not heard, or but faintly have been told, of the passing miracle, admirable as they are in design and hue-for it is a glorified work-do not respond adequately to the action-that the single figure of the Lazarus has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of the greater half of the interest? Now, that there were not indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the sound of it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardihood to deny; but would they see them? or can the mind in the conception of it admit of such unconcerning objects? can it think of them at all? or what associating league to the imagination can there be between the seers, and the seers not, of a presential miracle?

Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state of expectation, the patron would not, or ought not to be fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched oaks? Disseat those woods, and place the same figure among fountains, and fall of pellucid water, and you have a—naiad! Not so in a rough print we have seen after Julio Romano, we think-for it is long since-there, by no process, with mere change of scene, could the figure have reciprocated characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her own, beautiful in convolution and distortion, linked to her connatural tree, co-twisting with its limbs her own, till both seemed either these, animated branches; those, disanimated members yet the animal and vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct-his dryad lay-an approximation of two natures, which, to conceive, it must be seen; analogous to, not the same with. the delicacies of Ovidian transformations.

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial comprehension, the most barren, the great masters gave loftiness and fruitfulness. The large eye of genius saw in the meanness of present objects their capabilities of treatment from their relations to some grand past or future. How has Raphael-we must still linger about the Vatican-treated the humble craft of the shipbuilder in his "Building of the Ark?" It is in that scriptural series, to which we have referred, and which, judging from some fine rough old graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and more poetic grade than even the Cartoons. The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardice in modern art. As the Frenchmen, of whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess at Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo collected no inferences beyond that of a he

goat and a Cornuto, so from this subject, of mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively turn away, as from one incapable of investiture with any grandeur. The dockyards at Woolwich would object derogatory associations. The depôt at Chatham would be the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But not to the nautical preparations in the shipyards of Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for instructions, when he imagined the building of the vessel that was to be conservatory of the wrecks of the species of drowned mankind. In the intensity of the action, he keeps ever out of sight the meanness of the operation. There is the patriarch, in calm forethought, and with holy prescience, giving directions. And there are his agents-the solitary but sufficient threehewing, sawing, every one with the might and earnestness of a Demiurgus; under some instinctive rather than technical guidance; giant-muscled; every one a Hercules, or liker to those Vulcanian three, that in sounding caverns under Mongibello wrought in fire-Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyracmon. So work the workmen that should repair a

world!

Artists again err in the confounding of poetic with pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othello's colour-the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff-do they haunt us perpetually in the reading? or are they obtruded upon our conceptions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost in admiration at the respective oral or intellectual attributes of the character? But in a picture Othello is always a blackmoor; and the other only plump Jack. Deeply corporealized, and enchained hopelessly in the grovelling fetters of externality, must be the mind, to which, in its better moments, the image of the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote-the errant star of knighthood, made more tender by eclipse-has never presented itself, divested from the unhallowed accompaniment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at the heels of Rosinante. That man has read his book by halves; he has laughed, mistaking his author's purport, which was-tears. The artist that pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he is every season held up at our exhibitions) in the shallow hope of exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not to see that counterfeited which we would not have wished to see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic inside of the noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his withered person was passing, would have stepped over his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the "strange bedfellows which misery brings a man acquainted

with?" Shade of Cervantes! who in thy second part could put into the mou'' of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a superchivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil their pretty networks, and inviting him to be a guest with them, in accents like these: "Truly, fairest lady, Acteon was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty: I commend the manner of your pastime, and thank you for your kind offers; and, if I may serve you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may command me; for my profession is this, to show myself thankful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially of the rank that your person shows you to be; and if those nets, as they take up but a little piece of ground, should take up the whole world, I would seek out new worlds to pass through, rather than break them: and, (he adds,) that you may give credit to this my exaggeration, behold at least he that promiseth you this is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath come to your hearing." Illustrious romancer! were the "fine phrensies" which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote a fit subject, as in this second part, to be exposed to the jeers of duennas and serving-men? to be monstered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of great men ? Was that pitiable infirmity, which in thy first part misleads him, always from within, into half-ludicrous, but more than half-compassionable and admirable errors, not infliction enough from Heaven, that men by studied artifices must devise and practise upon the humour, to inflame where they should sooth it? Why, Goneril would have blushed to practise upon the abdicated king at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan not have endured to play the pranks upon his fled wits, which thou hast made thy Quixote suffer in dutchesses' halls, and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman.*

In the first adventures, even, it needed all the art of the most consummate artist in the book way that the world hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the reader the heroic attributes of the character without relaxing; so as absolutely that they shall suffer no alloy from the debasing fellowship of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to laugh; or not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion? Cervantes, stung, perchance, by the relish with which his reading public had received the fooleries of the man, more to their palates than the generosities of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony and the bal

* Yet from this second part, our cried-up pictures are mostly selected; the waiting-women with beards, &c.

ance, and sacrificed a great idea to the taste of his contemporaries. We know that in the present day the knight has fewer admirers than the squire. Anticipating, what did actually happen to him-as afterward it did to his scarce inferior follower, the author of "Guzman de Alfarache”—that some less knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious second part; and judging that it would be easier for his competitor to outbid him in the comicalities, than in the romance, of his work, he abandoned his knight, and has fairly set up the squire for his hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of Sancho; and instead of that twilight state of semi-insanity-the madness at second-hand-the contagion, caught from a stronger mind infected—that war between native cunning and hereditary deference, with which he has hitherto accompanied his master-two for a pair almost-does he substitute a downright knave, with open eyes, for his own ends only following a confessed madman; and offering at one time to lay, if not actually laying, hands upon him! From the moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote is become able lunatic. Our artists handle him accordingly.

a treat

REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE.

THE Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming of age, which he does, by calendar law, as soon as the breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing would serve the young spark but he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days in the year were invited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, were mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for mortals below; and it was time they should have a taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly debated among them, whether the Fasts should be admitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the objection was overruled by Christmas Day, who had a design upon Ash Wednesday, (as you shall near,) and a mighty desire to see how the old domine would behave himself in his cups. Only the Vigils were quested to come with their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night.

re

All the Days came to their day. Covers were provided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal table; with an occasional knife and fork at the sideboard for the Twenty-ninth of February.

I should have told you that cards of invitation had been Issued. The carriers were the Hours; twelve little, merry, whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went all round, and found out the persons invited well enough, with the exception of Easter Day, Shrove Tuesday, and a few such Moveables, who had lately shifted their quarters.

Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine Days, all sorts of Days, and a rare din they made of it. There was nothing but, Hail! fellow Day-well met-brother Day-sister Day, -only Lady Day kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said, Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she came in a tiffany suit, white and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, some in green, some in white-but old Lent and his family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days came in, dripping; and sunshiny Days helped them to change their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Doomsday sent word-he might be expected.

April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the year to erect a scheme upon-good Days, bad Days, were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy.

And

He had stuck the Twenty-first of June next to the Twentysecond of December, and the former looked like a maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged in (as was concerted) between Christmas and Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him-to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccoughed, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-critcritical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipped his fist into the middle of the great custard that stood before his left-hand neighbour, and daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you would have taken him for the Last Day in December, it so hung in icicles.

At another part of the table, Shrove Tuesday was helping