Part 19

|Last year at this time we were all impressed, as we seldom are by anything of this sort, by Delaroche's picture of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. We are none of us likely to forget the. feeling then experienced of being admitted into that dread presence, and looking, not only at the bodily form, but into the very soul of that great and miserable man. We may now get a different and yet a similar impression, from what we cannot but regard as a nobler and more touching work--something deeper and finer still. Those who knew what we thought of the first, will understand how much praise of the second is involved in our saying this. Last year we saw before us the spectacle of power, perhaps the most intense and enormous ever committed by the Divine Disposer to one of his creatures, in ruins, having all but played the game out. It was the setting sun of a day of astonishment, brightness, and tempest, lightning and thunder; but the great orb was sinking in disastrous storm and gloom--going down never to rise again. In this new picture, we have the rising sun climbing up its young morning sky; the hours of glory, of havoc, and of shame, are before him, and us. The innocent brightness of his new-born day is not yet gone; it will soon go.

Nothing can be simpler, or more everyday-like, than the body of the picture. A steady, painstaking mule, with his shoulder to the steep, his head well down, his nostrils dilated, his eye full of stress and courage, his last hind leg straining forward himself and his burden, his shaggy legs clotted with the sweat-ice-drops, the weatherworn harness painted as like as it can look, his ruffled and heated hide, the leash of thongs, which, dangling, has often amused and tickled his old and hungry sides, swinging forward in the gusty wind--his whole heart and soul in his work; he is led by his old master, with his homely, hardy, and honest face, his sinewy alpenstock in his hand. Far back on the mule sits Napoleon, consulting his own ease alone, not sparing man or beast--he was not given to spare man or beast--his muscles relaxed, his lean shapely leg instinctively gripping the saddle, his small handsome foot resting idly in the stirrup, the old useless knotted bridle lying on the mule's neck, his grey coat buttoned high up, and blown forward by the wind, his right hand in his inner coat, his slight graceful chest well up, and, above it, his face! and, above it, that well-known hat, firmly held by the prodigious head within, the powdery snow grizzling its rim. Ay, that face! look at it; let its vague, proud, melancholy gaze, not at you, or at anything, but into the immense future, take possession of your mind. He is turning the north side of the Alps; he is about descending into Italy; and what of that?--we all know now what of that, and do not know yet all of it. We were then, such of us as may have been born, as unconscious of what was before us and him, as that patient mule or his simple master. Look at the face narrowly: it is thin; the cheeks sunken; the chin exquisite, with its sweet dimple; the mouth gentle, and firm, and sensitive, but still as death, not thinking of words or speech, but merely letting the difficult air of that Alpine region in and out. That same mouth which was to ignore the word impossible and call it a beast, and to know it, and be beaten by it in the end; that thin, delicate, straight nose leading you to the eyes, with their pencilled and well-pronounced brows; there is the shadow of youth, and of indifferent health, under and around these eyes, giving to their power and meaning a singular charm--they are the wonder of the picture. He is looking seriously, but blankly, far on and up, seeing nothing outwardly, the mind's eye seeing--who can tell what? His cheek is pale with the longing of greatness. The young and mighty spirit within is awakening, and hardly knows itself and its visions, but it looks out clearly and firmly, though with a sort of vague sadness, into its appointed field.

Every one must be struck with this look of sorrow; a certain startled air of surprise, of hope, and of fear; his mind plays deeply with the future that is far off,--besides doing anything but play with his work to-morrow, that, as we shall soon hear, was earnest enough, as Marengo can tell. Such is the natural impression, such the feelings, this picture made and awakened in our minds through our eyes. It has a certain plain truth and immediateness of its own, which leads to the idea of all that followed; and, lest this effect be said to be ours, not the picture's, we would ask any man to try and bring such an idea, or indeed any idea, into the head of any one looking at David's absurd piece of horsemanship, called Crossing the Alps. And what is that idea? Everything ripening for that harvest, he is putting his sickle forth to reap. France, terrified and bleeding, and half free, getting sight of its future king--rousing itself and gathering itself up to act. Italy, Austria, and the drowsy, rotten, bewildered kingdoms, turning uneasily in their sleep, and awakening, some of them never again to rest; even the utmost north to bear witness of him, and take terrible vengeance for his wrongs. Egypt has already been filled with the glory, the execration, and disgrace of his name; and that Holy Land, the theatre of the unspeakable wonders and goodness of the Prince of Peace, that too has seen him, and has cast him out, by the hearty courage and hatred of an English captain and his sailors. England also is to play a part; to annihilate his fleets, beat him and his best marshals wherever she meets them, and finish him utterly at. last. .

