no result, from the exorbitant demands made by the Ottoman ministers on behalf both of the Porte and its Hungarian allies, which amounted to little less than a total cession of the country, and a few days after the arrival of the ambassador, the despatch of the firman to Tekoeli, and the display of the imperial horsetails in the plain of Daood-Pasha, showed that the resolution of the Divan was fixed for war. The negotiation with Poland presented almost equal difficulties, from the rooted jealousy entertained by the Poles of the ambition of Austria, and the opposition of the French envoy, De Vitry, who even carried his intrigues so far as to embark in a plot for the death or dethronement of the king, and the substitution of the grand marshal Iablonowski. The firmness of Sobieski, however, whom no minor considerations could blind to the importance of saving Austria and Hungary from the grasp of the Osmanli, overcame all these machinations; and the ratification of the diet was eventually given to a league, offensive and defensive, with Austria, on March 31, 1683--the same day on which the vast host of the Ottomans broke up from its cantonments about Adrianople, and directed its march towards the Danube.

The sons of Naodasti and Zriny, who had been executed ten years before, were retained as hostages, under the name of chamberlains, in the imperial household; and it fell to the lot of the former to announce to Leopold, that the legions of the crescent were pouring down on Hungary. The cheek of the Emperor blanched at the tidings; for well did he know that, till the arrival of the Poles, his disposable force amounted to scarce 35,000 men, under Duke Charles of Lorraine, who could barely make head against Abaffi and Tekoeli, while so high were the hopes of the Magyars raised of a speedy and final deliverance from Austrian tyranny, that a plot is even said to have been laid between Zriny and his sister, now the wife of Tekoeli, for seizing the person of Leopold in the palace of Vienna, and giving him up to the Tartars, who had already commenced their ravages on the frontiers. The sultan meanwhile--the cumbrous luxury of whose harem and equipages had retarded the march of the army--had halted at Belgrade, after holding a grand review of his forces, and placing the standard of the Prophet in the hands of the vizier, in token of the full powers entrusted to him for the conduct of the campaign. On the 10th of June, Tekoeli, who had crossed the Danube to welcome his potent auxiliaries, was received at Essek with royal magnificence by Kara-Mustapha, who imitated, in the ceremonial observed on this occasion, the pomp of the reception of John Zapolya by Soliman, on his march against Vienna in 1529; but after receiving personal investiture of the royal dignity conferred on him by the sultan, he returned rapidly to Cassovia, where he had fixed his headquarters. The khan of the Tartars had already arrived at Stuhlweissenburg, and was speedily joined by the vizir and the main Turkish army, which, passing the Danube to the number of 140,000 men, swept like a torrent over the rich plains of Lower Hungary: the towns, abandoned by the panic-stricken German garrisons, every where opening their gates to the partisans of Zriny and Tekoeli, in the hope of escaping the fate of Veszprim, which had been sacked by the janissaries for attempting resistance. The march was pressed with unexampled rapidity, till on the 28th the whole army was mustered under the walls of Gran; and the vizir, summoning to his tent the khan and the principal pashas, announced that his orders were to make himself master of Vienna.

The veneration with which the Turks have always regarded the memory of the greatest of their sultans, has led them not only to shrink with superstitious awe from attempting any enterprise in which he failed, but even to attach a prophetic importance to his recorded sayings. A promise attributed to him, that "an Ottoman army should never pass the Raab," had been recalled at the time of the signal defeat experienced by Ahmed-Kiuprili on that river, and his memorable repulse before Vienna had been ever held as a warning, that the Ottoman arms were destined never to prevail against the ramparts of the _Kizil-Alma_. These considerations, however, had little weight with Kara-Mustapha; bridges, hastily thrown over the ill-omened stream, afforded a passage to the army, (July 8,) and the march was again directed without stop or stay on Vienna. A body of Hungarians in the pay of the emperor, under Budiani, passed over to the ranks of their insurgent countrymen on the first appearance of the standards of Tekoeli; and the Duke of Lorraine, who had withdrawn his infantry to the island of Schutt and the other bank of the Danube, was worsted in a cavalry fight at Petronel by the Tartars, whose flying squadrons were already seen from the walls of Vienna. Proclamation had been made, forbidding the citizens to _speak of the present state of affairs!_--but the emperor and court, who had confidently reckoned on the invaders being delayed by the sieges of Raab and Komorn, no sooner learned that they had passed those fortresses unheeded, and were rapidly approaching the capital, than, seized with a panic-terror, they fled from the devoted city, on the same day with the combat at Petronel, (July 7,) in such dismayed haste, that the empress was forced to lodge one night under a tree in the open air; nor did they deem themselves in safety from the terrible pursuit of the Tartars, till they reached Lintz, on the furthest western verge of the hereditary states. The Austrian towns along the Danube were overwhelmed by the advancing tide of Turks, or ravaged by the Hungarian followers of Tekoeli, who vied with their Moslem allies in animosity against the Germans; and the light troops and Tartars, overspreading the country, pushed their predatory excursions so far up the river, as even to alarm the imperial fugitives at Lintz, who consulted their safety by a second flight to Passau. The three great abbeys of Lilienfeldt, Mölk, and Klosterneuburg, were preserved from these desultory marauders by the strength of their walls, and the valour of their monastic inmates, who took arms in defence of their cloisters; but the open country was laid waste with the same ferocity as in the invasion by Soliman, and many thousands of the country people were dragged as slaves into the Turkish camp. The regular columns of the janissaries and feudatory troops, meanwhile, continuing their advance, appeared on the morning of the 14th under the walls of Vienna; the posts of the different corps were assigned on the same day, and in the course of the following night, ground was broken for the trenches on three sides of the city.

The ancient ramparts of Vienna, which had withstood the assault of the great Soliman, had been replaced, not long after the former siege, by fortifications better adapted for modern warfare; but during the long interval of security, the extensive suburbs, with the villas and gardens of the nobles and opulent citizens, had been suffered to encroach on the glacis and encumber the approaches; and the ruins of these luxurious abodes, imperfectly destroyed in the panic arising from the unexpected celerity of the enemy's movements, were calculated at once to impede the fire from the walls, and to afford shelter and lodgement to the besiegers. Such preparations for defence, however, as the time allowed of, had been hastily made by the governor, Rudiger Count Stahrenberg, a descendant of the stout baron who, in the former siege, had repulsed the Tartars in the defiles near Enns, and an artillery officer of proved skill and valour. Most of the gates had been walled up, platforms and covered ways constructed, and the students of the university, with such of the citizens as were able and willing to bear arms, were organized into companies in aid of the regular troops, whose number did not exceed 14,000. But the flower of the Austrian nobility, with many gallant volunteers, not only from Germany, but from other parts of Christendom, were within the walls, and animated by their example the spirits of the defenders, whose only hope of relief lay apparently in the distant and uncertain succours of Poland. The Duke of Lorraine, with his cavalry, had still hoped to maintain himself in the Prater and the Leopoldstadt, (which were on an island separated from the city by a narrow arm of the river,) and thus to keep up the communication with the north bank:--but an overwhelming body of Turkish horse, (among whom were conspicuous the Arab chargers and gorgeous equipments of a troop of Egyptian Mamlukes, a force rarely seen in the Ottoman armies,) was directed against him on the 17th, and after a desperate conflict, he was driven across the main stream with the loss of 500 men, and with difficulty secured himself from pursuit by breaking the bridge. The suburb of Leopold, in itself a second city, was given up to the flames; and the Turks, erecting two batteries on the bank opposite Vienna, completed the investment on the only side which had hitherto remained open. Kara-Mustapha, in the confidence of anticipated triumph, now summoned Stahrenberg to surrender, by throwing a cartel into the city, wrapped up in linen and fastened to an arrow: and no answer being returned, the fire of the batteries on the Leopold island opened on the town; and in less than a week ten others were completed and mounted with cannon on the landward side.

The main point of attack, in the former siege under Soliman, had been the gate of Carinthia, (Kärnther-Thor,) and the adjoining bastions; but the weight of the Turkish fire on the land side was now directed principally against the Castle-Gate, (Burg-Thor,) lying to the left of the former, and against the curtain between the Castle bastion and that of Löbel; and on the river side from the batteries of the Leopold island against the Rothenthurm or Red Tower, at the point where the fortifications abut on the stream of the Danube. The tent of the vizir was pitched opposite the Burg-Thor, in the midst of the janissaries and Roumeliote troops, while the feudatories of Anatolia and Syria, under their pashas, were posted right and left of this central point, and the encampments of the various divisions stretched far round the city in a semi-circle many miles in extent, touching the Danube at its two extreme points of Ebersdorff below Vienna, and Nussdorff in the higher part of the stream, where a bridge thrown over the narrow channel formed a communication between the outposts on the mainland, and those on the Leopold island. The charge of this bridge was assigned to the Moldavian and Wallachian contingents, under the command of Scherban, waiwode of the latter province, and one of the most remarkable adventurers of the age. Born of a noble Wallachian family, which claimed descent from the ancient imperial house of Cantacuzene, he had earned from the Turks, not less by the reckless bravery he had displayed under the standard of the crescent in the wars of Poland, than by the consummate address with which he had steered his way through the tortuous intrigues of the Fanar, the sobriquet of Shaïtan Ogblu, _son of Satan_--nor was he unknown as a gay and gallant visitor to the more polished and voluptuous courts of the west. In his elevation to the throne of his native country, he was said to have been materially assisted by the criminal favour of the consort of his predecessor, the Princess Ducas:--but in the camp before Vienna he assumed the guise of extraordinary piety--a lofty cross was erected before his tent, where the rights of the Greek Church were daily celebrated with extraordinary pomp, and the priests of that communion offered up prayers for the success of the Ottoman arms against the schismatics of the Western Church![G]

On the 23d of July, two mines were fired under the counterscarp of the Löbel bastion, and though from the want of skill in the Turkish engineers, they did little damage, the alarm caused among the garrison, who called to mind the formidable use made of this species of approach in the siege of Candia, was such, that Stahrenberg issued orders that one person should be constantly on the watch in each house, to prevent the Turks from making their way into the city by these subterraneous passages. No more than forty mines, however, were sprung during the whole siege, and their effect, from the industry with which they were countermined by the garrison, was far less destructive than at Candia:--but the fire from the batteries continued without cessation, till the counterscarp and ravelin between the two bastions were reduced to a heap of ruins, and the covered approaches of the Turks, in spite of the constant sorties of the besieged, were pushed so close to the outer works that the defenders could reach the pioneers employed on the galleries by thrusting at them through the palisades with the long German pikes, the efficiency of which had been so severely experienced in the former siege. The first assault on the ravelin was made July 25--but the explosion of a mine at the instant threw the attacking column into disorder, and they were repulsed after a severe conflict, in which Stahrenberg himself was wounded. The attack was not repeated in force till the night of Aug. 3, when the troops of the pasha of Temeswar, and a select body of janissaries under their _houlkiaya_ or lieutenant-general, rushed with such fury upon the ruined rampart, that though four times driven back, they at last succeeded in effecting a lodgement in the ravelin, and threw up parapets to screen themselves from the fire of the walls. The city, meanwhile, was repeatedly set on fire by bombs thrown from the Turkish batteries; and during the confusion arising from one of these partial conflagrations, a fresh mine was run under the angle of the court bastion, and sprung with such effect as to cause a practicable breach. The quantity of powder, however, had been so greatly over calculated that great part recoiled among the Turks and the garrison, by a well-timed sortie, did great damage to the enemy's works. Before the breach, however, could be repaired, the janissaries, recovering from their panic, again assailed it, and, after a desperate struggle, established themselves in the ditch and front of the bastion, while the defenders endeavoured, by changing the direction of their guns, to enfilade the ground thus won by the enemy, so as to prevent their penetrating into the interior, which now lay open to them.

