hurried they may be. St. François in | til its latest outline be faded away! then Contemplation---what attenuation of fea only can it be forgotten with the host of tures! what untold histories of inward mighty creations which have been forgotmortifications and sufferings, and patient ten before it! endurance, does the pale wasted page of that contrite face convey! Had that saint taken half the pains to exalt humanity which he gave to debase it, how great a benefactor might he have been to his fellow creatures; he cultivated every quality which most adorns the slave, neglecting every one which most supports the natural dignity of man!

The Virgin and the Infants Jesus and John.-The former seems alive, just awakened, with his little arms open, the Virgin having just raised the veil which covered him. Her placid and maternal joy, while looking down on him, are exquisitely expressed-"tacitum pertentant gaudia pectus"--and the asking for an embrace, in the just opened eyes and in the outstretched arms of the child, speak themselves; and also of the heart of the man who could so divinely embody them; the tone and coloring is as if Raphael had left it yesterday.

DOMENICHINO.-A dark and sublime landscape, lying, with all its mountains and shadowed valleys, under a fading Italian twilight. His mind was in a high mood when he poured his spirit over the canvass here-I notice it the more particularly, as GERARD Dow has here his best picture, I have just turned from his picture of God and one of the most touching ever given reproaching Adam and Eve for their dis----A Woman dying of a Dropsy. Never obedience. The Deity is represented as a hale, cheerful-looking old man, suspended in the air in a sort of red blanket, with five cherubs tucked up round him; the mortals holding up their hands most piteously, as if just going to be whipped. How unlike the mind which inspired itself over that landscape! the picture looks fresh, as if just finished. GUIDO. Virgin holding the sleeping child on her knees-exquisite, but quite faded.

LEONARDO DA VINCI.-Portrait of Monna Lisa, (there is music in the name,) but when you look at the face! She was a famous Florentine beauty--her face, indeed, breathes the very music and the soul of expression; and surely the smile that plays over all the features like a flood of sunlight, tells much. How many a quiet triumph, how many a joyous recollection, or anticipation, or a mixture of both or | either, are written on that expansive forehead, are expressed in the dimpling of those parted lips, and are speaking in those long-fringed eyes! Francis the First gave four thousand crowns of gold for this picture, I would give forty-if I had them. Portrait of Joan of Sicily.---As perfect a material beauty, or more so, as the other is imaginative. I only notice her to mark that in pictures, as in life, how little we are moved by mere impassive beauty.

TITIAN.-The Crown of Thorns---I only noted down this picture as being dreadfully fine, but too harrowing.

was the languor and the resignment of the patient more faithfully expressed, as the light falls on her countenance through the opened Gothic window: the grief of the attendant, the scrutinizing eye of the phy sician on his vial, are all taken from life. It has all the minuteness of Crabbe, and leaves, like him, a painful, yet useful impression: for painting, too, silently shows its moral. This is a scene of silent suffering, which is happening every moment of life; but this is made morally, as well as gently, beautiful, from the harmony which religion itself throws round the picture.

MURILLO.---Infant Jesus playing with a Chaplet. All his rich and mellow tone is here displayed; a depth of tone one sees in no other picture of his here.

CORREGGIO: 1,255.---Jupiter and Antiope. A flowery and a magnificent picture. What a full and voluptuous development of the charms of Antiope; sleeping, or feigning to sleep, one arm lies under, and the other arches around, her head; and kneeling at her feet is the Satyr, (Jupiter ;) his imploring yet passionate regards while, half restrained, he touches the veil, are admirably rendered. The Grecian woods hang around; and all the naiads and nymphs which haunted them, are again before us.

ALBANO has near it a rich leafy landscape, with a recumbent Venus, and nymphs around-too faded, but exquisite to him who searches for its beauties.

TITIAN.--Jupiter and Europa.- All his style; the full and flowing figure of the female, the expressiveness of the upturned eyes of Jove.

RAPHAEL.Holy Family.---And the only picture to which he affixed his name! Of this picture I, designedly, say nothing---it is an epic picture of the whole, and must be seen. Yet I would note, that, after one 1,085.-Virgin and infant Jesus.- Athas steeped one's imagination, as it were, tendant behind, looking down, and smiling in the sort of celestial beauty which is-but how sweet and how original is that thrown over the front figures like a flood smile! of sunlight, one always fixes, at last, on 1,193.-A noble looking head!---how firm the head of Joseph, thoughtfully contem- and massively cast---what a lordly foreplating the scene from the dark back-head, and how much of intelligence in ground. That head has been the theme those dark eyes! So I wrote---and when of ten thousand studies, and will be so un

