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It is not to be supposed that the employments thus disposed of depended upon the pleasure of the government-all government employments in the Roman States, are generally supposed to be conferred for life, and are, therefore, eagerly sought after, though the salaries are in general so moderate as barely to afford the means of decent subsistence; moreover, of these salaries a certain proportion is retained by the Roman government, which acts in the parental light of an Assurance Company, towards its officials, in order to provide a fund for them, from which they draw their half-pay on retiring from office, and from which, in case of their death, their widows and children are pensioned. Thus to deprive these officials, on every slight pretext, of their employments, is to do away with the right which they have lawfully purchased by regular payments; it is, in fact, to confiscate the property which they have confided to the honour of government. Another hardship on the part of these poor officials is, that on being thus suddenly turned out of employments they may have held for many years, involving the prime and vigour of their lives, they cannot immediately turn to other occupations; and if even they were able and willing so to do, where are they to find persons courageous enough to give shelter and occupation to victims of political persecution! Alas, for Rome! what in London would form friends for the oppressed, there only feeds the vengeance of the oppressor. O, happy England! cherish your rights and privileges-defend them to the last drop of your free-born blood! but let not your own blessings harden your hearts to the miseries of others; let not your own glorious security from oppression or wrong, lap you in selfish, nay, sinful indifference, to the hardships, the injustice, which would crush every spark of manhood out of

millions of your fellow creatures, most gifted by nature, in themselves, and in the possessions nature has granted them. We could trace pictures of the misery and despair which,through the arbitrary despotism of the Council of Censure, during the two short years of its existence, instigated almost always, by injustice, error, or private feeling of enmity and vindictiveness-have seized families whom we have seen in the enjoyment of simple competence and social cheerfulness, that would call forth sighs of pity from many kind English firesides rich in the same blessings.

We need only add, in proof of the errors and iniquities of this abominable tribunal, that Pio Nono himself had the firmness to dissolve it, avowing, in excuse for his daring in this instance, to think and act for himself, that complaints of its cruelties and wickedness had reached him on every side: happy had it been for him, and for his country, had he always acted thus; but for thousands of his poor suffering, ill-used subjects, the mischief was done, and he, "vicar of God," and "king of kings," as he claims to be, had no means of repairing it. In the simple phraseology of the old ballad of "Chevy Chase," we may say

"The child may rue that was unborn,

The mischiefs of that day."

From the consideration of criminal jurisdiction, we are easily led on to the prisons, the galleys, the system of poplar education in Rome, and other subjects, belonging to Italy, yet, in effect, connected with the welfare of the whole human race; but these must be reserved for a future period, and we, for the present, conclude, with the hope that the more clearly we show the griefs of other countries, the more gratitude we shall inspire in the hearts of our readers for the blessings secured to us in our

own.

THE GARDEN SWING.

THERE is a class of art to which it is not very easy to affix a true and definite name, and still more difficult to determine what sentiment it is intended to convey, or to what feeling of the mind it appeals. Pictures of such a character call forth no emotion by their grandeur or sublimity, they elicit neither reverence nor admiration, tell no tale of history or fiction, exhibit neither pathos nor humour, and scarcely reveal to us the wonders and the beauty of created nature; and yet there is a

certain charm in these works, which is a sure passport to public favour, with a large number who seek to be pleased rather than instructed, who are satisfied with the elegancies of art, and desire in it no other qualities.

An American writer upon artist-life, Mr. Tuckerman, says, with much truth—“In the world of art there exists a kind of table-land, equally distant from mountain grandeur and flowery vales, where a cheerful tone and quiet harmony refresh the senses, and gratify with

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out disturbing the heart. In an age like the present, those who thus minister to the more tranquil pleasures of imagination, exercise a benign vocation. They may not thrill, but they often charm. Their labours create no epochs of inward life, yet they often cheer and solace. The lessons conveyed may be calm, but it is not the less refreshing; and the associations enkindled, like a bland atmosphere, yield a pastime not the less desirable, because it is unmarked either by tears or laughter, and is indicated only through an unconscious smile or placid reverie.”

While admitting that artists not unfrequently address themselves to very singular themes, or treat ordinary subjects in a very unfamiliar manner, for the purpose of attracting notice to their works, it is equally incontrovertible that they add but little to their reputation. The world, in general, has no sympathy with experimentalists in art; it is slow in recognising any deviation from paths in which others have walked, and in the appreciation of what may possibly be truth, but what it cannot see to be such. The late Turner is an instance of this rejection by the multitude, because his nature was not theirs, and his vision saw things hidden from them. Those who have an eye only for the picturesque, or whose notion of painting is confined to the graphic reflection of external creation, will find, comparatively, but little satisfaction in the fruits of such a pencil as his, which appeals as much to thought and meditation to ascertain its truth, as to imagination.