And what changes--as strange, though more hidden--in character, in affection, in moral worth, are to take place in that beautiful and spiritual countenance, in that soul of which it is the image; infinite pride, and glory, and guilt, working their fell will upon him--his being (that most dreadful of all calamities to a creature like man) left altogether to himself. How the wild, fierce courage of Lodi and Arcole is to waste away into the amazing meanness of "_Sauve gui peut_"-- the Regent's letter, and the pitiful bullying on board the Bellerophon. Before him lis his victories, his mighty civil plans, his code of laws, his endless activity, his prodigious aims, even his medals so beautiful, so ridiculous, so full of lies--one of them telling its own shame, having on one side Hercules strangling the monster of the sea (England), and on the other the words "Struck at London!!" his perfidy and cruelty; the murdered young D'Enghien; the poisoned soldiers at Jaffa. The red field of Leipsic rises stark on our sight, where the great German people, that honest and right-hearted but slow race, fell and rose again, never again to fall so low, and, by and by, through the same vital energy, it may be soon, to rise higher than many think, when, rousing themselves like a strong man after sleep, they shall drive their enemies, be they kings or priests, as old Hermann and his Teuts chased the Roman Eagles across the Rhine, and returning, lift up like them their beer horns in peace; this has always seemed to us the great moral lesson to the world of Napoleon's career. But our readers are impatient; they have, perhaps, parted company with us long ago. One thing they will agree with us in, that this picture raises up the mind of the looker; fills his memory with living forms; breathes the breath of life and of human nature into the eventful past, and projects the mind forward upon the still greater future; deepens impressions, and writes "Vanity of vanity, all is vanity," on such mad ambition--

"The glories of our earthly state #

Are shadows, not substantial things."

But to return to our picture. Behind Napoleon is another guide, leading the horse of a soldier, muffled up, and battling with the keen mountain wind. This closes the scene; around and above are the everlasting Alps, looking as they did when Hannibal passed nearly 3000 years before, and as they will do thousands of years hence. They bear down upon the eye in a formidable way, as if frowning at the intruder on their snows and silence, and as if crowding down to withstand his steps. Under is the spotless snow, with some bits of ice, troubling the hoofs of the mule. This completes the picture, which, as we have already said, is homely and simple in its body, in all that first meets the eye, though informed throughout with the finest phantasy when the mind rests upon it and reaches its soul.

Every one must be struck with the personal beauty of Napoleon as represented here. He was in his 31st year; had been four years married to Josephine--the happiest years of his life; he had just come from Egypt, having been hunted across the Mediterranean by Nelson. His peasant guide, who succeeded to the old man, and who brought him within sight of Italy, described him as "a very dark man, and with an eye which, though affable, he did not like to encounter." We can believe him; a single look of that eye, or a word from that mouth, cheered and set in motion the wearied army as they toiled up "the Valley of Desolation;" and if they stuck fast in despair, the Consul had the drums beat, and trumpets sounded, as for the charge. This never failed. He knew his men.

This picture was conceived by Delaroche last year, on the spot where the scene is laid, and painted very soon after. He was at Nice for his health, and had for his guide up the St. Bernard, the son of the man leading the mule, who told him many things about Napoleon, and how he looked. As regards colour, it is the best of Dela-roche's pictures we have seen; it is a curious study to mark how little, and how much, the young, thin, spiritual face differs from that of last year's picture.

There is something to our minds, not unseasonable in directing our thoughts to such a spectacle of mere human greatness, at this (Christmas) sacred time. So much mischief, crime, and misery, and yet so much power, intelligence, progress, and a certain dreadful usefulness in the career of such a man. What a contrast to His life, who entered our world 1850 years ago, and whose birth was heralded by the angel song, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men;" whose religion and example, and continual living influence, has kept this strange world of ours from being tenfold more wicked and miserable than it is. We would conclude with the words of the poet of _In Memoriam_--

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring happy bells across the snow,

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

"Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler forms of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

"Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace."

$THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD.

|If this picture in any degree fulfil its object, if we are impressed and moved by it, then it is not matter for words, it partakes of the unspeakableness of its subject. If it fall short of this, it fails utterly, and is not worth any words but those of displeasure, for nothing is more worthless, nothing is more truly profane, and few things are more common, than the attempt to represent sacred ideas by a man who is himself profane, and incapable of impressing others. For it is as unseemly, and in the true sense as profane, for a painter to paint such subjects if he do not feel them, as it is for a man to preach the great truths of our most holy faith, being himself an unbeliever, or at the best a Gallio, in both cases working merely for effect, or to bring in wages.

This picture is not liable to any such rebuke. Whatever may be thought of its central idea and of its expression, no one can doubt--no one can escape coming-under--its power, its true sacredness. Watch the people studying it; listen, not to their words, but to their silence; they are all as if performing an act of worship, or at least of devout reverence. The meaning of the picture reaches you at once: that lonely, serious, sorrowful, majestic countenance and form; those wonderful listening eyes, so full of concern, of compassion--"acquainted with grief;" the attitude of anxious hearkening, as if "waiting to be gracious." This idea rules the whole. We all feel who He is, and what He is desiring; and we feel, perhaps it may be in a way never felt before, the divine depth of.the words, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man open unto me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me;" and we see that though He is a king, and is "travelling in the greatness of his strength, mighty to save," He cannot open the door--it must open from within--He can only stand and knock.

We confess that, with this thought filling our mind, we care little for the beautiful and ingenious symbols with which the painter has enriched his work; that garden run wild, that Paradise Lost, with the cold starlight indicating and concealing its ruin--all things waste, the light from the lantern falling on the apple (a wonderful bit of painting)--"the fruit of that forbidden tree the darnel or tares choking up the door, and the gentle but inveterate ivy grasping it to the lintel; the Jewish and the Gentile emblems clasped together across his breast; the crown, at once royal and of thorns set with blood-red carbuncles; and many other emblems full of subtle spiritual meaning. We confess to rather wishing the first impression had been left alone.

The faults of the picture as a work of art are, like its virtues, those of its school--imitation is sometimes mistaken for representation. There is a want of the unity, breadth, and spaciousness of nature about the landscape, as if the painter had looked with one eye shut, and thus lost the stereoscopic effect of reality--the solidarity of binocular vision; this gives a displeasing flatness. It is too full of astonishing bits, as if it had been looked at, as well as painted, piece-meal. With regard to the face of our Saviour, this is hardly a subject for criticism,--as we have said, it is full of majesty and tenderness and meaning; but we have never yet seen any image of that face so expressive as not to make us wish that it had been left alone to the heart and imagination of each for himself. In the "Entombment," by Titian, one of the three or four greatest pictures in the world, the face of the dead Saviour is in shadow, as if the painter preferred leaving it thus, to making it more definite; as if he relied on the idea--on the spiritual image--rising up of itself; as if he dared not be definite; thus showing at once his greatness and modesty by acknowledging that there is "that within which passeth show."

$RIZPAH.

|Take one of Turner's sketches in his _Liber Studiorum_, a book which, for truth and power, and the very highest imaginative _vis_, must be compared, not with any other book of prints, but with such word-pictures as you find in Dante, in Cowper, in Wordsworth, or in Milton. It is a dark foreground filled with gloom, savage and wild in its structure; a few grim heavy trees deepen the gloom: in the centre, and going out into the illimitable sky, is a brief, irregular bit of the purest radiance, luminous, but far off. There is a strange meaning about the place; it is "not uninformed with phantasy, and looks that threaten the profane." You look more keenly into it. In the centre of the foreground sits a woman, her face hidden, her whole form settled down as by some deep sorrow; she holds up, but with her face averted, a flaming torch; behind, and around her, lie stretched out seven bodies as of men, half-naked, and dimly indicating far-gone decay; at their feet are what seem like crowns. There is a lion seen with extended tail slinking off, and a bittern has just sprung up in the corner from a reedy pool. The wraning moon is lying as if fainting in the grey heavens. The harvest sheaves stand near at hand, against the sky. The picture deepens in its gloom. The torch gives more of its fitful light as you steadily gaze. What is all this? These are two sons and five grandsons of Saul, who "fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the beginning of barley harvest." And she who sits there solitary is "Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, who took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night." For five months did this desolate mother watch by the bodies of her sons! She is at her ceaseless work, morn, noon, and night incessantly. How your heart now fills, as well as your eyes! How you realize the idea! What a sacred significance it gives to the place, and receives from it! What thoughts it awakens! Saul and his miserable story, David and his lamentation, the mountains of Gil-boa, the streets of Askelon. The king of beasts slinking off once more, hungry, angry, and afraid--finding her still there. The barley sheaves, indicating by a touch of wonderful genius, that it is nearer the beginning than the end of her time, so that we project our sympathy forward upon the future months. No one but a great artist would have thought of this. And that unfailing, forlorn woman, what love! That only love which He whose name and nature it has honoured by admitting to be nearest, though at an infinite distance from His own. "Can a woman forget?--Yea, she may forget." Here we have a scene in itself impressive, and truthfully rendered, enriched, and sanctified by a subject of the highest dignity, and deepest tenderness, and in perfect harmony with it.

