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until you find yourself on the broad, far-extending, and well-planted causeway, which leads to the Champs Elysées, the avenue of Neuilly, and the triumphal arch which crowns the hill and closes the view. This is assuredly a noble assemblage of objects, to which the clearness of the sky, and freshness of the vegetation, gave full effect; and as I had been reading Ariosto in the morning, I could almost imagine that I beheld a realization of some of his descriptions.

Retracing our steps, we crossed over to the Palais Royal, another vast piece of architecture, forming an oblong square, whose enclosure, of about six acres, is laid out in parterres, and formal rows of trees, with a jet d'eau in the centre; while the whole of its lower arcade is divided into innumerable shops, and its upper stories, as well as subterranean abodes, devoted to all imaginable purposes of business, amusement, and profligacy. As I recalled the fate of its first owner, recollections of the various scenes which had been enacted on the spot where I was standing crowded into my mind; but we had no time to indulge them, even if the succession of new objects would have permitted reflection, for we proceeded to inspect the brazen column in the Place Vendome. In its effect, when contemplated at a little distance, I was much disappointed. Its proportions are not majestic; the reliefs, with which it is encrusted, roughen its outline, and give it the appearance of a huge trunk of a tree; the eagles at the bottom are sparrows; the gallery at the top is a miserable tin-looking affair, and the summit, which is conical, but should certainly have been flat, forms a very unsatisfactory finish, not improved by the dirty white flag that crowns it. Napoleon's statue, fifteen feet high, was doubtless a handsomer termination; but nothing could ever have enabled it to bear a comparison with our Monument, the most beautiful piece of architecture in London, though nearly invisible from its unfortunate position. Columns on this large scale must always have a heavy effect if they be not fluted, and the dingy colour of that in the Place Vendome aggravates this tendency. I am aware that in that case the elaborate basso-relievo must have been sacrificed, (which, however, is already unintelligible except in the circles immediately above the base ;) and that the example of Trajan's column may be pleaded; but this is a question of taste and opinion, not of precedent. On approaching it, the defects become less obvious and the merits more so; for, independently of the value of the material and the historical associations which it awakens, the workmanship on the plinth, and as far up the shaft as it can be distinctly followed, is exquisitely delicate and spirited, though we may doubt the good taste of the hussar-boots and jackets which have been so liberally introduced upon the former. I was assured, that, in order to prove its stability at the time of its completion, a rope was carried from its summit to the Rue de la Paix, and that twelve stout horses could not displace a fragment of the consolidated mass. It is impossible not to attach a profound interest to this monument, when we reflect, that from its durability it will probably carry down to the remotest ages the name and exploits of the extraordinary man by whom it was erected, and prove, when we and many generations to

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succeed us shall have perished and become forgotten, the same source of inquiry and admiration to races yet unborn, that Trajan's pillar now is to us. Nor is it easy to forget the terrific scenes in which the materials we behold were once such fatal actors, in the form of cannon; but, as the representations of the victories in which they were taken, are seen winding spirally up the thickly-embossed shaft before us, we can almost fancy that we hear the roar of their brazen mouths, vomiting out fire and thunder; while through the dust and smoke we discover waving banners and gleaming swords, and catch the neighing of steeds, the groans of the wounded, and the deafening shouts of victory. Such are the associations this trophy appears to awaken in the minds of the French, and they are proud of it, in proportion as they are blind votaries of the false glory which it illustrates. The most common engraving exhibited on the Boulevards and the different walls of Paris, is a representation of this pillar, with the inscription— "Ah! who is not proud of being a Frenchman, when he beholds this column?"—while a youth is delineated in an heroic attitude swearing to conquer or die at its foot. With a self-satisfied inconsistency peculiar to this country, one of the warriors is holding the white flag at the base, and the same irrefragable evidence of the futility of all their conquests is seen waving at top.-A ramble on the Boulevards afforded us the same subject of delight with which we had been struck in the gardens of the Thuilleries,—fresh and verdant vegetation, as well as beautiful flowers, in the very heart of the city, forming a pleasing contrast to the dingy leaves and sickly aspect of the London gardens: and wherever we could get a view of any extent, sharp and distinctly-defined masses of stone-buildings stood out in the clear atmosphere, with a lucid effect never to be observed in our smoky metropolis. Having seen in the course of a short morning's walk a richer assemblage of palaces, gardens, statues, magnificent hotels, noble streets of stone, and extensive avenues of trees, than we could have viewed in the whole circuit of London, we returned to our hotel profoundly impressed with the grandeur of what we had witnessed, and anticipating not less delight from the vast portion of the city which yet remained unexplored.