O the rich, glorious, golden plains of Burgundy! the many shadowed, manyhued, and every where boundless landDAVID I dislike, and all that is his: it is scape-at whose extremities meet earth he who has made the French artists so ex- and heaven, as if in love. The lands travagant, and the misfortune is, they think around me are lying fallow, clad in soft him perfection. What coloring what grey, or green, or pink, or russet clothingt theatrical, yet often clownish attitudes--dotted with slender poplars, lessening in what a meeting of long arms, and longer the distance. up to that low far range of legs, as if they had flown from all quarters of the heavens by accident! Leonidas is preparing for a pirouette, the Horatii are measuring the length of their arms and legs, and Brutus---but enough.

they have their museum and gallery. the Gothic traceries no needle-work could When shall we be like them in England? rival, so fine has been the chisel here!-it I always leave the known to the Savans, is a model-work of cathedrals. Figures and search into nooks and corners of gal- of bishops and monks, in groups of two, leries for the unknown; and here I have appear emerging from under every archbeen rewarded to my heart's content. In way, one being behind in the inner cloisthe gallery was a very odd picture-the ter, each figure carved to the minutest ghost of Charles the Bold appearing to perfection. At the first sight it appears the Duke of Lorraine. The town of Nancy as if they were issuing from the very jaws (near which the duke fell) lies in deep sha- of the tomb, for, in stooping a little, to dow in the back ground. In the front, on examine more narrowly, one perceives one side, stands a grey tower in full light; the black marble of the tomb, far within or a stream flows to the bank beneath it, from through the arches, admirably throwing which the Duke of Lorraine and his es them out by relief. quire, a fine martial figure, are just landed, meeting, on the descent of the slight acclivity, Charles on his war-horse, armed cap a pie, and motioning to the duke his thanks for having found and buried his body. All the figures are well grouped, and the fear and astonishment of the liv. ing are well portrayed. The left of the picture shows a large stone cross raised in the stream, which was built by the Duke of Lorraine in commemoration of his ghostly visitant. and there it still stands, as fresh as yesterday. My only comment or reflection on this wild story is, that if ever a human being could burst the iron bands, and revisit the day, I should imagine it to be the indignant and fiery Charles of Burgundy. I can imagine him as restless in death as he was in life. This was a picture and subject that interested me deeply.

There too, is the very hall, the presence chamber where this fiery yet noble spirit met Louis the Eleventh; and here are preserved many reliques from the Church of Chartreux, which was nearly annihilated during the revolution. A colossal chimney-piece, with figures under it in armour, I hardly looked at, for all my senses were employed in the contemplation of two most superb and unique tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy, there deposited from the Chartreux; one of Philip le Hardi, and one of John, sans Peur his father, and Marguerite of Bavaria, his wife: both were similar, but the latter I will endeavor most fully to describe, drawing from my notes of the moment.

But it was the mysterious sort of commune which each group seemed absorbed in which so deeply rivetted me; and the expression of each figure was so admirably done that it could be read at once. Here were two figures cowled and mantled; the one had made some confession which had inspired the other with horror: there again was a bishop, proffering the holy Bible to one who was turning offendedly and haughtily away!-each figure wrought up to the last perfection. Here was one in profoundest penitence, the confessor turning sadly away, and offering no hope-what inexhaustible food for imagination to dwell on here!

And then, there were female figures absorbed in profoundest grief; now consoling, now being consoled; and now consolation offered to them in vain! Under one archway were two muffled wholly, both faces and figures; perhaps they were intended to note that all was over-that there the tale ended; that the history, developed around, of the crimes and headstrong passions of those who slept within was finished. This was merely a conjecture of my own. Each figure, and round the tomb there must have been at least an hundred, was the very acme of art of the chisel. The features of the holy men were all different; guilty and guiltless, all wore a different expression, marked through every change; and nothing could be more awakening to curiosity than the cowls drawn over the faces of those who confessed. I stooped a little to look under, into the hollow of the cowl, and there was revealed the darkened face in all its penitency or obduracy, to the very life!

They lie on a highly elevated and colos sal tomb of polished black marble. The duke is fully armed, the ducal robe being Since writing this, I have read a little thrown loosely over his coat of mail; the tract giving an account of the House of figure of the duchess also is enveloped in Burgundy. There were only four dukes the ermine. Angels, finely carved, are of the second branch; the last of the first bending with unfolded wings at their was Philippe de Rouvre; when, falling heads, and at their feet are lions couchant, into the crown, King John of France gave the effect being solemn and impressive. it to Philip le Hardi, his fourth son, in the But the four sides of the tomb arrested my year 1363; he married Margaret of Flaneye: they are entirely filled up, or rather ders, and died in 1404: he was made reformed of long-extending ranges of Gothic gent to the weak Charles VI. in 1384. The arches, forming double ranges of cloisters, second duke was John sans Peur, who each divided by pillars; the outer ranges lies on the tomb described above-á very containing under them two figures, the monster of fraud and cruelty; he caused inner only one. They are carved from the Duke of Orleans to be stabbed at Orthe whitest marble, and with the most ex-thonville, and bought the priests, by good quisite beauty and grace of proportion; wine and red gold, to sanctify the deed.