Great had been the panic throughout Europe at the advance of the Turks into Austria, and their appearance before Vienna. The infidel host was magnified, by the exaggerations of popular terror, to the number of 100,000 horse and 600,000 foot! And it was doubted whether, after destroying the power of the House of Hapsburg, the vizir would march to the Rhine, and annihilate the remaining strength of Christendom by the overthrow of Louis XIV., or would cross the Alps to fulfil the famous threat of Bayezid I., by stabbing his horse before the high altar of St Peter's. Even among those better qualified to take a calm view of the state of affairs, little hope was entertained that Vienna could hold out till the armies of Poland and the empire could be collected in sufficient force for its relief, if the Turks continued to press the siege with that vigour and stubborn perseverance, the combination of which in the attack of fortified places had hitherto been one of their most remarkable military characteristics. But Kara-Mustapha, deficient alike in martial experience and personal courage, was little qualified either to stimulate the fanatic ardour of the Ottomans or to guide it to victory. While within the wide enclosure of his own tents, carefully pitched beyond the range of cannon-shot from the ramparts, he maintained a household and harem of such luxurious magnificence as none of the sultans had ever carried with them into the field, the rations of the soldiers were reduced, on the pretext that the supplies expected from Hungary had been intercepted by the garrisons of Raab and the other towns on the Danube, which still held out for the emperor; and so little did he care to disguise his apprehensions for his own safety, that he visited the lines only in a litter rendered musket-proof by plates and lattices of iron! Whether he entertained the wild design, as asserted by Cantemir, (whose authority, as that of a contemporary, may in this case perhaps deserve some credit,) of throwing off his allegiance to the sultan, and erecting an independent _Western Empire_ of the Ottomans in Austria and Hungary, or whether he was simply instigated by his avarice to preserve the imagined treasures of the capital of the German Cæsars from the pillage which must follow from its being taken by storm--he no sooner saw the imperial city apparently within his grasp, than he restrained, instead of encouraging, the spirit of the troops, endeavouring rather to wear out the garrison by an endless succession of petty alarms, than to carry the place at once by assault. The murmurs of the soldiers, who even refused to remain in the trenches, were with difficulty quieted by the exhortations of Wani-Effendi, a celebrated Moslem divine, who had accompanied the army in order to share in the merit of the _holy war_--while the remonstrances of the pashas and generals were silenced by the exhibition of the sultan's _khatt-shereef_, which conferred on the vizir plenary powers for the conduct of the war.

While Kara Mustapha thus lay inactive in his lines before Vienna, Tekoeli, who had been detached with his Hungarian followers and an auxiliary Turkish corps to reduce the castle of Presburg, which held out after the surrender of the town, had been defeated by the Duke of Lorraine, aided by a body of Polish cavalry under Lubomirski, the forerunners of the army now assembling at Cracow. All the European princes, meanwhile, with the exception of Louis XIV., who, even in the danger of their common faith, forgot not his hostility to the house of Hapsburg, vied with each other in forwarding the equipment of the host which was to save the bulwark of Christendom. The cardinals at Rome sold their plate to supply funds for the German levies; Cardinal Barberini alone contributed 20,000 florins, and the Pope was profuse in his indulgences to those who joined the new crusade. The emperor, meanwhile, from his retreat at Passau, was abject in his entreaties to Sobieski for speedy succour, offering to cede to him his rights upon Hungary if he could preserve his Austrian capital; but the zeal of the Polish hero needed no stimulus. Though so disabled by the gout as to be unable to mount his horse without help, he was indefatigable in his exertions to hasten the march of his troops, to whom he gave the rendezvous, "Under the counterscarp at Vienna." On his march into Germany, he was every where received as a deliverer; the Jesuits of Olmutz erected, at his entrance into the town, a triumphal arch, with the inscription, "Salvatorem expectamus;" and all hailed, as a sure omen of victory, the presence of the champion whose very name had become a byword of terror among the Turks. The beleaguered garrison was, meanwhile, cheered by frequent messages promising speedy relief from the Duke of Lorraine, whose emissaries, selected for their knowledge of the Turkish language, contrived to pass and re-pass securely; but an epidemic disease, in addition to the sword and the bombardment, was rapidly thinning their numbers; and Callonitz, bishop of Neustadt, who, in his younger days, had gained distinction against the Turks in Candia, now acquired a holier fame by his pious care of the sick and wounded, who crowded the hospitals and houses. The siege had been languidly carried on during the greater part of August, but at the end of the month fresh symptoms of activity were observed in the Ottoman lines; several mines were sprung on the 27th and 28th, and the fire from the batteries was so warmly kept up, that on the 29th the garrison, conjecturing that the anniversary of the battle of Mohacz had been chosen for the general assault, stood to their arms in anxious suspense. But the day passed over without any alarm, and it was not till September 4, that, having blown up great part of the right face of the court bastion by a powerful mine, 5000 of the _élite_ of the janissaries sprang, sword in hand, with loud shouts and the clangour of martial music, into the breach thus made, and forcing their way, with the fanatic valour which had in their best days characterized the sons of Hadji-Bektash, into the interior of the bastion, planted their _bairahs_, or pennons, on the ruined ramparts. Stahrenberg himself, with his officers and guards, was fortunately going the rounds at the menaced point at the moment of the explosion and assault, but the Osmanlis held firm the ground they had gained; and Stahrenberg, seeing the enemy thus fairly established within the defences, directed barriers to be constructed and trenches sunk at the head of the streets nearest the breach, while thirty rockets, fired in the night from the steeple of St Stephen's Domkirch, announced the extremity of their distress to their approaching friends; and all eyes were turned to the rocky heights of the Kahlenberg, which bounded the prospect to the west, in hope of descrying the standards of the Christian army.

It was at Tuln, six leagues above Vienna, that Sobieski received, the day after this assault, a despatch from Stahrenberg, containing only the words--"There is no time to be lost!" On the 6th the Poles passed the river by the bridge of Tuln, and the king, amazed at the supineness of the vizir in suffering this movement to be effected without molestation, exclaimed, "Against such a general the victory is already gained!"--and advanced as to an assured triumph. Though far inferior in numbers to the Turks, who, after all their losses by the sword and desertion, still mustered 120,000 effective men, when passed in review on the 8th by the vizir, it was in truth a gallant army which Sobieski now saw united under his command. The Imperialists, under the Duke of Lorraine, were not more than 20,000; but the Saxons and Bavarians, led by their respective electors, and the contingents of the lesser states of the empire, with the fiery hussars and cuirassiers of Poland, formed an aggregate of 65,000 men, more than half of whom were cavalry; while in the ranks were found, besides the German chivalry who fought for their fatherland, many noble volunteers, who had hastened from Spain and Italy to share in the glories anticipated under the leadership of Sobieski. Among these illustrious auxiliaries was a young hero, who had escaped from France in defiance of the mandate of Louis XIV., to flesh his maiden sword in view of the Polish king, and who at a later period, under the well-known name of Prince Eugene, himself earned deathless fame by his achievements against those redoubted enemies, whose first great overthrow he was destined to witness.

On the evening of the 10th the two armies were separated only by the ridge of the Kahlenberg, and the thick forests covering its sides; and a still more urgent message arrived from the governor, who intimated that he had little chance of repelling another assault. "On the same night, however," (says the diary of a Dutch officer in the garrison,) "we saw on the hills many fires, and rockets thrown up, as signals of our approaching succours, which we joyfully answered in like manner ... and next day the Turks were moving, and their cavalry riding about in confusion, till about four P.M. we saw several of their regiments drawing off towards the hills, and those in Leopoldstadt marching over the bridge." The knowledge, indeed, that the terrible Sobieski was at the head of the Christian army, had spread such a panic among the Osmanli, that several thousands left the camp the same night; but Kara-Mustapha, though urged by all his officers to march with his whole force to meet the coming storm, contented himself with sending 10,000 men, under Kara-Ibrahim, pasha of Buda, to watch the Poles, while the rest were kept in their lines before the city, which was cannonaded with redoubled fury throughout the 11th and the night following. The summits of the Kahlenberg glittered with the arms of the confederates, who bivouacked there during the night, being unable to pitch their tents from the violence of the wind, which Sobieski, in one of his letters to his queen, (his "charmante et bien aimée Mariette,") says, was attributed by the soldiers to the incantations of the vizir, "who is known to be a great magician." From the top of the Leopoldsberg, the king and the Duke of Lorraine reconnoitred the Turkish camp, which lay in all its wide extent before them, from the opposite skirts of the Wienerberg almost to the foot of the ridge on which they stood, with the lofty pavilions and scarlet screens of the vizir's quarters conspicuous in the midst, while the incessant roar of the artillery rose from the midst of the smoke which enveloped the city.

At five in the morning of the 12th, the sound of musketry was heard from the thickets and wooded ravines at the foot of the Kahlenberg, where the Saxons were already engaged with the Turkish division under Ibrahim-Pasha; and the king, having heard mass on the Leopoldsberg from his chaplain Aviano, mounted his favourite sorrel charger, and, preceded by his son James, whom he had just dubbed a knight in front of the army, and by his esquire bearing his shield and banner, led the Poles, who held the right of the allied line, down the slopes of the mountain. The left wing, which lay nearest the river, was commanded by the Duke of Lorraine, and the columns in the centre were under the orders of the two electors, and the Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg and Eisenach. By eight A.M. the action had become warm along the skirts of the Kahlenberg--the Turks, who were principally horse, dismounting to fight on foot behind hastily-constructed abattis of trees and earth, as the nature of the ground was unfavourable to cavalry, and keeping up a heavy fire on the enemy while they were entangled in the ravines. The ardour of the Christians, however, speedily overcame these obstacles; and by ten A.M., their van was debouching from the defiles into the plain with loud shouts of battle; and the Turks, though from time to time receiving reinforcements from the camp, were gradually obliged to give ground. The vizir, meanwhile, remaining immovable in his tent, directed a fresh cannonade to be directed against the city, under cover of which a general assault was to be made; but the long files of camels laden with the spoils of Austria, which were sent off in haste on the road to Hungary, revealed his secret disquietude--and the troops in the trenches, effectually disheartened by the delay and privations of the siege, showed little inclination again to advance against the shattered bastions. The towers and steeples of Vienna were thronged with anxious spectators, who with throbbing hearts watched the advance of their deliverers, who pressed on at all points, "making the Turks give way" (says the diary above quoted) "whenever they came to a shock." The villages of Nussdorff and Heiligenstadt on the Danube, where several _odas_ of janissaries, with heavy cannon, were posted, checked for some time the progress of the Austrians on the left; the Duc de Croye, a gallant French volunteer, fell in leading the attack, but a body of Polish cuirassiers were at last sent to their aid, who, levelling their lances, and dashing with loud shouts against the flank of the Turkish batteries, carried the position, and put the defenders to the sword. It was not so much a battle, as a series of desperate but irregular skirmishes scattered over wide extent of ground--the Turkish troops (who were almost all cavalry, as most of the regulars and artillery were still in the camp) gradually receding before the heavy advancing columns of the Christians. By four P.M. they were driven so close to their intrenchments, that Sobieski could descry the vizir, seated in a small crimson tent, and tranquilly drinking coffee with his two sons. At this moment, a torrent of the wild cavalry of the Tartars, headed by the khan in person, poured forth from the Moslem lines, and thundered upon the right of the Poles, only to recoil in disorder before the lances of Iablonowski and the Lithuanians, who pushed in pursuit close to a deep ravine, which covered the redoubts of the Turks. But the khan had recognized in the mêlée the well-known figure of Sobieski, whose personal presence had been as yet uncertain. "By Allah!" said he to the vizir on his return from his unsuccessful charge, "the heavens have fallen upon us; for the ill-omened _kral_ of the _Leh_ (Poles) of a truth is with the infidels!"