But whatever the subject may be, and however treated, "there is a pleasure in painting which none but painters know;" whether sitting under the canopy of heaven to copy nature in her various moods and aspects, or solitarily in the studio, with no other companion than one's own thoughts and fancies, the costumed lay-figure, and the heaps of incongruous and motley materials which constitute the chief furniture of the painting-room, the artist has a world of treasures within himself in which he luxuriates, and which none can take away. Thus, says Hazlitt, "the hours pass away untold, without chagrin and without weariness; nor would he ever wish to pass them otherwise. Innocence is joined with industry, pleasure with business; and the mind is satisfied, though it is not engaged in thinking, or in saying any mischief."

But it is not the painter alone who derives gratification from his art, it cannot ever be a matter of indifference to the most illiterate, though tastes will differ, as to that quality of art in which the pleasure is found. It must never be regarded only as a luxury to be possessed by the few and wealthy; but rather as a powerful engine for enlightening and instructing the masses as a gentle and unreproaching friend, whose voice is in alliance with goodness and virtue, and which, when once understood, is able both "to sooth misfortune and to reclaim from folly." It is the duty of an artist to see that he does not misapply his talents, by employing them to any less worthy purpose.

These remarks seem naturally to suggest themselves from the contemplation of such a picture as "The Garden Swing," a pleasing and graceful composition, though it makes no appeal to our sensibilities: it has in it none of those qualities which called forth the poet's lines"Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue. Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew;" but it is a subject one is contented to look at, because it speaks of human joys, and whatever does this can scarcely be unwelcome. The reader of Boccaccio will be reminded by it of some of the scenes described by that elegant, but not very moral, writer; and the admirers of Watteau's pictures will find in it a resemblance, in style, to many of his most esteemed productions. Indeed, to Watteau may be attributed the merit of originating this style of art, which, for the sake of a better title, we would call "aristocratic pastoral," or, as Walpole aptly describes it, as representing an "impossible rural life, led by those opposites of rural simplicity-people of fashion and rank." Such a style could only have emanated from a Frenchman, living at a period when folly was allied with pleasure, and frivolity had taken the place of sober reason. In our day, to see men and women amusing themselves with a "garden swing," would certainly afford meriment, but scarcely any feeling beyond this. Watteau's success led to many imitators among his countrymen, but few of our school have followed his example. Stothard and Smirke are almost the only names that have been popularly associated with this style; more, however, as designers for book-prints, than as painters of important pictures, similar to those which the French artist produced.

THE PROGRESS OF THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON

FROM WESTMINSTER TO TWICKENHAM.

WE could wish that every foreigner, who visits the shores of our beloved country, might receive an invitation to meet the "Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress, the sheriffs, aldermen," and several of the good citizens of London, at the steps of Westminster-bridge, thence to accompany them (as we had the good fortune to do, on the 17th of July), in the City's gorgeous barge, to Kew; then and there to board, with loving and pacific intent, the Maria Wood; and so on to Twickenham, where a very important ceremony takes place; inasmuch as the Maria Wood has accommodation in her spacious cabin to seat 140 persons at her hospitable board, who, when safely anchored in the Twickenham Deeps, discuss the various good things provided for their entertainment by the most hospitable of all cities of the world. Again, we wish that foreigners could enjoy such a treat; because we desire them sometimes to remember us by other tokens than "Waterloo," "Trafalgar," and such-like indications of our power. We wish them to know our citizens-to behold our Thames-and especially to see our Palace of Westminster, from where it only can be seen as it ought to be-from our proud and beautiful river-and to view the banks of that river crowded with glorious memories of the past, and happy realities of the present. We do not seek to represent ourselves as an humble-minded people, or a people at all inclined to meekness; we have no propensity to "succumb;" we know our own value, though we are not sufficiently eloquent to talk of it at all events continually-imitating our very polished neighbours the French, and our "go-a-head" brethren across the Atlantic; the world's history records our power, and having visited other lands, we have learned to estimate the beauty of our own; therefore it is, that, reposing on our dignity, we would show our neighbours what, taking the past and present into account and blending them into " great whole," they can see in no other country of the globe.*

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* We missed a rare opportunity of showing the foreigner our Thames last summer, when our City was bearded like the pard," and English sounded as an unknown tongue amid the Babylonish confusion. Then should the citizens have decked and drawn out their barges, and prepared one as a

VOL. I. N. S.

It was like a masque of the olden timedescending the steps, and being handed by the oarsmen, in their bright red liveries and black velvet-badged caps; to be received so cordially by the good Lord Mayor, ribboned and starred and gold-chained as he was; to be conducted along a richly-carpeted saloon, shaded from the hot rays of the sun by silken curtains, to where a graceful young lady, the daughter of the Lord Mayor, (the Lady Mayoress of the day, in the absence of her mother, from illness,) half-shrouded in white muslin and lace, reclined between two golden dolphins. It was, as "they say," "quite a picture," and a very pretty one; the rich red velvet draping a table in front of the dolphin chair, was an admirable foreground to the "enchanted lady;" and when the barge cleared from her moorings, and the music of the band, which floated in its own separate and particular boat around us, mingled with the salute of cannon-the sounds being repeated by one of the most perfect echoes we ever heard, from the "Houses of Parliament"-the effect was perfect; we had gone back at least 150 years, when the Thames was the great London "highway" for our rulers and their people, who "took boat" as we "take carriage,” and enjoyed pure air and sunshine without dust or hindrance. We have some faint remembrance that the superb red velvet covering was afterwards removed from the table, which was then heaped with ice and fruit of delicious fragrance; and that while the ladies looked, as all ladies are said to do, most charming in the becoming robes of morning, the gentlemen talked politics, as vehemently as they had done, or were going to do, at the hustings. But while we were so entranced by the magnitude and beauty of what may be called OUR GREAT WATER PALACE--the new Houses of Parliament-as to forget for a time where we were, and to people it with those whose voices can never be heard within the magnificent walls of the new "St. Stephen's," we felt an additional triumph, for that our past is a security for our future.