After a host of crimes, he, in 1419, appointed a meeting with Charles VII., and when in the very act of seizing him, he received the stroke of a dagger from one of the king's knights which laid him dead.

The third duke was Philip the_Good; he it was who allied with the English against Joan of Arc, seceded from them, and died suddenly in 1467.

And then the starlight above-the soft, delicious starlight! The cold black sky of night was each moment softening away, and the stars beaming more pale and liquid; I forgot the almost oppressive grandeur round me while gazing and blessing them, those Cyclades of heaven! floating in their own blue profound-all happy, and all revelling under their own lovely suns; and, each moment, melting away in a softer and richer light, as they became enveloped in the radiance of ours!

The fourth and last duke was the famous Charles the Bold; after losing the battles of Grandson in 1746 against the Why should I dwell on the remaining Swiss, he died, valiantly fighting, before passes of the Jura? I have described all Nancy, and, as it is supposed, by treach-in one-a long succession of gorges openery. Louis XI. then seized on the duchy, ing on their girding hills, on ground for Marie, the duke's only daughter, passing ever rising, where every extension and over to Flanders, and marrying Maximilian of Austria.

The sculpturing round the tomb of John sans Peur, alludes, no doubt, to the fearful details of his own life.

Indolent as I am, I would go a hundred miles to see those tombs, so unique must they necessarily be: for what time, and art, and immense cost, must their finish have demanded!

I awoke at three o'clock in the morning,

form of prospect is unclouded. Long, rich, delicious sweeps of valleys, where the eye loves to lose itself, sometimes entombed in mountains like the romantic village of Morey—“ Jam, jam, lapsura, cadentique immuriet assimilis.'

BY MRS. CRAWFORD.

and was aware of the carriage toiling up AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.* a heavy ascent-it was the Jura. I looked through the window, but the gorges shut out everything; and instantly alighting, I beheld a scene I never shall forget. The road, like a gallery, wound upwards, and was overhung by the mountain-ridge; on the other side yawned an immense ravine, whose depths were totally lost in darkness; long ranges of mountains feather ed, or rather plumed, to their summit entirely with pines, rose solemnly and silently up from the abysses beneath; and those trees, which always give a deep character to the hills, increased it now tenfold by their dubious light, and by their motionless silence. The air was thin, and chill, and cold, but exquisitely fresh. The first pale grey light was faintly defining the crisped edges of the topmost pines on the mountains, and fading away downwards, just enough to show the darkness massed and palpable-where, far, far beneath, the sound of a falling torrent rose up, and making the silence felt, completed the sublimity of the time and of the scene. As I looked down into the dark abyss, yawning like futurity, I thought of that finest couplet of Gray

"Hark! how each giant oak and desert cave Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath!" And yet, it answered not here. I weighed the very sound, so intently fixed were my senses on the scene: it was low and hoarse, and sepulchral, and while above, around, and below, the motionless firs rose above each other in solemn grandeur, the impression I felt was that it more resembled a dirge of the monks of old rising from among the nodding pomp and grandeur of a funeral procession.

IT so happens that this particular day of the year is, to me, sacred to pleasant remembrances; and therefore, gentle reader, I will endeavour to note down a few of them, as they pass in review before me; and for this reason, more especially, that I have not just now any thing better to offer you. My mind is at present like the still lake famed in story, over which my thoughts fly, (as the birds do over that torpid stream,) to fall lifeless. I believe it is not my own sapient discovery, that summer is unfriendly to the exercise of thought. The mind seems to become as dry, during the dog-days, as "the remainder biscuit ;" and there are others, as well as myself, who complain that they cannot comfortably compose themselves to anything but sleep, in hot summer weather. Certain it is, that Burns wrote best in autumn, and Hafez in spring, two seasons most congenial to mind,-anticipation and retrospection forming the main links in the strong chain that unites us to earth. Winter, with all its chilling attributes and influences, seems to freeze up the genial current of our thoughts at the fountain-head: and summer, like the fruition of our hopes, makes us lazy, and dream away those sunny hours, so longingly looked for over the blue distance of the wintry hills.