The Turks were now every where driven within their lines, and the battle appeared over for the day; but the Poles, with cries of triumph, demanded to be led to the attack of the camp, and Sobieski exclaiming, "Not unto us, O Lord, but to thy name be the praise!" directed the assault. In a moment the Polish chivalry spurred up the steep side of the ravine in the teeth of the Turkish artillery--a redoubt in the centre of the lines was stormed through the gorge by Maligny, brother-in-law of the king--the Pashas of Aleppo and Silistria, whose prowess sustained the fainting courage of their troops, were slain in the front of the battle--and, after a conflict of less than an hour, the whole vast array of the Osmanlis, pierced through the centre by the onset of the Polish lances, gave way in hopeless, irremediable confusion, and, abandoning their camp, artillery, and baggage, fled in wild confusion on the road to Hungary. By 6 P.M. the Polish King reached the tent of the vizir; but Kara-Mustapha had not awaited the arrival of the victor. In an agony of despair at the mighty ruin which he now saw to be inevitable, he gave the barbarous order (which was but partially executed) for the massacre of the women of his harem, to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy; and, seizing the Sandjak-shereef,[H] mounted an Arabian camel of surpassing swiftness, and accompanied, or perhaps preceded, the flight of his army. Such was the panic haste of the rout, that, before sunset the next day, the whole host swept past the walls of Raab, the garrison of which thus gained the first tidings of the catastrophe--nor have the crimson banners of the crescent been ever again seen on the soil of Germany.

From the desultory character of the action, in which little use was made of artillery, and the headlong dismay in which the Turks at last took to flight, not more than 10,000 of their number, according to the most probable accounts, fell in the battle; of the allies, scarcely 3000 were killed or wounded. Three hundred pieces of cannon of various calibres, many of them taken in former wars by the Turks, and still bearing the arms of Poland or the empire--a countless quantity of arms, ammunition, and warlike implements of all kinds--were found in the abandoned intrenchments; and the abundance of cattle, with the amply stored magazines of provisions, afforded instant relief to the famine from which the citizens had been for some time suffering.

Surrounded by a vast crowd, who hailed him with enthusiastic acclamations as their deliverer, and thronged each other with a zeal approaching adoration, to kiss his hand or his stirrup, Sobieski entered Vienna through the breach on the morning of September 13, in company with the Duke of Lorraine and the electoral Prince of Bavaria, and with the horsetails found before the tent of the vizir borne in triumph before him; and having met and saluted Stahrenberg, repaired with him to a chapel in the church of the Augustin friars, to return thanks for the victory. As he entered the church, a priest cried aloud in an ecstacy of fervour--"There was a man sent from God whose name was John," and this text, which in past ages had been applied to the Hungarian paladin, John Hunyades, was again employed by the preachers throughout Europe, in celebration of the new champion of Christendom, John Sobieski. Far different to the entry of the Polish king was the return of the Emperor Leopold to his rescued capital. He had quitted it as a fugitive, amid the execrations of the people, who accused him of having drawn on them the storm of invasion, without providing means to ward off the destruction which threatened them; and having descended the Danube in a boat, he re-entered the city on the 14th in the guise of a penitent, proceeding on foot, with a taper in his hand, to the cathedral of St Stephen, where he knelt before the high altar in acknowledgement of his deliverance. But neither from his misfortunes, nor from his returning prosperity, had Leopold learned the lesson of gratitude or humility. He even attempted at first to evade an interview with Sobieski, on the ground that an elective king had never been received on terms of equality by an emperor of Germany: and, when this unworthy plea was overruled by the honest indignation of the Duke of Lorraine, the meeting of the two monarchs was formal and embarrassed: and Sobieski, disgusted at the meanness and arrogance of the prince who owed to him the preservation of his capital and throne, hastily cut short the conference, by deputing to his chancellor Zaluski the task of showing to Leopold the troops who had saved his empire; and departed on the 17th with his noble colleague in arms, the Duke of Lorraine, to follow up their triumphs by attacking the Turks in Hungary.

The battle of Vienna effectually broke the spell of the Ottoman military ascendancy, which for near three centuries had held Europe in awe;--and though the energies of the empire, and the efficacy of its institutions, had long been gradually decaying, it was this great blow which first revealed the secret of its impaired strength. The treaty of Zurawno with Poland in 1676, had raised the Ottoman dominions to the highest point of territorial extent which they ever attained. From the time of the reunion of the empire, after the confusion following the defeat of Bayezid I. by Timour, every reign had seen its boundaries enlarged by successive acquisitions; and if we except the voluntary abandonment, in 1636, of the remote and unprofitable province of Yemen, the horsetails had never receded from any territory on which they had been planted in token of permanent occupation. Besides the vast territories which were under the immediate rule of pashas sent from the Porte, and which the land and capitation taxes (_ssalyaneh_ and _kharatch_,) the khan of the Krim Tartars, the otaman of the Cossacks, the vassal princes of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, the hereditary chiefs of the Circassian and Koordish tribes, and the rulers of the Barbary regencies, were all "under the shadow of the imperial horsetails," and paid tribute and allegiance to the sultan, who might boast, with no less justice than did the monarchs of the Seljookian Turks of old, that a crowd of princes arose from the dust of his footsteps. During the reign of Mohammed IV., the last relics of Venetian rule in the Levant had been extirpated by the conquest of Candia; the frontiers in Hungary and Transylvania had been strengthened by the acquisition of the important fortresses of Grosswardein and Neuhausel, with the territory attached to them; while Poland had been deprived of the province through which she had access to the undefended points of the Ottoman frontier, and the Cossacks, from restless and intractable enemies, had been converted into friends and auxiliaries. In the domestic administration, also, the wisdom and clemency of Ahmed-Kiuprili, supported by a corresponding disposition on the part of the sultan, who was naturally averse to measures of severity, had introduced a spirit of moderation and equity unknown in the Ottoman annals. Such was the condition of the foreign relations and internal government of the Turkish empire at the juncture immediately preceding the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili, whose life closed (as mentioned above) within a few days of the conclusion of the peace of Zurawno:--and the coincidence of this highest point of territorial aggrandizement and domestic prosperity, with the last days of the great minister who had so principal a share in producing them, would almost justify the superstitious belief, that the star of the Kiuprilis was in sooth the protecting talisman of the Ottoman state, and inseparably connected with its welfare and splendour.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: The Poles were sometimes called _Lechi_, from Lech, the name of one of their ancient kings.]

[Footnote C: Von Hammer describes him, without quoting his authority, as of lofty stature, and extremely fair complexion; but Rycaut's personal acquaintance insures his correctness.]

[Footnote D: He subsequently became grand-vizir, and was killed at the battle of Salankaman in 1691.]

[Footnote E: This name in western parlance would be Gabriel de Bethlen; in Hungary, the Christian _follows_ the surname.]

[Footnote F: The anonymous biographer of Tekoeli, believed to be M. Leclerc.]

[Footnote G: After the defeat of the Turks, Scherban Cantacuzene opened a correspondence with the Emperor and the King of Poland, setting forth his hereditary claim to the imperial crown of Constantinople in the event of their expulsion from Europe! but his intrigues became known to the Ottoman ministry, and he is supposed to have been taken off by poison.]

[Footnote H: A _crimson_ banner was again sent to Rome as the Sandjak-shereef, as the green one of Hussein had been after the victory of Choczim.]

EXHIBITIONS

British art is in a transition state. Remembering many a year past our Academy Exhibitions, and the general, the family resemblance the works bore to each other, the little variety either in style or execution; and of later years noticing the gradual change, the adoption of a new class of subjects, and more varied styles; we are yet struck with the manifest difference between the present and any other we ever remember to have seen. There is, in fact, more originality. There are, indeed, mannerists enough; and we mean not here to use the word in its reprehensive sense but they stand more alone. There are far fewer imitators--some, of course, there must be, but they are chiefly in those classes where imitation is less easily avoided. Common-place subjects will ever be treated in a common-place manner, and resemble each other. Few venture now to follow even erratic genius in its wild vagaries. Turner has no rivals in the "dissolving view" style. By those who look to one or two favourite masters, who have hitherto given the character to our exhibitions, perhaps some disappointment may be felt. Edwin Landseer has but two pictures--Sir Augustus Calleott not one; and herein is a great loss, speaking not with reference to his very late pictures, his English landscape, or even his Italian views, but in vivid recollection of his fascinating river views, with their busy boats, under illuminating skies, such as, alas! he has ceased to paint.

With regard to landscape, we progress slowly. Yet we fancy we can perceive indications there, that are of a better promise; although of the higher class of landscape there is not one this year. The promise is in the pencil of Creswick. He labours to unite great finish, too minute finish, with breadth and boldness of effect. His is unquestionably a new style; his subjects are all pleasing, bordering on the poetical; we only question if his aim at minute finishing does not challenge a scrutiny into the accuracy and infinite variety of the detail of nature, that few pictures ought to require, and his certainly do not satisfy the demand. For, after all, there is a great sameness, where there ought to be variety, particularly in his foliage: it is safer, by a greater generality, to leave much to the imagination. We do not, however, mean to quarrel with this his peculiar style, nor to limit its power. There is something yet not achieved.

Mr Maclise has likewise originated a new style, and if not altogether a new class of subjects, one so richly, so luxuriantly treated as to be fairly considered new. He has given to humour a gentle satire, and more especially to works of creative fancy an historical importance; for herein he is essentially different from all other painters of this class, that none of his pieces, we might almost say none of his figures, are, or pretend to be, real life. If it be said that they are theatrical, we know not but that the term expresses their merit; for as Sir Joshua has well observed, there must be in the theatrical a certain ideal--which is, nevertheless, the higher representative of nature. Mr Maclise has adopted the elaborate finish and lavish ornament, but with so much breadth, and powerful execution, that the display scarcely offends--and he generally seeks subjects that will bear it. As a fault it was conspicuous in his Lady Macbeth: the strong emotions of that banquet-scene are of too hurrying, too absorbent a nature, to admit either the conspicuous multiplicity of parts, or the excess of ornament which that work exhibited. It was the very perfection of the "Sleeping Beauty," and singularly enough, begat a repose; for the mind was fascinated into the notion of the long sleep, by the very leisure required and taken to examine the all-quiescent detail.