SONG.

LOVE, like the butterfly, takes wing,
He courts the rose but to forsake;
Ah! then beware his treacherous sting,
Which leaves the fester'd heart to break!

But friendship has the ivy's truth,

And closer twines when tempests lour:

It takes its root in early youth,

And blossoms in life's latest hour.

P. H.

THANKS FOR A PLACE!

AN old Borough-reeve served a politic Duke,
And proved, by so doing, a wise man ;
For the politic Duke opportunity took

To make his friend's son an exciseman.
Dick, led by his father, the Nobleman saw,
And certainly well to behave meant ;
With many a bow he put out his fore paw,
And scraped his hind leg on the pavement.

"I'm come, Sir, to thank you, but feel here a burr;

At speaking I be but a fresh un:"

The Borough-reeve whisper'd-"Boy, don't call him Sir,
Your Grace is the proper expression."

"When feyther, Sir, told me I'd gotten the place,

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I skipt like a colt in a paddock;"

"Sir, again?" cried the father," You fool! say Your Grace-

Say Your Grace-you 're as deaf as a haddock!"

Thus tutor❜d, the son of the old Borough-reeve

Cried out, with a pious endeavour,—

"For what we are going this day to receive,
The Lord make us thankful for ever!"

ON AFFECTATION IN PORTRAITURE.

THERE is no one branch of the Fine Arts in which there is so much of barefaced affectation and bad taste as in portraiture. Whether this arises from the vulgar inclinations and perverted tastes of the painted, or from the want of capacity and invention of the painter, it is not our purpose to inquire. That these errors are thick as the leaves in spring, no one can doubt who glances his eye round the walls of an exhibition-room, or an amateur's gallery-through the portfolios of our illustrators, or at the windows of Colnaghi or Molteno.

There are several eras, or rather schools, in the affectation alluded to. The first is the Lely, or wig-and-armour affectation. Hogarth has ridiculed this humorously enough in his "Marriage à la Mode," where you may perceive the portrait of an officer of rank in a flowing wig and armour, grasping in his lady-like hand the lightning of Jupiter: it looks for all the world like an embodied imagination of the

"Brave Dalhousie, that great god of war,
Lieutenant-colonel to the Earl of Mar."

There is a portrait extant of Cotton, which makes Hogarth's exaggeration hardly a caricature, a man celebrated only for being an angler of Isaac Walton's school, and a writer of piscatory eclogues (or, as a punning friend calls them, water-logs), dressed most impregnably in armour, and inundated with a heavy fall of wig, or, as the same