Many may say we bring out much that is not in it. This maybe partly true, and is rather to that extent an enhancement of its worth. But the real truth is, that there is all this in it, if it be but sought for and received in simplicity and reverence. The materials for imagination are there; let the spectator apprehend them in the like spirit, and he will feel all, and more than we have described. Let a man try to bring anything out of some of the many landscapes we see in our Exhibitions, and he may be strong and willing, but it will prove too hard for him; it is true here as everywhere else---ex nihilo nihil Jit--ex parvo, parvum--ex falso, falsum--ex magno, magnum--ex Deo, Optimo, Maximo, maximum, optimum, divinum._

$THE GLEN OF THE ENTERKIN.

|This is a representation by Mr. Harvey of a deep, upland valley; its truthfulness is so absolute, that the geologist could tell from it what formation was under that grass. The store-farmer could say how many sheep it could feed, and what breed those are which are busy nibbling on that sunny slope. The botanist could tell not only that that is a fern, but that it is the _Aspidium filix-mas_; and the naturalist knows that that water-wagtail on that stone is the _Motacilla Yarrelli_. To all this, the painter has added his own thoughts and feelings when he saw and when he painted this consummate picture. It is his idea of the place, and, like all realized ideals, it has first crept into his study of imagination, before it comes into the eye and prospect of his soul or of ours. We feel the spirit of the place, its gentleness, its unspeakable seclusion. The one shepherd with his dog far up on the hillside, grey and steadfast as any stone, adding the element of human solitude, which intensifies the rest. It were worth one's while to go alone to that glen to feel its beauty, and to know something of what is meant by the "sleep that is among the lonely hills," and to feel, moreover, how much more beautiful, how much more full of life the picture is than the reality, unless indeed we have the seeing eye, the understanding heart, and then we may make a picture to ourselves.

$DAWN--LUTHER IN THE CONVENT LIBRARY AT ERFURT.

|This is, we think, Mr. Paton's best work. We do not say his greatest, for that may be held to include quantity of genius as well as quality. He has done other things as full of imagination, and more full of fancy; but there is a seriousness and depth, a moral and spiritual meaning and worth about this which he has never before shown, and which fully deserve the word best.

The picture requires no explanation. It is Luther, the young monk of four-and-twenty, in the Library of the Convent of Erfurt. He is at his desk, leaning almost wildly forward, one knee on the seat--its foot has dropped the rude and worn sandal--the other foot on the floor, as it were pressing him forward. He is gazing into the open pages of a huge Vulgate--we see it is the early chapters of the Romans. A bit of broken chain indicates that the Bible was once chained--to be read, but not possessed--it is now free, and his own. His right hand is eagerly, passionately drawing the volume close to him. His face is emaciated to painfulness; you see the traces of a sleepless night--the mind sleepless, and worse, seeking rest, and as yet finding none, but about to find it--and this takes away from what might otherwise be a _plus_ of pain. Next moment he will come upon--or it on him--the light from heaven, shining out from the words, "Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God and in intimation of this, His dawn, the sweet, pearly light of morning, shining in at the now open lattice, is reflected from the page upon his keen anxious face--"faint yet pursuing." If you look steadily into that face, you will see that the bones of the mighty Reformer's face, so well known to us, are all there, and need but good food and sleep, and the open air, and peace of mind, and the joy of victorious faith and work, to fill it up and make it plump, giving it that look of energy in repose, of enough and to spare, of masculine power, which that broad, massive, but soft and kindly visage, wears written all over it; and the slightly upturned head, the clear, open, deep eyes, and that rich chin and neck, "dewlapped like a Thessalian bull."