May we not call the style of Mr Redgrave original? perhaps more so in his execution than his subject. He has appropriated the elegant familiar. Many are the painters we might name under whose hands the arts are advancing; those we have named, however, appear to us to be more or less the chief originators of new styles. Nor does it follow from this that their pictures are always the best in any exhibition, though they may be generally found so to be. If we are to congratulate the world of art on the particular advancement of this year, we shall certainly limit our praise to one picture, because it is the picture of the year; and it is a wondrous improvement upon all our former historical attempts. Whoever has visited the Exhibition will at once know that we allude to Mr Poole's "Plague of London." There has not been so powerful a picture painted in this country since the best days of Sir Joshua Reynolds. For its power we compare it with the "Ugolino" of the President, and we do so the more readily as both pictures are now publicly exhibited. Unlike as they are, unquestionably, in many respects, and painted indeed on opposite principles, regarding the mechanical methods and colour; yet for power, for pathos, they come into competition. The subject chosen by Mr Poole was one of much more difficulty, more complication: he has had, therefore, much more to do, much more to overcome; and he has succeeded. Both, possibly, to a certain extent, were imitators, yet both possessing a genius that made the works their own creations. Sir Joshua saw Rembrandt in every motion of his hand; and Mr Poole was not unconscious of Nicolo Poussin in the design and execution of his "Plague." This is not said to the disparagement of either painter; on the contrary, we should augur ill of that man's genius who would be more ambitious to be thought original in all things than of painting a good picture. Great minds will be above this little ambition. Raffaelle borrowed without scruple from those things that were done well before him, a whole figure, and even a group; yet the result was ever a work that none could ever suspect to be by any hand but Raffaelle's. In saying that Mr Poole has seen Nicolo Poussin, we do not mean to insinuate more than that fact: others may say more; and, depreciating a work of surprising power, and that, too, coming from an artist who has hitherto exhibited nothing to be compared with it, will add that he has stolen it from Nicolo Poussin. This we boldly deny. The works of Nicolo Poussin of similar subjects are well known, and wonderful works they are; we need mention but two--the one in the National Gallery, the "Plague of Ashdod," and that in the collection of P.S. Miles, Esq., and exhibited last year at the British Institution, and which is engraved in Forster's work. We do not believe that one group or single figure in Mr Poole's picture can be shown in these or any others of Poussin. And in the conception there is a striking difference. Mr Poole's subject, though we have called it the "Plague of London," is not, strictly speaking, the awfulness and the disgust of that dire malady, but the insanity of the fanatic Solomon Eagle, taking a divine, an almost Pythean impress from its connexion with that woful and appalling mystery. This being his subject, he has judiciously omitted much of that dreadfully disgusting detail, which _his_ subject compelled Poussin to force upon the spectator. There is, therefore, in Mr Poole's picture more to excite our wonder and pity than disgust; nay, there is even room for the exhibition of tender, sensitive, apprehensive, scarcely suffering beauty, and set off by contrasts not too strong; so that nothing impedes the mind in, or draws it off from, the contemplation of the madman--here more than madman, the maniac made inspired by the belief of the spectator in denunciations which appear verifying themselves visibly before him. It is this feeling which makes the crazed one grand, heroic, and which constitutes this picture an historical work of a high class. It is far more than a collection of incidents in a plague; it is the making the plague itself but an accessory. The theme is of the madness that spreads its bewilderment on all around, as its own of right, as cause and effect--a bewilderment that works beyond the frame, and will not let the beholder question its fanatic power. We will endeavour to describe the picture, but first, take the subject from the catalogue:--"Solomon Eagle exhorting the People to Repentance, during the Plague of the Year 1665. P. F. Poole.--'I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon Eagle, an enthusiast; he, though not infected at all, but in his head, went about denouncing of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner, sometimes quite naked and with a pan of burning charcoal on his head.'--See DE FOE'S _Narrative of the Plague in London_." The scene is supposed to be in that part of London termed "Alsatia," so well described by Sir Walter Scott--the refuge of the destitute and criminal. Here are groups of the infected, the dying, the callous, the despairing--a miserable languor pervades them all. The young--the aged--the innocent--the profligate. One sedate and lovely female is seeking consolation from the sacred book, beside whom sits her father--a grand figure, in whose countenance is a fixed intensity of worldly care, that alone seems to keep life within his listless body, next him is a young mother, with her dying child, and close behind him a maiden, hiding her face, whose eye alone is seen, distended and in vacant gaze. We feel that this is a family group, perhaps the broken remnant of a family, awaiting utter desolation. Behind the group are two very striking figures--a man bewildered, and more than infected, escaping from the house, within the doorway of which we see, written in red characters, "Lord have mercy upon us," and the cross; the nurse is endeavouring to detain him. Nothing can be finer than the action and expression in both figures--the horror of the nurse, and fever energy of the escaped, in whose countenance, never to be forgotten, is the personification of plague-madness. It is recorded that such a one did so escape, swam across the Thames, and recovered. Beyond these are revellers, a dissolute band, card-playing. In the midst of the game one is smitten with the plague, and is falling back--one starts with horror at the sudden seizure--a stupid, drunken indifference marks the others--they had been waiting for a feast, which one is bringing in, who stands just above the falling figure, who will never partake of it. Quite in the background, and behind a low wall, are conveyers of the dead, carrying along a body. This describes the left of the picture. To the right, and near the middle, is a dying boy, leaning upon a man, who is suddenly roused, and rising to hear the denunciations of Solomon Eagle. At his back are two lovely female figures, sisters we should suppose, the younger one dying, supported by the sister's knee, who sits with crossed hands, as if in almost hopeless prayer. Beyond is a wretched man, with his head resting upon his hand, in a fixed state of stupid indifference; above whom are several figures, mostly of the lower grade, in the various stages of infection or recovery. They are sitting before the window of a house, through the panes of which we see indistinctly one raving, while from the same house a dead body is being let down from above, and in the background are the dead-cart and the carriers. At the feet of the figures by the house lie others, in all the langour of disease and feverish watchfulness. Among these persons are various shades of character, apparently all from nature, each one, artistically speaking, representing a class, and yet with such a stamp of individual nature, that we are satisfied they must have been taken from life. In this respect they resemble Raffaelle's beggars at the "Beautiful Gate," in their admirable generality an individuality. Two are very striking--an odd, stiff-looking old man, with a beard, whose marked profile is of the old cheat; he is observing the escape of the man on the opposite side of the picture, and the woman at his side, whose face is turned upwards, one-half an idiot, and all-wicked. We cannot help thinking that we have seen these two characters. It is, perhaps, the skill of the painter that has so represented the class that we have the conviction of the individuals. So far the scene is prepared for the principal _dramatis personæ_; and so far we have only the calamity of the Plague, not in its scenes of turbulence, but kept down under an awful and quiet expectation of doom; so that, were the two principal figures obliterated, we should say the scene is yet but a preparation, awaiting the master figures to mark its true impression and feeling, constituting the subject of the picture. These principal figures are Solomon Eagle and his attendant; they are placed judiciously in the centre of the picture, in no part intercepted. Solomon Eagle hurries into the picture with a book in one hand, the other raised, as pointing to the heavens, from whence come the denunciations he pronounces: on his head is a pan of burning charcoal. He is naked, excepting his waist. His very attitude is insane--we need not look at his face to see that; the fore-finger, starting off from the others, is of mad action, and similar is the energy of the projected foot. The attitude is of one with a fixed purpose, one under an imaginary divine commission; it is of entire faith and firmness; and never was such insanity more finely conceived in a countenance. The man is all crazed, and grand, awfully grand, in his craziness. He throws around him an infection of craziness, as does the atmosphere of plague. There is a peculiar look in the eye, which shows the most consummate skill of the painter. The finger starts up as with an electric power, as if it could draw down the vengeance which it communicates. We mentioned the attendant figure--not that he is conscious of her presence. She is mysterious, veiled, a masked mystery--a walking tale of plague, woe, and desolation--a wandering, lonely, decayed gentlewoman: we read her history in her look, and in her walk. Her relations have all been smitten, swept away by the pestilence; her mind is made callous by utter misery; she wanders about careless, without any motive; a childish curiosity may be her pleasure, any incident to divert thoughts that make her sensible of her own bereavement. She stops to listen to the denunciations of the crazed prophet, and herself partakes, though callously, of his insanity--half believes, but scarcely feels. The sky is lurid, pestilential; it touches with plague what it illuminates. Such is the picture in its design. The colouring is quite in accordance with the purpose, and completes the sentiment; there is much of a green tone, yet under great variety. There is very great knowledge shown in it of artistical design, and the art of disposing lines; the groups, kept sufficiently distinct, yet have connecting links with each other; and there are general lines that bring all within the compass of one subject. Now, what, after all, is the impression on the mind of the spectator? for it is not enough to paint plague or madness: unless our human sympathy be touched, we turn away in disgust. Yet upon this picture we look with pleasure. Many whom we have heard say they could not bear to look at it, we found again and again standing before it: some we questioned; and at last they acknowledged pleasure. So are we moved at tragedy: human sympathies are moved--the great natural source of all our pleasures: pity and tenderness, and a sense of the awfulness of a great mystery, are upon us; and though pleased be too light a word, yet we are pleased; and where we are so pleased, we are made better. We feel the good flowing in upon us; and were not the busy scene of the multitudes in an exhibition, and the general glare, distracting, and discordant to the feeling such a picture is calculated to convey, we could enter calmly and deeply into its enjoyment. We have given, at much length, a description of the picture, because we think it a work of more importance than any that has, we would say ever, been exhibited upon the Academy walls--one of more decided commanding genius. There are faults in it doubtless, some of drawing, but not of much importance. We look to the mind in it--to its real greatness of manner, and we believe it to be a work of which the nation may be proud; and were we to look for a parallel, we must go to some of the best works of the best painters of the best ages. We were surprised to find that so small a sum as L 400 was set upon the picture--and more so that it was not sold. We regret that there is no power in the directors of our National Gallery to buy occasionally a modern production. Is there, in that gallery, one work of a British painter in any way equal to it?

There are only two pictures by Mr Maclise--they sustain his reputation.

"The Actress's reception of the Author."--"He advanced into the room trembling and confused, and let his gloves and cloak fall, which having taken up, he approached my mistress, and presented to her a paper with more respect than that of a counsellor when he delivers a petition to a judge, saying, "Be so good, madam, as to accept of this part, which I take the liberty to offer." She received it in a cold and disdainful manner, with out even deigning to answer his compliments.'-_Gil Blas_, c. xi."

The picture here is the luxuriantly beautiful and insolent prima-donna; we could wish that much of the picture, many of the "figures to let," were away. There is a continuous flowing of graceful lines, in this one figure, with much breadth, that give it a largeness of style, extremely powerful. She luxuriates in pride, insolence, and beauty. The expression is perfect; nor is it confined to her face--it is in every limb and feature. The poor despised author bows low and submissive--and is even looked at contemptuously by a pet dressed monkey, pampered, and eating fruit: a good satire; the fruit to the unworthy--the brute before the genius. There is the usual display, the usual elaborate finish; but it is perhaps a little harder, with more sudden transitions from brown to white than commonly to be found in Mr Maclise's works.

"Waterfall at St. Nighton's, Kieve, near Tintagel, Cornwall." A lovely girl crossing the rocky bed of a stream--attended by a dog, who is leaping from stone to stone. The action of the dog, his care in the act of springing, is admirable, and shows that Mr Maclise can paint all objects well. This is of the high pastoral: the lonely seclusion of the passage between rocks, the scene of the "Waterfall," is a most judicious background to the figure, which is large. It is most sweetly painted.

We are glad to see Mr Ward, R. A., again in the Exhibition. His "Virgil's Bulls," is a subject poetically conceived. The whole landscape is in sympathy, waking, watchful sympathy, with the bulls in their conflict. Not a tree, nor a hill, nor a cloud in the sky but looks on as a spectator. All is in keeping. There is no violence in the colour, nothing to distract the attention from the noble animals--all is quiet, passive and observant. A less poetical mind would have given a bright blue, clear sky, and sparkling sunny grass; one more daring than judicious, might have placed the creatures in a turbulent scene of storm and uprooted ground; Mr Ward has given all the action to the combatants--you shall see nothing but them, and all nature shall be looking on as in a theatre of her own making. The subject is no less grand on the canvas than in the lines of the poet.

We had fully intended to have omitted any mention of Mr Turner's strange productions; but we hear that a work has appeared, exalting him above all landscape painters that ever existed, by a graduate of the University of Oxford. Believing, then, that his style is altogether fallacious, and the extravagant praise mischievous, because none can deny him some fascinations of genius, which mislead, we think it right to comment upon his this year's works. Their subjects are taken from abstracts from a MS. poem, of which Mr Turner is, we presume, himself the author; for though somewhat more distinct and intelligible than his paint, they are obscure enough, and by their feet are as much out of the perspective of verse, as his objects are of that of lines. "The opening of the Wallhalla," is by far the best, indeed it has its beauties; distances are happily given: most absurd are the figures, and the inconceivable foreground. The catalogue announcement of No. 129 startled us. We expected to see "Bright Phoebus" himself poetically personating a doge, or a midshipman; for it points to the "Sun of Venice going to Sea." His "Shade and Darkness; or, the Evening of the Deluge," is the strangest of things--the first question we ask is, which is the shade and which the darkness? After the strictest scrutiny, we learn from this bit of pictorial history, that on the eve of the mighty Deluge, a Newfoundland dog was chained to a post, lest he should swim to the ark; that a pig had been drinking a bottle of wine--an anachronism, for certainly "as drunk as David's sow," was an after-invention: that men, women, and children, (such we suppose they are meant to be) slept a purple sleep, with most gigantic arms round little bodies; that there was fire that did not burn, and water that would nearly obliterate, but not drown. But more wonderful still is the information we pick up, or pick out bit by bit, as strange things glimmer into shape. "Light and Colour, (Goethe's Theory)--The Morning after the Deluge--Moses writing the book of Genesis." Such is the unexpected announcement of the catalogue. But further to account for so remarkable a jumble as we are to behold, Mr Turner adds the following verses:--

"The ark stood firm on Ararat: th' returning sun Exhaled earth's humid bubbles, and, emulous of light, Reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic guise, Hope's harbinger, ephemeral as the summer fly, Which rises, flits, expands, and dies."