friend observes, wearing his fine horse-hair fishing-lines about hi head and shoulders, to the great terror of all young jacks in the water who hope to become pikes. The second is the lady, or cherryand-parrot affectation. The third, the Reynolds, or lamb-andshepherdess affectation. The fourth, the Jervas, or wig, or nightcap and bed-room affectation. Some portraits in this style are indisputably vulgar, ill-looking, and almost disgusting. No man appears like a hero to his valet; nor does a man look much like a poet or a philosopher in his night-shirt. Franklin himself must have looked like an ostler to the night-mare, in his white shirt and republican red night-cap; or a surly landlord, disturbed by his first-floor lodger ringing to get in. We remarked that these portraits were almost disgusting; there is one that is so it is that of Phillips, the cider-celebrater. His filthy cap is falling flashily on one side of an entirely bald head; he has too a low, collarless, skin-fitting jerkin, opening the bare breast to the eye; and if, reader, thou knowest him from his butcher, why then his "splendid shilling" was a Brummagem ballad-halfpenny. Even the fine-tasted Addison could not keep himself out of the hands of this affectation. There is a portrait of him by Jervas; the countenance looks modest, and unambitious of effect; but look at the externals: the wig is white, flowing, and profuse, and has a more daring length of curls than ruined Absalom. You would surmise, if you look no farther, that he has just slipped away from Queen Anne's dull drawing-room to unloose his brilliant mind; but you see that he has only unloosed his waistcoat with sleeves, and altogether it is a very half-drest and half-disagreeable portrait. The fifth is the Kneller, or wry-wigged affectation; for which see the heads and perukes of Swift, Sterne, Gay, and Pope with his finger thrust under one. The sixth is the Romney, or white-cap affectation; for which see Thomson, who looks as glum and surly as Mr. Giblet in fly-blowing weather; Cowper, who seems as if he had just got out of bed to avoid his physician; Dilworth, the awfulness of whose boy-compelling brow, that looks big and burly with the threatening terrors of whole brooms of birch, is softened off into something like a safe consciousness that he is nothing higher than human, or else men and gods might tremble as much as "apple-munching" boys; and Farrance, whose white wonder (on a cook's head) assures us of cleanly patties and savoury, and might almost have quieted the cook-shaving apprehensions of his late Majesty. The seventh is the modern, or the most superlative affectation; but this we shall leave untouched for some future paper; and as the Academy is now likely to become a gallery for the exhibition of portraits only, we shall not want matter for remark.

There are several other affectations, but not of any particular school there is one, however, which must not be forgotten, namely, that of painters, in their personal portraits, not seeming

what they are. This is the very Mount Ossa of affectation. What should we have thought if the glorious images of the imaginary and the real great of old had come down in equivocal actions and appearances Hercules resting on a turnpike-gate instead of on his club; Homer stringing a kite instead of a lyre; Demosthenes ducking and draking the pebbles he cured his impediment with, instead of standing like a god, with outstretched arms, commanding the waves to silence; Apollo jarring a pestle and mortar, instead of reining-in the glorious strength of his pawing steeds; Scipio dusting his sandals, like a Bond-street beau, with the walking-stick he was named after, instead of shewing an arm that was the stay and young strength of his father's old age? It is too silly to be thought seriously of; and an ingenious friend of ours, thinking as we do, and holding it in the like humorous contempt, has ridiculed it very pleasantly: he is modest enough (a rare virtue among artists) to think that he has a fine hand in nothing so much as in drawing a cork, and has made a sketch of himself, where he is very sedentarily seated before his easel, with a bottle of champagne between his knees, screwing in a corkscrew, and screwing up his mouth, with a most intense look of blended expectation and perseverance. You can see in it that he has either a noble thirst for glory, or for champagne; and that nothing short of the attainment of his ambition will satisfy his soul. In the back-ground, on the right, Gerard Dow is touching his viol de gamba with great complacency, and without even a latent suspicion, or the slightest betraying, of his real profession;-and on the left, Rubens is seen carrying home his own venison, with a most porter-like perplexity of personal doubt as to his own identity, leaving you to decide whether he looks most like a porter or a painter; and seems to be going off before you can give your opinion, sucking either his own thumb or the toe of the dead deer by the way. This is a pleasant mode of satirizing absurdity, and absolutely tells better than the critic's thong, or the connoisseur's table-talk.

But you ask, what is affectation in portraiture? Whatever is forced, uneasy, out of nature in action or expression, or foreign to the picture, is affectation. Here is an illustration of it, though not so extravagant a one as many which we have met with. Look at this portrait of Hamlet Winstanley, an engraver, "who learned to draw under the Knellers, being designed for a painter," a very bad design not well executed, for what designs might not have tortured the eye of taste from a man who could at the outset write himself down an ass? Such a man could not be safely trusted to illustrate an Old Bailey execution, for his vanity would make him play the principal figure in it. You can see in his face and body that he cares not for his art; the only art that is in his mind is that of shewing himself off to the most connoisseur-killing advantage.

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