But to return. It was on this day, that some few years ago, in company with two or three highly valued friends, I paid a visit to Moor Park, a place which is inti

• Continued from p. 187.

mately associated with many royal and thickly hung with paintings; but those in noble names, and historical recollections. the "long drawing-room" were the more There is nothing to me more interesting, select, being chiefly by the more celebrathan to ramble over scenes, sanctified and ted of the old masters. This is an exhallowed by the past-away glories of our tremely handsome, but not very well procountry. A voice seems to speak from portioned apartment, being from its great the very walls of mansions, once inhabited length better adapted for a picture gallery, by the brave and the renowned of former but at the same time not the less suited for times,-men who stand out in bold relief, the reception of the beautiful and costly as models for their descendants to copy works of art, which decorated its lengthfrom, and grow great, by inheriting, not ened walls. I profess no sort of skill or merely noble names, but natures. judgment in these matters: but amongst those paintings which here more particularly struck my fancy, were the Flight into Egypt, by Claude-a Sleeping Cupid, by Guido-a Holy Family, by Raphael-and a very beautiful portrait of the unfortunate Don Carlos of Spain, by Titian.

It was on just such a morning as this, that I set off, with my friends, on an excursion to Moor Park; and the drive was all the more delightful for our prudent precaution, in leaving home at an early hour. We carried provisions with us, intending to banquet in nature's dining room, in true After having fully satisfied our curiosity gipsy fashion. By the time we reached in the interior of the mansion, we next viRickmansworth, the king of day had fin- sited the gardens and pleasure grounds; ished his toilet, and arrayed himself in all where the gay profusion of flowers, deep his regal splendor, so that our eyes were emerald of the velvet turf, and varied fofain to repose on the quiet colour of na- liage of the mingled shrubs and forestture's carpet, as we entered the park, and trees, formed altogether a scene as destrolled under the shade of those majestic lightful as the dreams of the poet, in his trees, that still seem, in their extended inspired nightcap. After wandering about hospitality to strangers, to represent the till fatigue made rest desirable, we sate us olden worthies of the land. After having down under the deliciously cool shade of wandered for some time amongst the de- a venerable oak in the park; and there, lightful and embowering woods, and made like the merry exiles in the forest of Archoice of an inviting and sequestered spot, den, spread our cates beneath the greenfor afterwards enjoying our rustic repast, wood tree. Nor did any of us, I believe, we proceeded to take a view of the man- require the invocation of the melancholy sion; in which, though not equal in extent Jaques, to call upon us to partake of Heato many others of greater fame and pre-ven's bounty to unworthy man. Then and tension, we found quite enough to gratify and repay us for our visit.

there we were all a merry and a happy group; and the memory of that day is still pleasant, and still dear to me.

nor grown venerable along with the name and renown of any one family. It has been sold and resold, forfeited and regranted, from time to time, and has thus been the subject and the scene of neverending changes and vicissitudes.

On entering "the marble hall," which forms, I believe, a regular cube of forty The fate of Moor Park has been somefeet, I was particularly struck with its rich what singular. Its ownership, from the yet chastely elegant appearance. The period of its first erection, has been redoor-cases are all of fine white marble, as markably transient and unsettled. It is well as the floor; and a wide open gallery, not merely that, like the Shrewsbury title, with a beautiful gilt balustrade, runs round which I formerly alluded to, it has not of the hall, throwing over the whole the witch-ten descended from father to son; but it ery of romance, by recalling the days has not long remained in any one hand, when beauty watched in the one, and chivalry banqueted in the other. The sides are decorated and enriched with four large paintings by Sir James Thornhill, of which the subjects are taken from the heathen mythology, and represent the story of Jupiter and Io. I confess there is something to me so uninteresting (classic though they be) in these absurd and monstrous fables, that I am always sorry to see genius thrown away upon them. It is very true that the female deities of Thornhill are not equal in grace and delicacy to the celestials of Titan: but Thornhill has left behind him, in various places, records enough of his skill and talent, to make his country proud of him: and if his female figures be occasionally somewhat coarse, they are at any rate more in character with the gross animal attributes, with which our admired ancients endowed the objects of their disgusting worship,

Almost all the rooms at Moor Park were

Moor Park was originally built in the year 1473, by George Neville, Archbishop of York, brother of the famous Earl of Warwick; to whom, in those troublesome and unsettled times, appertained the dangerous distinction of making and unma king kings. The archbishop had a grant from the crown of the manor of the moor, from which the park had its name. Immediately after the completion of the mansion, the princely prelate entertained there King Edward IV., together with many of the great men of the day, at a splendid banquet, or "house warming." Some idea may be formed of the splendor with which Moor Park was thrown open, on this occasion, to the hospitalities of the time,