_Fallacies of Hope, MS._

This is unquestionably one of the "Fallacies of Hope"--for it is quite hopeless to make out, the sun smoking his cigar of colour, and exhaling earth's humid bubbles; yet we do see a great number of "bubble" heads, scratchy things, in red wigs, rolling and floating out of nothing into nothing. There must indeed have been very wondrous giants in those days; for here is an enormous leg, far beyond the "ex pede Herculem," rising up some leagues off far bigger than whole figures close at hand. But we learn the wonderful fact, that the morning after the Deluge, Moses, sitting upon nothing, possibly the sky, wrote the book of Genesis with a Perryian pen, and on Bath-post, and that he was so seen by Mr Turner in his own peculiar perspective-defying telescope--for so "_sedet, eternumque sedebit_," in the year 1843. We know that in this account of it we a little jumble past, present, and future; but so we the better describe the picture; for when the Deluge went, Chaos came. That we may the more easily recognize the historian, a serpent is dropping from him, hieroglyphically. Can Mr Turner be serious? or is he trying how far he may perpetrate absurdities, and get the world to believe them beauties, or that his practice is according to any "theory of colour!" His conceptions are such as would be dreams of gallipots of colours, were they endued with life, and the power of dreaming prodigies.

There is unquestionably an impetus given to historical talent--and there is good proof that such talent is not wanting in this year's Exhibition; Mr Patten has chosen a very grand subject from the Inferno of Dante. "Dante, accompanied by Virgil in his descent to the Inferno, recognizes his three countrymen, Rusticucci, Aldobrandi, and Guidoguerra"--_Divina Commedia, Inferno._ The subject is finely conceived by Mr Patten. Virgil and Dante stand upon the edge of the fiery surge; they are noble and solemn figures. There is an abyss of flames below, that sends upward its whirling and tormenting storm, driven round and round, by which are seen the three countrymen. They are well grouped, and show the whirling motion of the fiery tempest; we should have preferred them more foreshortened, and such we think was the vision in Dante's mind's eye--for he says--

"Thus each one, as he wheel'd, his countenance At me directed, _so that opposite The neck moved ever to the twinkling feet_."

There is great art in placing the large limb of one of the figures immediately over the fiercest centre of fire--it gives interminable space to the fiery sea--an this part of the picture is very daringly and awfully coloured. We rather object to the equal largeness and importance of all the figures; and perhaps the bodies are too smooth, showing too little of the punishment of flame--they are too quiescent. Dante says, "Ah me, what wounds I marked upon their limbs!" And Rusticucci, who addresses Dante, thus describes their bodies:

"'If woe of this unsound and dreary waste,' Thus one began, 'added to our sad cheer _Thus peel'd_ with flame.'"

The persons of such sufferers should be Michael Angelesque--punishment and suffering should be equally _large_. We venture to suggest this criticism to Mr Patten, because the subject is grand, and there is so much good in his manner of treating it, that he will do well to paint another picture of it.

Mr Etty has no less than seven pictures. His "In the Greenwood Shade" is by far the best. Cupid and sleeping nymphs--the rich and lucid colours, softly losing themselves in shade, and here and there playfully recovered, very much remind us of Correggio. We should more applaud Mr Etty for his general colouring, than for his flesh tints; nor have his figures in general the soft and luxuriant roundness which grace and beauty should have--the faces, too, have often too much purple shadow. We have before remarked that, painting too closely from the model, he exhibits Graces that have worn stays. And surely he often mistakenly enlarges the loveliest portion of the female form--the bosom--whose beauty is in its undefined commencement, its gentle and innocent and modest growth. How happily is this hit off by Dryden in his description of Iphigenia sleeping, to the gaze of the clown Cymon:--

"As yet their places were but signified." While so many pictures of acknowledged merit are rejected for lack of room, it is scarcely fair, perhaps, for one artist to exhibit so many. Mr. Eastlake has, however, been too liberal to others in his forbearing modesty; we could wish he had not confined himself to one. He might offer the lioness's answer, were not his picture one most tenderly expressive of all gentleness. It is an old subject, but treated in no respect after the old manner. The boy is faint and weary, on the ground. Hagar, with a countenance of sweet anxiety, is giving the water, with a care, and with a view to the safety of the draught. There is a dead, dry, burnt palm-tree lying on the ground, poetically descriptive. The expression of both figures is perfect, and they are most sweetly, tenderly painted. If we might make any objection, it would be that the subject is not quite poetically treated as to colour. It may be, and we have no doubt it is, most true to nature in one sense. We can believe that such a country would have such a sky, and such appearance in foreground and distance; but that very truth creates to our mind's eye an anachronism--it brings down the tale of antiquity to very modernism--it robs it of its antique hue--it shows it too commonly, too familiarly. As _we read it_, we do not so see it; we are not so matter-of-fact. There is an ideal colouring that belongs to sentiment--our minds always adopt it. We have not as yet correctly worked out that theory, and therefore it is not enough in our practice. More particularly in this subject do we require something ideal in the manner, for few are equally true in the characters as in the external scene. Here, certainly, neither Hagar nor Ishmael are of their nation and country. It is too lovely a picture to wish touched. The remarks we venture upon may be applied to most modern pictures of ancient subjects, and may be worth consideration. There are two other pictures, very beautiful pictures, too, in the Exhibition, which have, we think, this defect--"Jephtha's Daughter, the last Day of Mourning. H. O. Neil;" and "Naomi and her Daughter-in-law. E. N. Eddis." The first, Jephtha's Daughter and her attendant maidens is a group of very lovely figures, extremely graceful, all breathing an air of purity; it is loveliness in many forms; for its conception as to chiaroscuro and colour, is most skilfully managed; but it has this present day's reality, and we only force ourselves to believe it Jephtha's Daughter. Exquisitely beautiful, too, is the affectionate, the very loving, Ruth. Orpah, too, is sweet, but the difference is well expressed--"Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, _but_ Ruth clave unto her." There is an unaffected simplicity about these figures that is quite charming, a simplicity of _manner_ well according with the simplicity of character; but has not the picture in colouring too much of this day's familiar air? In historical design both these pictures are a decided advance in art. We are giving promise.

We could wish that Mr. Martin would not ruin his greatness by his littlenesses. There is often a large conception, that we overlook to examine interminable minutiæ of parts, and mostly parts repeated; his figures are always injurious. His "Canute the Great rebuking his Courtiers" would have been a fine picture had he contented himself with the real subject--the sea. It is, indeed, crude in colour, and the coldness to the right ill agrees with the red heat on the left; but still, in chiaroscuro, it would have been a fine picture, if completed according to his first intention, but Canute and his courtiers spoil it. In the first place, they make, by their position and ease, the awful overwhelming sea safe. It is, as Longinus remarks, the plank that takes away the danger and the poetry; and such an assemblage of courtiers put the times of Canute quite out of our heads--a collection from a book of fashions--Ladies' Magazines--in their velvet gauze and tiffany, in colours that put the sun to shame, and make him blush less red; and the little, minute work about the pebbly shore creates a weariness, for they tempt us to count the sands. All this arises from a mistaken view of the sublime, that we have before noticed in Mr. Martin. It is very strange that an artist of his undoubted genius should err in a matter so essential to the greatness at which he aims.

Would that we could say a word in of Mr Haydon's one historical picture, "The Heroine of Saragossa." She is most unheroic certainly, stretching across the centre of the picture with a most uncomfortable stride, with what a foot! and a toe that looks for amputation--a torch suspended out of her hand, held by nothing--not like "another Helen," to "fire another Troy," but purposing to fire off a huge cannon, without a chance of success; for not only do not her fingers hold the torch, but her face is averted from the piece of ordnance, and her feet are taking her away from it. She is splendidly dressed in red, and without shoes or stockings--a great mistake, for such a foot might have been well hid. She is the very worst historical figure we have ever seen in a picture of any pretensions; there is another figure that only attempts to hold a pistol. The whole is a most unfortunate display of the vulgar historical. The unfortunate woman has two heads of hair, and both look borrowed for the occasion. How very strange it is that an artist who could paint the very respectable picture of the "Raising of Lazarus," now at the Pantheon, should not himself be sensible of the glaring faults of such a picture as this; and we may add, the large one exhibited last year. Mr Haydon understands art, lectures upon it, and is, we believe, enthusiastic in his profession. Does he bring his own works to the test of the principles he lays down? The misconception of men of talent with regard to their own works is an unexplained phenomenon.

Edwin Landseer, R. A., exhibits but two pictures, both excellent. Of the two, we prefer the smaller, "Two horses drinking"--nature itself. Lord Kames, in his Elements of Criticism, remarks, that the fore-horse of a team always has his ears forward, on the alert, while the rest mostly, throw theirs back. This watchfulness Landseer has observed in the eye of the animal; the eye of the one, protected by the horse nearest to the spectator, has a quiet, unobserving look; the eye of the other is evidently on the watch. A cunning magpie is looking into a bone. The picture is beautifully coloured.

Mr Redgrave's three pictures are exquisitely beautiful, and in his own truly English style. "The Fortune Hunter,"

"Neglects a love on pure affection built, For vain indifference if but double-gilt."

A screen separates the deserted one from the courting pair. The contrast in expression of the two fair ones is as good as can be. The "vain indifference" is not as many, treating this subject, have made her, deformed, old, and ugly, for that would have removed our pity from the suffering one, showing the man to be altogether worthless, and the loss an escape; on the contrary she is of a face and person to be admired; but she looks vain and void of affection. We like not so well his "Going to Service;" but his "Poor Teacher," is most charming; it is a most pathetic tale, though it be one figure only, but that how sweet! A lovely girl in mourning is sitting in deep thought waiting for her scholars; on the table is her humble fare, and of that she takes little heed. She is thinking of her bereavement, perhaps a father, a mother, a sister--perhaps she is altogether a bereaved one--a tear is on her cheek. These are the subjects, when so well painted; that make us love innocence and tenderness, the loveliness of duty, and, therefore, they make us better. The habitual sight might rob a villain of his evil thoughts--such human loveliness is the nearest to angelic--indeed it is more, for we must not forget the exceeding greatness, loveliness, of which human nature is capable. Divine love has given it a power to be far above every other nature, and that divine love has touched the heart, and speaks in the countenance of the "Poor Teacher."

Mr Creswick has this year rectified the fault of the last. His greens were thought somewhat too crude and too monotonous. "In culpam ducet culpæ fuga"--the old foot-road is scarcely green enough. All Mr Creswick's pictures have in them a sentiment--nature with him is sentient and suggestive. The very stillness--the silence, the quiet of the old foot-road is the contemplative of many a little history of them whose feet have trod it: such is the character of "The Terrace." But the most strikingly beautiful is "Welsh Glen"--

"The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides, The woods wild scatter'd clothe their ample sides."

What sketcher has not frequently come upon a scene like this, and, with a delight not unmixed with awe, hoped to realize it--and how many have failed! How often have we looked down upon the quiet and not shapeless rocky ledges just rising above and out of the dark still water; while beyond them, and low in the transparent pool, are stones rich of hue, and dimly seen, and beyond them the dark deep water spreads, reflecting partially the hues of the cliffs above--and watched the slender boughs, how they shoot out from rocky crevices, and above them branches from many a tree-top high up, hanging over; while we look up under the green arched boughs, and their fan-spreading leafage--every tree, every leaf communing, and all bending down to one object, worshipping as it were the deep pool's mystery! Here is the natural Gothic of Pan's temple--and out from the deep pass, golden and like a painted window of the sylvan aisle, glows the sun-touched wood, illuminated in all its wondrous tracery. In such a scene--where "Contemplation has her fill"--the perfect truth of this highly finished picture is sure to renew the feeling first enjoyed--enjoyed in solitude: it should have no figure but ourselves, for we are in it--and it has none. The colouring and execution are most true to nature; if we would wish any thing altered, it would be the sky, which is a little too light for the deep solemnity of all below it. Exquisitely beautiful as are these scenes from Mr Creswick's pencil, we doubt if he has reached or knows his own power. He has yet to add to this style the largeness of nature. We should venture to recommend to his reading, again and again, those parts of Sir Joshua's Discourses which treat of the large generality of nature.

