lowers in the here untrodden field of scriptural art. The public taste is set in a different direction, and those that live to please, must please to live. We must cease to wonder, therefore, how little has been accomplished in high art. The times are by

"When praise

Was to the poet, money, wine, and bays;"

and so it is with the painter. Our dignitaries of the church,-our Bishop Bloomfields and our Reverend Mr. Bennetts,-are not imbued with the least particle of taste for adorning their churches with incentives to religion. Their principles, perhaps, are against the admission of holy pictures into holy edifices. If this is the case, I commend their sincerity, while I regret their determination. I am afraid we shall never be awakened into a sense of the high and beautiful in art. Our Westminster Hall exhibitions are little understood. Curiosity and Prince Albert (human nature and a love of royalty) have taken more people to see our attempts in fresco, than you will readily believe with all your knowledge of the English people. Not but what the Westminster Hall exhibitions have already accomplished a good, - they have set people thinking, and thousands who never heard before of a fresco or cartoon, talk about art as if they understood the principles of painting.

There are artists in this country who have improved immensely since you went away. I would instance young Ward, who has an admirable Terburg-like picture in this year's exhibition. The story is from Evelyn, Charles II. talking to Nell Gwynn, who is standing on a terrace, leaning over her garden-wall, in St. James's Park. He has had, I am told, four applications for its purchase from four different individuals. Lord Lansdowne was one, but his lordship was too late. The picture was unfortunately sold to some one else. Another still improving artist is Frith, who contributes more than one work of varied excellence to the Academy Exhibition. Egg also is advancing, and bids fair for election into the Academy on the first vacancy. His "Queen Elizabeth discovering that she is no longer young," is in Hogarth's best style, and yet historical. Did I tell you that Egg is one of the amateur actors for the Shakspeare endowment fund. I saw him as "Simple," in the "Merry Wives," and thought his dress, look, and bye-play, indeed, all that he did, quite Shakspearian.

The loss that portraiture sustained by the death of Sir Thomas Lawrence is likely to be made up by two Scottish artists, Mr. John Watson Gordon, A.R.A., and Mr. Frank Grant, A.R.A. Gordon excels in painting men, Grant in painting ladies. Gordon works in Raeburn's manner, Grant in a style something between Lawrence and Gainsborough. There is a three-quarter portrait in the Academy of a "Scottish Doctor," by Watson Gordon, which Reynolds would have admired; and Grant's "Mrs. Charles Lamb," would have induced Gainsborough to have admitted him into company with Vandyck and himself. I cannot add, while on portrait painting, that either Ross or Thorburn are better than they were. Ross is still too feeble in the pose of his figures, and Thorburn just as much too broad.

In the sculpture-room at the Academy there is little to admire but Gibson's marble statue of "Aurora" which, if I remember rightly, I think you saw at Rome before its departure for our London exhibition. I wish when you see Gibson again that you will remember me most

heartily to him, and add how sincerely I appreciate his statue-the finest poetic figure, to my taste, executed in this country since the death of Flaxman. There are lines in Ben Jonson which suit it admirably. Gibson has represented Aurora stepping on the earth scattering dew; and old Ben has introduced his Sad Shepherd to our notice by the following exquisite reference to the shepherdess of his tale :

"Here she was wont to go! and here! and here!
Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow:
The world may find the spring by following her,
For other print her airy steps ne'er left.
Her treading would not bend a blade of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk!
But like the soft west-wind she shot along.

And where she went, the flowers took thickest root
As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot."

The introduction of colour into the skirts of the figure I think in great good taste. The busts are all poor; and Gibson's "Queen" one of the worst in the whole exhibition.

The Directors of the British Institution have opened their usual annual exhibition of the works of the old masters, or by English artists recently deceased. This, you will recollect, was always one of the best exhibitions of the London season, and there is a novelty on the present occasion, viz., a series of pictures from the times of Giotto and Van Eyck, which makes it especially interesting to the student in art. It is true that the Giotto specimen is not very important, being only a fragment of a fresco in the church of the Carmelites at Florence executed about 1295, and destroyed when the church was repaired after a fire in 1769. The fragment (the property of Mr. Rogers the poet), represents St. John and St. Paul, and is remarkable as, perhaps, the only specimen of Giotto in this country. The profound truth of sentiment, and the reverential expression in these old heads, is very striking. The Van Eyck (also the property of Mr. Rogers), represents "A Virgin and Child" seated in an elaborate Gothic recess. It is a very small but most marvellous picture, full of truth, beauty, devotion, and the best art. What fine thoughtful, honest, sincerely-believing, and sincerely-painting men, those early masters were! Whenever I visit Italy again I shall devote nearly my whole time to the study of the earliest examples of art. I think you would do well to give more time to them than English artists usually devote; for though they are apt to lead you into bad drawing, they will inoculate you with a love for expression and inward sentiment far superior to the more mechanical excellences common to the worst masters of the Bolognese school.