FLOATING THRONE, for our island Queen, upon which she could have passed, with thousands of hre people, over those brilliant waters! What a pageant it might have been! amid the thunder of artillery--then the minstrelsy of peace.

Not even the regal towers of WINDSOR can excite more patriotic feelings, sanctified as they are by our beloved Queen, than the precincts of OLD PALACE-YARD! The memories of Pym, of Hampden, of Cranmer, Strafford, Laud, Camden, Sir Thomas More, Cromwell, Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Grattan, Canning, crowd upon us, without distinction of time or space. There, beneath the shadow of those peerless towers, went on, for century after century, until the object was achieved, the struggle for our rights and liberties-not the soulless liberty which is craved by the wild socialist, but the thrice hallowed liberty of a Christian people. There, beneath the influence of Burke, and the perseverance of Wilberforce, perished the slave trade. There, within our own time, the statesman Peel, uniting the wisdom of age with the vigour of manhood, threw himself into the tide, to direct where he could not control. Great ones are there still; and believing that—

"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," may we not believe that ample for the danger will be the power of resistance?

The rowers bent on their oars, and the stately barge pressed onward over the waters of our glorious river-still the "highway” of our commerce and our wealth, bringing up to the gates of our Royal Mint the gold which distant lands are pouring into the lap of England. We recalled the well-known dialogue between James I. and a certain lord mayor, from whom the King had to borrow money. The "first magistrate of the first city in the world" declined to entertain the proposal, upon which the King threatened to ruin the City, to make a desert of Westminster, by removing the Court to York or to Oxford. The Lord Mayor was faithful-he knew the value of his position. "Please your Majesty," he answered, "there will be this consolation for the poor merchants of your city of London, your Majesty cannot take the Thames along with you!" Then, what sacred memories came upon us from the Abbey of Westminster! while, to the left of the river, stands the mournful-looking Palace of Lambeth, flanked by the tower where the Lollards lingered through fearful imprisonments, and sundry kinds of death, sealing their sincerity with their blood; where the unwomanly Elizabeth imprisoned the Earl of Essex, before she committed him to the Tower; where Archbishop Laud, a brief time before his execution, was attacked by the riotous London apprentices, who scem, in their day, to have been pretty much what our artisans of the great cotton and iron cities are now.

What hosts of recollections!-overflowing even as the waters of the brimming Thames, big from the last nights' rain!--the shadow of the Lollards' Tower, grey and grim with age, seemed to forbid all approach of joya monument of suffering, and of the solemn triumph which unites time with eternity.

We would rather, as we have often done, gaze upon that tower when night spreads its pall over the city, and

"All that mighty heart is lying still."

It has no sympathy with the bright things of day, the invigorating sound of drum and trumpet, or the light cheerful laughter of young, bounding life; and we were glad to speed past a gloom of another kind, the Milbank Penitentiary, looming above the Pontine marsh of London, and to pass also the tinsel of Vauxhall, which, despite its fête memories, is as painful to look upon by day as an old beauty, who seeks to obliterate the ravages of insulted time by pearl powder and paint. We were still within the range of our monstrous city-the dense population of Lambeth crowded at one side, and the indescribable débris of "London out of town" at the other-so that it was a great pleasure when the lawns and trees of Chelsea Hospital hove in sight, and we could talk of the veteran's shelter-where he bivouacks until his tent is struck for the last time, and sinks, covered with age and honour, into a soldier's grave, beneath the shadow of those spreading trees. The citizens affectionate Greenwich more than they do Chelsea; they are both noble establishments, worthy a great nation-Greenwich having the advantage of a better position, and being more commanding, more palace-like in its appearance; but the locality of Greenwich cannot boast such a host of associations as Chelsea; the very legend (if it be no more) that Nell Gwyn prevailed upon the heartless Charles to establish this institution, is in itself a pleasure. It is one of the greatest delights in the world to find the silver side of a character, or if there be nothing so substantial as a 66 silver side" to come upon, a bright spot on a dark surface, even a tiny spot, so bright, that it lightens darkness! It is beneficial to ourselves to think well of our fellow beings-it is so healthy, as well as happy, to take kindly to our species-and to light the candle, as did the woman in holy writ, to find a missing coin-that this legend of "Nell's" goodness gives us more contentment than a long epitaph to a great rich man, all carved in marble, and designed by a fair sculptor. "Poor Nelly!" We have passed the Hospital,

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