Stanfield is, as usual, remarkably clear, more characteristic of himself, his manner, than of the places of his subjects--ever the same coloured lights and shadows. His compositions are well made up, there is seldom a line to offend. In "Mazorbo and Torcello, Gulf of Venice," however, the right-hand corner is extra-parochial to the scene--is unbalanced, and injures the composition. The scenes, as views, are very sweet, and have more repose than he usually throws into his pieces. This sameness of colouring, and scenical arrangement and effect, are no less conspicuous in the works of Mr Roberts, most of which are, however, very beautiful. Very striking is the view of "Ruins on the Island of Philoe, Nubia." It is not the worse for the absence of the general polish. We seem to be on the spot--the effect is so simple, the art is unobserved. We have to wonder at departed glory, at hidden history, and we do wonder. Why is it that Mr Danby, whose pictures of the "Sixth Seal," and the "Deluge," none that have seen them can forget, exhibits but one piece, and that, though very beautiful, not from the boldness of his genius? It is a quiet evening scene--the sun setting red towards the horizon, the sky having much of nature's green tints, her most peaceful hues, some cattle are standing in the river--the left is filled up with trees, which, beautiful in form, want transparency. There is a heaviness in that part too powerful; it attracts, and therefore disturbs the repose. Mr Lee has not very much varied his subjects or manner this year. His scenes are evidently from nature--great parts appear to have been painted out of doors, being fresh and true. Not altogether liking some of his subjects, we cannot but admire the skill in their treatment, the warm glow in the colouring, and true character of some of his woods running off in perspective are most pleasing. He does not aim at sentiment. He often reminds us of Gainsborough's best manner; but he is superior to him always, in subject, in composition, and in variety. He has great skill in the transparency and clearness of his tones. We think his pictures would be vastly improved if painted in a lower key. His "Scenery near Crediton, Devonshire," is remarkably good; perhaps the sky and distance is a little out of harmony with the rest. There are three pictures by Mr Müller, two very effective--"Prayers in the Desert"--but we are more struck with his "Arabs seeking a Treasure." The sepulchral interior is solemnly deep; the dim obscure, through which are yet seen the gigantic sculptured heads that seem the presiding guardians; the light and shade is very fine, as is the colour; the blue sky, seen from within, wonderfully assists the colour of the interior. There is great grandeur in the scene, and it is finely treated. His other picture, No. 1 in the Exhibition, is so very badly placed over the door, that we do not pretend to judge of it, because, Mr Müller being a good colourist, we do not recognise him in what we can see of this "Mill Scene on the Dolgarley."

Mr Collins has improved greatly upon his last year's exhibition. "A Sultry Day," though at Naples, and a "Windy Day," in Sussex are not the most pleasant things to feel or to think of. Mr Collins has succeeded in conveying the disagreeableness of the "windy day," and it is the more disagreeable for reminding us of Morland: luckily he has not succeeded in conveying the sultriness. On the contrary, to us, No. 217 breathes of freshness and coolness. It is a very sweet picture; water, boats, and shore, beautifully painted. It is well that Mr Kennedy has but one picture--"Italy"--for he paints by the acre. It is a great mistake--and, while so many pictures of merit are rejected for want of room, some injustice in his doing so. Nor does his subject, which is meagre enough, gain any thing by its size. There is merit in the grouping--not a little affectation in the poor colouring and general effect. Surely he might have made a much prettier small picture of a subject that has no pretensions to be large. Were "Italy" like that, we should totally differ with him, and not subscribe to his quotation--

"I must say That Italy's a pleasant place to me."

There is a very good picture by J. R. Herbert, A., if it were not for its too great or too common naturalness. The subject is the interview with the woman of Samaria. There is good expression, simplicity of design, but violence of colour. The subject demands a simplicity of colouring. Surely in such a scriptural subject, the annunciation, "I that speak unto thee am He," should alone be in the mind; but here the accessories are as conspicuous as the figures. Yet it is a picture of great merit.

There are two pictures of historical subjects, (not in the artistical sense so treated,) which attract great attention. "The Queen receiving the Sacrament," by Leslie; and "Waterloo," by Sir W. Allan, R.A. We are aware of the great value of this manner of pageant painting; it is perhaps worth while to sacrifice much of art to portraiture in this case. Viewing the necessity and the difficulty, we cannot but congratulate Mr Leslie--notwithstanding the peculiarity of the dresses, and the quantity of white to be introduced, this is by no means an unpleasantly coloured picture. There is much richness, in fact; and the artist has, with very great skill, avoided a gaudy effect. So the Battle of Waterloo must derive its great value from the truth of the portraits. It is any thing, however, but an heroic representation of a battle. Perhaps the object of the painter was confined to the facts of a military description, of positions of brigades and battalions--to our unmilitary eyes, there is wanting the vivid action, the energy, the mighty conflict--possibly only the ideal of a battle---which may, after all, be in appearance a much more tame sort of thing than we imagine. There is a necessity, for historical value, to see too much. There is Mr Ward's "Fight of the Bulls:" the whole earth echoes the boundary and the conflict; it is one great scene of energy. But the great fight of men conveys none of this feeling. It is not imposing in effect--it looks indeed rather dingy, the sky and distance cold, and not remarkably well painted--a battle should have more vigorous handling, something of the fury of the fight. If, however, it be matter-of-fact truth; that in such a subject is all important, and should be painted. A battle, any battle, may be another thing.--"Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Friends" is an excellent subject, if all the portraits are from authentic pictures; at a future day it will be of great value, although it is not very agreeable as a picture.

Either the portraits have less effect than they usually have, or there are fewer of them this year. We must give the palm to Mr Grant. He combines many excellences--perfect truth, unaffected simplicity, and most judicious and ever-harmonious colouring. It may not perhaps be far wrong to say, that he is the very best portrait-painter this country has known since Vandyck; certainly he appreciates, and has often deeply studied, that great painter. We have long considered Mr Grant's female portraits by far the best--the present exhibition raises him as a general portrait-painter. The perfect unaffected ease of his attitudes is a very great thing. Here are three pictures in a line, portraits, the _sitters_ all _seated_--and yet how striking it is, that there is only one that sits--Mr Grant's "Lord Wharncliffe." How sweet and natural, how beautiful as a picture, are "The Sisters!" The conventional style of portrait is undoubtedly good, and founded on good sense--but genius will seize an opportunity, and be original--such is the character of Mr Grant's portrait of "Lord Charles Scott, youngest son of the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch." The boy stands like a boy, every limb belongs to him; he is all life--the flesh tints in the face are as perfect as can be. The attitude, the dress, so admirably managed. It has all the breadth, and power, too, of Velasquez, with all modern clearness. And what a charmingly coloured picture is the portrait of "Lady Margaret Littleton!" And close at hand, right glad were we to see the noble portrait of the "Professor of Moral Philosophy, Edinburgh," the [Greek: autos echeinos], by R. S. Lauder, an artist whose works we think have not always been done justice to in the Academy--yet how seldom do we see pictures of such power as his "Trial," from the "Heart of Mid-Lothian," and his "Ravensworth!" There is another portrait painter that is very original--Linnell; and such is he, in the "Portraits of the Three eldest Children of Robert Clutterbuck, Esq." There are so many smooth and soft pictures at the exhibitions which we must look at very near, that the habit is acquired of seeing all in that manner. To those who should so see this of Mr Linnell, it will appear odd, sketchy, unfinished--recede, and it is of very great power, and comes out wonderfully with all the truth of nature. It is an out-of-door scene. The children in most natural positions, and separate from the background, which is quite true in effect, with surprising force. It is very well coloured, and the manner, though not so at first, at length pleases. We like to see much done with little effort, as soon as the eye has recovered from the examination of laboured work.--How many works of great merit that we should wish to mention! and perhaps we ought to notice some of demerit; but we must forbear; the bad and the good must repose together--if there _can_ be repose in an exhibition room. Why has not Mr Uwins painted another "Fioretta," worth all the crude, blue, red and yellow processions he ever painted? And why--but we will ask no questions but of the "Hanging Committee:" why do they offend the eyes of spectators, and vex the hearts of exhibitors, by hanging little pictures out of sight? It is insulting to the public and the artists. Surely, if the works be not fit to be seen, boldly and honestly reject them. It is an injury to misplace them. Many of the pictures so placed, are evidently intended to be seen near the eye. You do not want to _furnish_ the walls with pictures. If so, do advertise that you will sacrifice some of your own to that purpose. You may find a sufficient number of "Amateurs" ready to immolate their reputation for art, of little value; but you should consider with what an aching heart the poor painter sees the labour of many a day, and many a cherished hope, as soon as the Academy opens, raised to its position of noted contempt. Nor should you have a "Condemned Cell"--such is the octagon-room termed. You render men unhappy--and superciliously seem to think, you pay them by a privilege of admission. Admission to what?--to see your well-placed merits, and their own disgraced position. We are happy to see an appeal to you on this subject in the _Artist's Magazine_, and eloquently written--and with good sense, as are all the notices in that work. That or some other should be enlarged to meet the requirements of art. Now we are indeed making hotbeds for the growth of artists. They will be thick as peas, and not so palatable--youths of large hope and little promise--some aiming beyond their reach, others striving and straining at a low Art-Union prize. Patronage can never keep pace with this "painting for the million system." The world will be inundated with mediocrity. This fever of art will terminate in a painting-plague. What is to become of the artists? Where will you colonize?

Now let us purpose a plan. Let the members of the Academy come to this resolution that instead of exhibiting some 1300 pictures annually, they will not admit into their rooms more than the 300--and so cut off the 1000--that the said 300 shall all have good places, and shall be the choicest works of British talent. Let them signify to the public that they will show no favour, and that they will be responsible for the merit of the works they mean to invite the public to see. They need not doubt the effect. Great will be the benefit to art, artists, and to patrons of art.

SUFFOLK STREET GALLERY--SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS.

This twentieth exhibition opens, according to the catalogue, under the auspices of Marcus Tullius Cicero; but why or wherefore the world who read the quotation mottoes of catalogues, must ever be at a loss to discover. "I think," said the wordy Roman, "that no one will ever become a highly distinguished orator, unless he shall have obtained a knowledge of all great things and arts." Therefore, you, the British public, are requested to walk in and see the show. We wish this motto affectation were put an end to--the Royal Academy are sadly puzzled year after year to hit upon a piece of Latin that will do, and their labour in that line is often in vain. And certainly this intimation from Suffolk Street, which might be very useful to a young barrister preparing for the circuit, is now to the "matter in hand" _nihil ad rem_. But have not we heard that motto before? We believe it was the last year's, and is we suppose to become an annual repetition _in secula seculorum_. The exhibition is, however, very respectable; we fear it is not so well attended as it deserves to be. The fact is, that the Academy, with its innumerable works, becomes, before it is half gone through, a very tiresome affair. What with straining at raw crude colours, and pictures out of sight, the public, who feel they must go there, have had enough of work for weary eyes; and imagining the other gallery to be inferior, go not to it. Yet, after a little rest, they would, we are sure, feel gratified in Suffolk Street. If there are but half-a-dozen good pictures, they are worth going to see, and certainly this exhibition has its very fair proportion of works of merit, and interest. Nor is there any lack of variety. We have only to make remarks upon a very few, not at all wishing to have it believed that we have selected either the best or the worst. There is novelty in some of Mr Woolmer's pictures. He seems, however, undetermined as to style; for his pictures are here very unequal. In one or two he is imitating Turner, but it is to have "confusion worse confounded." And singularly enough, in such imitations, his subjects are of repose. "A Scene in the Middle Ages, suggested by a visit to Haddon Hall," is very pleasing. The style here is suggestive, and judiciously so; he generalizes, and we are pleased to imagine. We see elegant figures walking under shade of trees, clear refreshing green shade; the composition is graceful, and fit for the speculative or enamoured loiterers. Perhaps the foreground is too ambitious--too much worked to effect. If this be done for the sake of contrast, it is a mistake of the proper effect of, and proper place for, contrast. In such a scene of ease and gentleness, all contrast is far better avoided; it always has a tendency to make active; and is to be applied in proportion to the degree of life and activity that may be desirable. His "Castle of Indolence" is much in imitation of Turner. The poet uses a singular expression,

"O'er which were _shadowy_ cast _Elysian gleams_."