There is a very marvellous picture in the Gallery-the celebrated Wilton diptych-representing Richard II. and his three patron saints praying to the Virgin and infant Saviour. It has evidently been a triptich; and very glorious the centre compartment must have been if it was at all like the two side wings that remain. Hollar engraved this picture when in the possession of Charles I.; and Walpole has described it at great length in his well-known Anecdotes. It is painted in distemper on a gesso ground, though Walpole thought it was in oil, and is evidently the work of an able Italian painter of Richard's own time. The finishing is, as Waagen observes, as delicate as a miniature, and the heads, and partially opened eyes, are in the manner of Giotto. The angels' blue dresses are actually powdered with the white hart, the

favourite cognizance of the king! The gold-diapered ground throughout is marvellous in its way. I wish you could see this picture, for I do not remember, in any of our conversations, that I have heard you refer to Wilton as one of the places you have seen. Another good picture is the head of a female, painted in profile, and without any artist's name attached to it in the catalogue. It is distinguished by an impressive simplicity of manner, and is much in the style of Sandro Botticelli, a scholar of Fra Filippo, whose best work "a Madonna crowned by Angels," is in the gallery of the Uffizj at Florence. This excellent head is the property of Henry Seymour, Esq., and should certainly be added to our national collection.

The great value of an annual exhibition, like that of the old masters at the British Institution, is its bringing to light, and to the knowledge of artists and connoisseurs, certain pictures of importance either imperfectly known, or not known at all. I consider the discovery of an important work in this country, from the pencil of Botticelli, a matter of congratulation. It gives us also more frequent opportunities than we should otherwise possess of correcting or confirming our previous predilections. For instance, I have been inclined for some time past to depreciate our own Hoppner as a portrait-painter, but here I find a portrait of himself painted in a dashing vigorous style as if he was drunk with admiration of Velasquez and Sir Joshua, and Titian and Van Dyck were altogether forgotten. Here, too, is a head of George Canning by Gainsborough; of course, from the name of the painter, painted when Canning was young. It is a noble portrait ! such character and such colour, and justifies the dying belief of the great artist :-"We are all going to heaven, and Van Dyck is of the company." There are other works to admire, nor would I omit a reference, or a word of praise, in favour of Barker's "Woodman and his Dog," known to thousands and thousands who never heard the artist's name. The original picture possesses all that truthfulness which has justly rendered it so especial a favourite with English cottagers. Had it been a cabinet-picture, and painted with the same fidelity of touch, it would have stood well by the side of a Metzu or a Gerard Dow.

The Society of Arts in the Adelphi has opened an interesting exhibition of Mr. Mulready's pictures. The charge for admission is a shilling, and the money thus collected will, if sufficient is raised, be given to Mr. Mulready, who has undertaken to paint a picture for the sum. What the Society has in view is, the formation of a National Gallery of British Art,-a most praiseworthy effort, deserving of every encouragement, for it not only advances the reputation of English artists, but will add to our collection of the works of our island school, a somewhat insignificant gathering, till Mr. Vernon's recent gift of his entire gallery, a noble gift indeed, of which I trust all Europe rings from side to side, in spite of the intestine troubles that disturb not the Continent alone, but our own once peaceful shores. I have been to see the Mulready Collection, and was indeed delighted with what I saw. At every turn I either found an old favourite, or a picture entirely new to me. The former favourites retain their old attractions, and some of the new ones have been added to my list of pet pictures. This great artist,-for such he certainly is, has now been four-and-forty years before the public, and in that long period he has had a variety of styles. It deserves to be mentioned (for example to others), that he actually began well,—

that his first exhibited picture, though with very little matter in it,— "St. Peter's Well in the Vestry of York Minster," is conceived and painted on the true principles of art. I confess, however, that I cannot see so much in his works as his admirers profess to observe. That he can be "powerful and large in his drawing" is clear from his Academy studies in red chalk, part of the present exhibition; but what I contend is, that his class of subjects is so limited in its range that he has no opportunity of displaying the resources of his skill in rivalling "the best designers of the best times of Italian art." Others, again, profess to see that he paints in Correggio's manner—a comparison which implies an odd kind of knowledge of what Darley so happily called the Corregiescity of Correggio. Do not understand from this, my dear M, that I wish to underrate Mr. Mulready; he can rely on his own great merits, and needs not to be placed, by the ill-judged kindness of his friends, on tiptoe or on stilts.