What meaneth Thomson? He further calls the hue, "a roseate smile," and is reminded of Titian's pencil. By all which hints and expressions we conclude that the poet saw this "pleasing land of Drowsyhead" as through a coloured glass, subduing all the exciting colours of nature to a mellow dreaminess. No strong, no vivid colours are here--all is the quiescent modesty, the unobtruding magic of half-tones. What shall we say of such a Domain of Indolence being painted without shade or shelter; with violent contrasts of dark and light, and of positive forcing colouring? All repose is destroyed. Then again we see too much; there are too many parts, too many figures, too many occupations: indication that the territory was peopled would have been enough; this is more like a _fête champêtre_. Besides, the scene itself is not one to give delight to contemplate; it is not suggestive of pleasant dream, but looks out on an ugly, swampy, fog-infected country. The only "Indolence" we see has been devoted to the execution, for it is slovenly to a degree. We find the same fault, though not to the same extent, with his "Scene from Boccaccio." It sadly wants repose, and affects colouring which is neither good for itself, nor suitable to the subject. His "Subject from Chaucer" has the same defects. Mr Woolmer is decidedly a man of ability; but we think he has strange misconceptions with respect to colours, their sentimental effect and power.

There is a "Scene from the Arabian Nights," by Mr Jacobi, which, though it is an attempt, and by no means an unsuccessful one, at an accidental effect of nature, which is generally to be avoided, is extremely pleasing. It is a portrait of great loveliness, grace, and beauty--we look till we are in the illusion of the Arabian tale--the foot of the Beauty is not good in colour or form; and the distance is a little out of harmony. There is considerable power; such peculiar light and shade, and colouring, offered great difficulty to keep, up the effect evenly--and the difficulty has been overcome. Mr Herring greatly keeps up the character of this exhibition in his peculiar line. His "Interior of a Country Stable" is capitally painted, even to the ducks. The old horse has been evidently "a good 'un;" goats, ducks, and white horse behind, all good, and should complete the scene--we may have "too much for our money." The cows and occupation going on within, in an inner stall, are too conspicuous and a picture within a picture, and therefore would be better out. His black and roan, in the "Country Bait Stable," are perfect nature. A picture by Mr H. Johnston, "The Empress Theophane, begging her husband Leo V. to delay the execution of Michael the Physician," is well designed; has a great deal of beauty of design, of expression, and of general colour, but not colour of flesh--nor is the purple blue of the background good.

We take it for granted that artists are often at a loss for a subject, and that they often choose badly we all know; but a worse than that chosen by Mr G. Scott, we do not remember ever to have met with. It is entitled "Morbid Sympathy," forming two pictures. In the one the murderer is coming from the house where he has just committed the diabolical act; in the other he is visited. The man is an uninteresting villain and his visitors are fools. The object of the painter is doubtless a good one; it is to avert that morbid sympathy which has been so conspicuously and mischievously felt and affected for the worst, the most wicked of mankind. But to do this is the province of the press, not the pencil. It is a mistake of the whole purpose of art. It will not deter murderers, who look not at pictures; and if they were to look at these, would not be converted by any thing the pictures have to show--nor will it keep back one fool, madman, or sentimental hypocrite from making a disgraceful exhibition. We are not sorry to notice this failure of Mr Scott's, because we would call the attention of artists in general to "subject." Let a painter ask himself before he takes his brush in hand, why--for what purpose, with what object do I choose this scene or this incident? Can the moral or the sentiment it conveys be told by design and colour?--and if so, are such moral and such sentiment worth the "doing." Will it please, or will it disgust? We mean not to use the word "please" in its lowest common sense, but in that which expresses the gratification we are known to feel even when our quiescent happiness is disturbed. In that sense we know even tragedies are pleasing. We may, however, paint a martyr on his gridiron, and paint that which is only disgusting; the firmness, the devotion through faith of the martyr, are of the noblest heroism. If to represent that be the sole object, and it succeeds, such a work would rank with tragedy, and please.

PAINTING IN WATER COLOURS.

We have visited the two societies of painters in water colours. In these there are two antagonist principles in full practice--while some are endeavoring to imitate, and indeed to go beyond the power of oil colours, others are going back as much as may be to the white paper system; imitating in fact the imitation which painters in oil have taken up from the painters in water colour. We must, of course, expect from this no little extravagance both ways--and we are not disappointed in the expectation. We will first notice the elder institution. In this, certainly, there are fewer examples of the power of colour system--but not a few in the weaker system. We noticed last year that Mr Copley Fielding was making great advances in it. His practised and skilful hand causes that style to have many admirers. Poor John Varley--we look with interest at his last work. His early ones were full of genius. He was an enthusiast in art. There is very great beauty in his "View on the Croydon Canal previous to the making the rail-road." An admirable composition--the woods and water are very fine. There are some very good drawings by D. Cox, which will greatly please all who like to see much told with little labour. Prout fully sustains his reputation. Amidst much detail he is always broad and large. There is a most true effect of haze in Copley Fielding's fine drawing of "Folkstone Cliff." There is an affected absence of effect in his "Arundel Castle"--the blues and yellows are not in harmony--and all has an uncomfortable, unsubstantial look. Eliza Sharpe's "Little Dunce" is a delightful drawing. It is only the old dame that can ever be angry with a little dunce--and she puts on more than half her anger; and this is a glorious little dunce, that we would not see good for the world--the triumph of nature over tuition. This charming little creature has been happy her own way, has been wandering in her own "castle of indolence," and perhaps, too, philosophizing thus--Well, I have been naughty, but happier still than if I had been good. So is the goodness we force upon children often against nature--we love to see nature superior. Eliza Sharpe must have been of the same way of thinking, and it is archly expressed. Her Una and the lion is large and free--the face of Una nor quite the thing. We have a "Castle of Indolence" by Mr Finch, gay with "all the finches of the grove," but the country does not look indolent, nor the country for indolence. Hunt's boys, clever as ever. The sleeping boy, with his large shadow on the wall, is most successful. The companion, the boy awake, is a little of the caricature. His "Pet," a boy holding up a pig, natural as it is, is nevertheless disgusting; for such a toy will ever be the biggest beast of the two. Mr Hills has several excellent drawings of deer; but there is one, so perfect that it is quite poetical--a few deer, in their own wild haunt, heathery brown, and almost treeless, the few spots of stunted trees serving to mark the spot, separating it from similar, and making it the home. It is furthest from the haunts of man. It looks silence. The animals are quite nature, exquisitely grouped. The quiet colouring, unobtrusive, could not be more nicely conceived--it is the long Sabbath quiet of an unworking world. The picture is well executed. It is one that makes a lasting impression.

Mr Oakley's "Shrimper," a boy sitting on a rock, reminds us of some of Murillo's boys; it is as good in effect, and better in expression, than most of the Spaniard's. "After the second Battle of Newbury," by Cattermole, is a well-imagined scene, but is defective in that in which we should have supposed the artist would not have failed. It is not moonlight. "Tuning," by J. W. Wright, is a good proof that blue, as Gainsborough likewise proved, is not necessarily cold. His "Confession," with the two graceful figures, is very sweet. "The Gap of Dunloe," W. A. Nesfield--has fine folding forms--the distance and rainbow beautiful--it is, however, somewhat hurt by crude colour, and too much cut up foreground. The Vicar and his family supply work to many an artist of our day. Mr Taylor's is very good--Moses pulling the reluctant horse, is a good incident. We do not quite recognize Mrs Primrose, and could wish the daughter had more beauty. We never could very much admire Mr Richter's coarse vulgarities--and they are of gross feeling, and we think, caricatures without much humour; but his sentimentalities are worse. His "Sisters," a scene from the novel of "The Trustee," is but a miserable attempt at the pathetic. Mr Gastineau's "Bellagio" is a beautiful drawing, has great breadth and truth; but the water is certainly too blue.

EXHIBITION OF NEW SOCIETY IN WATER COLOURS.

Generally speaking, this Society is mostly ambitious of carrying water colour to its greatest possible depth and power, and certainly, in this respect, the attainment is wondrous. In design, and other character, this society more than keeps its ground. We remember last year noticing Miss Setchell's little picture, as one of the best of the year; we have still a perfect recollection of the most lovely pathetic expression of the poor girl. We were greatly disappointed that no work of Miss Setchell adorns the walls. There is a picture, however, which, if it did not move us equally, at once arrested our attention, and again and again did we return to it. The character of it is not certainly moving, as Miss Setchell's, it is altogether of a different cast--it is one for thought and manly contemplation. The subject is "Cromwell and Ireton intercepting a letter of Charles the First," by L. Haghe. Cromwell is standing reading a letter--Ireton adjusting the saddle in the recess of a window, near which Cromwell stands, is a table with a flagon, the scene is an inn in Holborn. The attitude of Cromwell is dignified ease and resolution. In his fine countenance we read the full history of the "coming events"--we see all there, that we have learned from history. The very curtains and stick seem to the imagination's eye convertible into canopy and sceptre. There is great forbearance in the painting--we mean that there is just enough, and no more, of water-colours' ambition. More depth would have injured the effect. It is a very striking picture; well finished, and with a breadth suited to the historical importance of the history. Mr Warren's "Christ's Sermon" is of the ambitious school. If we contrast the quiet, solemnly quiet, tone of that sermon of beatitudes, with the coloured character of the picture, we must condemn the inappropriate style. We should say it is immodestly painted; the picture and not the subject, obtrudes. The head of Christ is weak. It is a picture nevertheless of great ability, but with a gorgeous colouring ill suited to the subject. But we must speak with unqualified admiration of a little picture by Mr Warren--the "Ave Maria." It is a lady kneeling before a picture of a saint in a chapel. The depth and power is very surprising, and much reminds of Rembrandt, with the exception of the picture of the saint, which struck us at first as too light by a great deal, so much so that we noted it down as a glaring defect, but returning to the picture, we looked, not only till we were reconciled, but to an admiration of what we had considered a fault. It is the poetry of the subject. We see not the face of the petitioning figure, we only feel that she is there, and devoutly petitioning, and the brightness of the patron saint, with its simple open character of face and figure, comes out as a miraculous manifestation. We must not mistake--the "Ave Maria" does not mean that it is to the Virgin the petitioner prays; it is to a male saint.

Mr E. Corbould still is in the full ambition of water colour power. "Jesus at the House of Simon the Pharisee," is an example of the inappropriateness of this manner to solemn sacred subjects. The Mary is very good--not so the principal figure, it has a weak expression: some parts of this picture are too sketchy for others. His "Woman of Samaria" is a much better picture, has great breadth and grace. It is rather slight. His "Flower of the Fisher's Hut" is very pretty--a lady in masquerade. Absolon's "Uncle Toby" is well told, and with the author's naïveté. Mr Topham's farewell scene from the "Deserted Village," is, we think, too strong of the mock-pathetic--a scene of praying and babying.

There are many pictures we would wish to notice, but we must forbear: we cannot, however, omit the mention of a sea-piece, which we thought very fine, with a watery sky; a good design,--"North Sunderland Fishermen rendering assistance after a Squall."

THE BRITISH INSTITUTION.

Having recently given some account of Sir Joshua, his Discourses, his genius, and his influence upon the arts in this country, we visited this gallery, where as many as sixty of his works are exhibited, with no little interest. The North Room is occupied by them alone. Have we reason to think our estimate of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as a painter, not borne out by this exhibition? By no means. Our first impression from the whole collection, not seeing any particular picture, is of colour. And here Sir Joshua appears _inventive_; for though he not unfrequently imitated Rembrandt, there is, on the whole, a style that is far from Rembrandt, and is not like any other old master; yet we believe, for it was the character of his mind so to do, that he always had some great master in view in all he did. But he combined. Hence there is no little novelty in his style, and not seldom some inconsistencies--a mixture of care and delicacy, with great apparent slovenliness. We say apparent, for we are persuaded Sir Joshua never worked without real care and forethought; and that his apparent slovenliness was a purpose, and a long studied acquirement. He ever had in view the maxim--_Ars est celare artem_; but he did not always succeed, for he shows too evidently the art with which he concealed what first his art had effected. Looking carefully at these pictures, we see intention every where: there is no actual random work. We believe him to have finished much more than has been supposed; that there is, in reality, careful drawing and colouring, at least in many of his pictures, _under_ that large and general scumbling and glazing, to which, for the sake of making a whole, he sacrificed the minor beauties. And we believe that many of those beauties were not lost when the works were fresh from his easel, but that they lave been obscured since by the nature of the medium and the materials he used. That these were bad we cannot doubt, for we plainly see that some of these pictures, his most laboured for effect, are not only most wofully cracked, (yet that is not the word, for it expresses not the gummy separation of part from part,) but that transparency has been lost, and the once-brilliant pigments become a _caput mortuum_. Hence there is very great _heaviness_ pervading his pictures; so that even in colouring there is a want of freshness. A deep asphaltum has overpowered lightness and delicacy, and has itself become obscure. Sir Joshua did not leave his pictures in this state. It is as if one should admire, in the clear brown bed of a mountain river, luminous objects, stone or leaf, pebble or weed, most delicately uncertain in the magic of the waving glaze; and suddenly there should come over the fascination an earthy muddying inundation. In estimating Sir Joshua's mind, we must, in imagination, remove much that his hand has done. Nor was Sir Joshua, perhaps, always true to his subject in his intention of general colouring. His "Robinettas," and portraits, or ideals of children, are not improved by that deep asphaltum colouring, so unsuitable to the freshness, and may we not add, purity of childhood. And there appears, at least now in their present state, that there is too universal a use of the brown and other warm colours; Rembrandt invariably inserted among them cool and deep grays, very seldom blue, which, as too active a colour, is apt to destroy repose, the intended effect of deep colouring. Titian uses it for the sake of its activity, as in the Bacchus and Ariadne and how subdued is that blue! but even in such pictures there are the intermediate grays, both warm and cold, that the transition from warm to cold be not too sudden. We cannot say that Sir Joshua Reynolds did not introduce these qualifying grays, because the browns have so evidently become more intense, that they may have changed them to their own hue.

There are some pictures here which have either lost their glaze by cleaning, or never had it, and these have a freshness, and touch too, which others want; such is the case with "Lady Cockburn and her Three Sons"--a very fine picture, beautifully coloured, and well grouped, very like nature, and certainly in a manner of Vandyck. We remember, too, his "Kitty Fisher," and regret the practice which, with the view of giving tone, often took away real colour, and a great deal of the delicacy of nature. The very natural portrait of "Madame Schindelin," quite in another manner from any usual with Sir Joshua, shows that he was less indebted to his after theory of colouring than people in general have imagined. The most forcible picture among them is the "Ugolino." It is well known that the head of Ugolino was a study, and not designed for Ugolino, but that the story was adopted to suit it; yet it has been thought to want the dignity of that character. Ugolino had been a man in power; there is not much mark in the picture of his nobility. It has been said, too, that the addition of his sons is no improvement in the picture. We think otherwise: they are well grouped; by their various attitudes they give the greater desperate fixedness to Ugolino, and they do tell the story well, and are good in themselves. The power of the picture is very great, and it is not overpowered by glazing. On the whole, we think it his most vigorous work, and one upon which his fame as a painter may fairly rest. We have a word to say with respect to Sir Joshua's pictures of children. That he fully admired Correggio, we cannot doubt--his children have all human sweetness, tenderness, and affection; but it was the archness of children that mostly delighted our painter--their play, their frolic, their fun. In this, though in the main successful, he was apt to border upon the caricature; we often observe a cat-like expression. "The Strawberry Girl" has perhaps the most intense, and at the same time human look. It is deeply sentient or deeply feeling. The "Cardinal Beaufort" disappoints; so large a space of canvass uncouthly filled up, rather injures the intended expression in the cardinal. Has the demon been painted out, or has that part of the picture changed, and become obscure? But we will not notice particular pictures; having thus spoken so much of the general effect, we should only have to repeat what we have already said.

The Middle Room is a collection of old masters of many schools, and valuable indeed are most of these works of art. There is a small landscape by Rembrandt, "A Road leading to a Village with a Mill," wonderfully fine. It is the perfect poetry of colour. The manner and colouring give a sentiment to this most simple subject. It is a village church, with trees around it. This is the subject--the church and trees--all else belongs to that--we see dimly through the leafage--we read, through the gloom and the glimmer, the village histories. The repose of the dead--the piety of the living--all that is necessary for the village home, is introduced--but not conspicuously--and nothing more; here is a house, a farm-house, and a mill--a village stream, over which, but barely seen, is a wooden bridge--the clouds are closing round, and such clouds as "drop fatness," making the shelter the greater--a figure or two in the road. There is great simplicity in the chiaroscuros, and the paint is of the most brilliant gem-like richness, into which you look, for it is not flimsy and thin, but substance transparent--so that it lets in your imagination into the very depth of its mystery. No painter ever understood the poetry of colour as did Rembrandt. He made that his subject, whatever were the forms and figures. We have made notes of every picture, but have no room, and must be content with selecting a very few. Here are two fine sea-pieces by Vandervelde and Backhuysen. We notice them together for their unlikeness to each other. In the latter, "A Breeze, with the Prince of Orange's Yacht," there is a fine free fling of the waves, but lacking the precision of Vandervelde. There are two vessels, of nearly equal magnitude, and not together so as to make one. We are at a loss, therefore, which to look at. It is an offence in composition, and one which is never made by Vandervelde--often by Backhuysen; and not unfrequently are his vessels too large or too small for the skies and water. "The Breeze, with Man-of-War," by Vandervelde, is, in its composition, perfect. It is the Man-of-War; there is nothing to compete with it--the gallant vessel cares not for the winds or waves--she commands them. It is wondrously painted, and as fresh as from the easel. Here are three pictures by Paul Potter--the larger one, "Landscape, with Cattle and Figures," how unlike the others! "Cattle in a Storm," is a large picture in little. The wind blows, and the bull roars. It is very fine, and quite luminous. The other, "Landscape, with Horses and Figures," looks, at first view, not quite as it should; but, on examining it, there are parts most exquisitely beautiful--the white horse coming out of the stable is perfect, and, like the Daguerreotype portraits, the more you look with a good magnifying-glass, the more truth you see. There is no picture in this room that excites so much attention as the "View of Dort from the River."--Cuyp. It is certainly very splendid. It is a sunny effect; the town is low--some warm trees just across the river, near which, half-way in the stream, is a barge, the edges gilded by the sun--further off is a large vessel, whose sides are illuminated--above all is a thunder-cloud, very effectively painted. The picture has been divided, and rejoined, and is very well done. It would perhaps be better if it were cut off a little beyond the large vessel, as the opposite sides are not quite in harmony, one part being cold, the other extremely warm. There is a companion by Cuyp, which has been engraved for Forster's work, "A River Scene--Fishing under the Ice." It is very fine: if not quite so luminous as the former, it is in better tone altogether. We must move on to--

THE SOUTH ROOM

With the exception of two pictures of the modern German school, this room contains the works of English artists not living. Only one of the German school is a picture of any pretension, "Christ blessing the Little Children"--Professor Hesse. The reputation of this painter led us to expect something better. We must consider it apart from its German peculiarities, and with respect to what it gains or loses by them. As a design, the story is well and simply told. As a composition, it is a little too formal, lacking that easy flowing of lines into each other, which, though eschewed by the new school, is nevertheless a beauty. The expression in the heads is good generally, not so in the principal figure. There is throughout a character of purity and tenderness--it is a great point to attain this. But none of this character is assisted by the colouring, or the chiaroscuro. The colouring, though it has a gold background, is not rich, for the gold is pale, even to a straw colour, and the pattern on it rather gives it a straw texture. We presume it is meant to represent the dry Byzantine style of colouring, purposely avoiding the richer colours; as power is lost, by this adoption, it is impossible to give either the tones or colours of nature--there is no transparency. To preserve this old simplicity, softening and blending shadows are avoided, by which a positive unnaturalness offends the eye; hence the hands and feet not only look hard, but clumsy--they may not be, but they look, ill drawn. The figures, indeed, look like pasteboard figures stuck on; there is a leaden hue pervading all the flesh tints. It fails, too, in simplicity and antique air, which we suppose to be the objects of the school. For there is too much of art in the composition for the former, too little quaintness for the latter; and indeed its perfect newness of somewhat raw paint prevents the mind from going back to ancient time; and that failure makes the picture as a whole, a pretension. It does not, then, appear to gain what that old style is intended to bestow--and it loses nearly all the advantages of the after-improvements of art--of its extended means. It rejects the power of giving more intensity to feeling, of adding the grace of nature, the truth and variety of more perfect colouring, by the opaque and the transparent, and does not in any other way attain any thing which could not have been more perfectly attained without the sacrifice. The collection of the British school contains good and bad--few of the best of each master. West's best picture is among them, his "Death Of Wolfe"--everyone knows the print; the picture is good in colour and firmly painted, and contrasts with some others where we see the miserable effect of the megillups and varnishes which our painters were wont to mix with their colours. We should have been glad to have seen better specimens of Fuseli's genius--we suppose we must say that he had genius. The best piece of painting of his hand in the room is the boy in Harlowe's picture of the "Kemble Family;" a picture of considerable artistic merit, but ruined by the coarse vulgarity of a caricature of Mrs Siddons. How unlike the Lady Macbeth! The corpulent velvet dark mass and obtruding figure is most unpleasant. It is much to be regretted Mr. Harlowe did not redesign that principal figure. There are several landscapes of Gainsborough's, and one portrait--the latter excellent, the former poor. There is much vigour of colouring and handling in the "Horses at a Fountain;" but as usual, it is a poor composition, and of parts that ill agree. The mass of rock and foliage are quite out of character with the bit of tame village scene, and the hideous figures. Here, too, his "Girl and Pigs," for which he asked sixty guineas, and Sir Joshua gave him a hundred. We do not think the President had a bargain. There is not one of Wilson's best in this collection. The "Celadon and Amelia" is dingy, and poor in all respects. It verifies as it illustrates; for Thomson says,

"But who _can paint_ the lover as he stood?"

Very coarse is Opie's "Venus and Adonis." He had not grace for such a subject--nor for "Lavinia." We should have been glad to have seen some of his works where the subjects and handling agree. We are sorry to see Hogarth's "March to Finchley" so injured by some ignorant cleaner. His "Taste in High Life" is the perfection of caricature. We have not the slightest idea what Constable meant when he painted the "Opening of Waterloo Bridge." The poor "_Silver_ Thames" is converted into a smear of white lead and black. "Charles the First demanding the Five Members," surprised us by its power--its effect is good. Here is no slovenly painting, so common in Mr. Copley's day--the general colour too is good; and the painting of individual heads is much after the manner of Vandyck. There are some pictures on the walls which might have been judiciously omitted in an exhibition which must be considered as characteristic of English talent.

As the British Gallery is for a considerable period devoted to works of English art, and as so many other exhibitions offer them in such profusion, we would suggest that it would be more beneficial to art, and to the success and improvement of British painters, if the original intention of the governors of the institution were adhered to, of exhibiting annually the choicest works of the old schools.

MARSTON, OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.