In the best Dutch manner of painting, and in a way of telling a story superior to the Dutch school-with more variety and less to disgust one than Teniers or Ostade-Mr. Mulready is second only to Sir David Wilkie. Higher praise would run to flattery; and mislead the young in forming a proper appreciation of a great painter.

My letter, I find, has run to such length (so charming a subject is art to write about), that I must stop for the present in the very middle of Mr. Mulready's exhibition. By the next packet you may look for another letter in the same vein, for what I have to say about art in England is far from exhausted.

My dear M, yours very faithfully,

ABRAHAM VANDERDOORT.

THE ENCHANTED DOME.

WHERE resteth Lotus lilies on the deep transparent water,
To a lonely islet came an Eastern sage's daughter:

A wondrous dome of burnished gold, by her mystic order rose,
'Mid the stately ancient cedars, shadowing forth a deep repose.

The priceless gems they flashed back the gold and glittering sheen,
But impenetrable mystery profoundly steeped the scene;
For no human force could enter, or explore that dome within,
If the spirit of the seeker had known secret grief or sin.

On the green enchanted isle landed all who sought the way,
Unseen harps divinely strung, and spicy gales urged sweet delay;
Bands of smiling pilgrims came, o'er the deep transparent water,
And with joyous bearing thronged round the Eastern sage's daughter.

The gifted and the diademed-the youthful and the gay,
The wisest--best-and loveliest-were there in full array;
Nobly she received them all, ever giving smile for smile,
Yet, alas! the hidden entrance surely told of woe and guile.

"Ah! pilgrims," spake the islet Queen, "mine art hath truly shewn
Earthly visions oft seem fairest with a veil around them throwu;
When ye are mouldering dust to dust,' forgotten in the tomb,
Your children's children hence will come, nor ope the mystic dome."
C. A. M. W.

SIGHTS OF CADIZ.

BY HIS SERENE HIGHNESS PRINCE LÖWENSTEIN.*

View from the House-tops in Cadiz.-Religious Processsions and Ceremonies during Passion Week.-The Inquisition.-Priestly Delinquencies and Punishments. The Cathedral of Cadiz.-The Monumento.-Chiclana.-Spanish Gardening.-Montes, the celebrated Matador.-Climate of the South of Spain.-The Solano, or Wind of the Desert.

ONE morning during my stay in Cadiz I ascended to the roof of our hôtel to survey the prospect from the Belvidere, one of those little towers which are erected on most of the house-tops. From this elevated point the aspect of the city was singularly curious. The streets were not discernible, owing to their narrowness, and the loftiness of the houses. The latter are almost all of one height, (varying from three to four stories,) and their flat roofs, as seen from the Belvidere, presented the appearance of a vast white plain; the uniformity being only broken at intervals by the towers already mentioned, and by the lead here and there substituted for the usual white roof covering. No sound was audible; no rolling of carriages, or hum of busy movement, ascended from the quiet streets; there was altogether something dreary in the surrounding stillness. Here and there a human figure, flitting across one of the house-tops, looked like the last man in a city of the dead. The scene suggested to the imagination the idea of a vast cemetery, and it would have given birth to chilling and unpleasant thoughts, but for the consciousness of the gay and genial life which breathed beneath the seeming desert.

Beyond the confines of the city, in every direction, save at that point where the narrow tongue of land joins the continent, the eye ranges over a boundless expanse of water. On the south is the widespreading Atlantic; on the north the Bay of Cadiz.

On going out I met in the street a party of eight sailors, walking in procession, headed by their captain. I learned that these poor men had undertaken a pilgrimage, by way of thanksgiving for their deliverance from a terrible shipwreck. They were carrying a piece of sail-coth, the only fragment of the wreck which they had brought ashore with them. There was something deeply moving in this pious procession, which, as it passed along, was joined by many of the common people.

It was Holy Thursday, and preparations were made for the first grand religious procession of Passion Week. Towards the close of the afternoon a solemn retinue began to move slowly along the nar'row street of San Fernando, in which our hôtel was situated. This procession was headed and closed by a long train of men carrying wax-tapers. Two little girls, who figured as angels, were decked out in gay attire; and to their shoulders were fastened large wings made of pasteboard, and covered with satin. Their own hair was concealed beneath wigs, and long curls flowed down their backs, between the wings. Next followed Herod, and a train of priests, in * First Secretary of Legation to the Prussian Embassy now in London,