'WIDOW COVENTRY OF THE "PEAR TREE."

BY EDWARD J. WOOD.

THE Pear Tree was a snug, clean, way-side inn, with a straggling row of quaint houses, which formed the village of Chalkcherry, on each side of it, and a smooth green, of which parties of clamorous geese were the tenantry, before it. The hostess was a fat, comely widow, with crisp dark hair, bright little eyes, which gleamed on her ruddy cheeks like an autumn sun on an apple orchard, dimply arms, and feet which, scorning the limits of shoes, swelled over the sides in thick folds. Many a traveller who halted at the Pear Tree would have given his purse for a kiss from Widow Coventry's ripe lips; but she was too coy to allow any familiarity beyond a laugh and a mild inuendo, o lud

One cold frosty night in December, when the impudent wind cuffed the sign-board of the inn about incessantly, endeavoured to insinuate itself behind the crimson curtains, through which the firelight shone out on the snow, and howled down the chimney with malignant fury, Widow Coventry sat in her little parlour among the barrels and spirit bottles, with her feet on the fender, her elbow on a table, whereon a heap of money was scattered, and a complacent smile on her face; for all day long she had been busy. Carriers' vans laden with poultry, fruit, and dairy produce for London markets, coaches with passengers from town, waggons, carts, and pedestrians, came and went continuously; but her last lingering guest had departed, and the widow now prepared to make herself comfortable, as the savoury odour of fried ham and eggs, which lurked in the apartment, and a tumbler of rum and water, which fumed at her elbow, testified. Widow Coventry coquetted with the disc of lemon in her potion, and sipped some, blushing overmuch as she placed the glass again on the table; perhaps at the strength of it, or at a glimpse of herself reflected by the quivering firelight in the looking-glass, with a bunch of mistletoe dangling most temptingly over her head. However, she was so perturbed that she took another sip, and, with a modest, husky cough, set the glass down empty. After a cursory survey of the adjuncts which made up the cosy apartment, the widow sighed, and as she peered into the fire, a slight quivering of the eyelids, and redoubled brightness of the orbs which they shaded, portended an outburst of tears, but a sudden tap at the door averted this, and made the widow gather up her day's takings, and hasten to admit the belated one.

"Well, Mrs. Coventry, how are you?" said a man whom the widow. confronted when she opened the door.

"La! is it you, Mr. Buffles? How very unexpected!" she exclaimed, as the man entered her parlour, shook a mimic snow-storm off his coat, and unwound from his neck a length of woollen comforter, disclosing a broad, good-humoured face.

"Supper in a trice, Mrs. Coventry, with something hot first-whiskytoddy."

The man appeared to be no stranger there, for he gave this order, stirred and threw more wood on the fire, and sat down to the supper prepared by his hostess with a quick, off-hand air, quite alarming to a diffident person; at intervals commenting on the viands before him, the weather without, and the advantages of a fireside. He was a cattle

1

salesman at country markets, and, in his journeys from one town to another, often put up at the Pear Tree, where he always stayed much longer than necessity required, for the cogent reason, that the widow had captivated him, and did not receive his attentions unkindly.

"When he had supped, he drew his chair to the hearthside, and ordered another glass of toddy and a pipe.

"Mrs. Coventry, mum," he began, as he rested his head on one side and contorted his mouth to disseminate the tobacco smoke-" Mrs. Coventry, mum, I want to get married."

"said the widow, all in a flutter.

dea! Mr. Vox It's a fact, Passure you. The person I have in my eye"-here a very anti-bachelor look appeared in that feature-"the person I have in my eye is the one essential to my happiness, but she don't know it, and I'm too bashful to tell her." He expelled a volume of smoke, and, after a pause, continued: "I went one night to see her, and she was all alone, but, hang it, I could not get the proper words out, so I kept hinting, and still she would not understand me. Now, Mrs. Coventry, what would you advise me to do ?"

Here Mr. Buffles got very confidential, hitched his chair a little nearer to the widow, and patted her arm with his pipe.

Well, I'd keep on hinting, Mr. Buffles.'

-So I will.”

1

the

Widow Coventry got married again. When the summer came, with frolic of light and shadow and flirting zephyrs, the man of the jolly face was seen leaning in the doorway of the Pear Tree, or lounging in semi-somnolence on the settles outside, girt with a little white apron." He was a veritable Boniface, and looked as though he could tell you particular flavour of every article he sold. Still, with his attractions, business did not flourish, but sensibly decreased; for those of the widow's customers who came at intervals, and enjoyed a laugh with her, ceased to visit there, not caring to crack questionable jokes when a husbandwas nigh. And Mrs. Buffles found that all her diminished profits were consumed by her spouse, in the shape of whisky-and-water; so she fretted and lamented her folly in getting married again, and grew so thin and careworn that folks stared in amazement-a proceeding which cruelly wounded Mrs. Buffles, who had a spice of self-conceit in her composition. Well, the Pear Tree got into debt, and one winter's day the bailiffs came to sweep off all the goods and chattels therein, which, by a transition of rights that Mrs. Buffles could not understand, were doomed to satisfy Mr. Buffles' liabilities. Sobbing, and cowering from observation, Mrs. Buffles, followed by her lord, left her home a beggar, and wended her steps she knew not whither.

The fire had gone out, and the candle had shaped a mushroom with its wick, when Widow Coventry started up from an uncomfortable dream, and confusedly overturned her chair. She thought a moment, then burst into a fit of loud hilarity that would have very much astonished any person not in the secret of her mirth, and with the joy of freedom she soliloquised: "Get married, indeed! not I. No, Mr. Buffles, you will never hook me." Here she set her cap, and performed a comical pas round the table, which done, she went to bed, with an unwavering determination ever to remain Widow Coventry of the Pear Tree.

A HANDBOOK FOR YOUNG PAINTERS.*

THE gullibility of Englishmen is proverbial. An ingenious and enterprising quack is sure to make a fortune, and, accordingly, we have quackery in every department-in perfumery, in medicine, in teaching, and in the fine arts. It is, therefore, refreshing and delightful, amidst so much that is false and dangerous, to meet occasionally with something that serves as a preservative and an antidote. Such a preservative is the book before us; calm, rational, and instructive; the production not of a half-informed charlatan, but of a thoroughly educated man, whose life has been devoted to the study of the subject on which he writes. Its publication, too, is singularly well-timed, for the errors of Ruskinism and pre-Raphaelism, supported by the remarkable talents of a knot of painters, and by the eloquence of one of the most brilliant writers of the day, are fast gaining ground. When Mr. Ruskin seriously proposes to bind all the architects of this country by act of parliament, to confine themselves to one style of architecture as the best means of improving our public and domestic buildings, and when a pre-Raphaelite will scarcely introduce a cloud into a picture because its form is too evanescent and fleeting to be copied from nature, and spends weeks of labour in painting chips and straws, it is surely high time that the fundamental errors at the root of these systems should be exposed, and the youthful artist warned against them, by one whose acknowledged abilities and well-merited success entitle him to speak with weight and authority.

Mr. Leslie's book is written in an excellent spirit; it is learned without pretension, and national without prejudice; errors are pointed out and censured, but without bitterness, and the utmost toleration is shown for difference of opinion. The style, too, is clear and flowing, occasionally rising to eloquence; and his advice to young artists, pointing out what they should principally attend to, as well as what they ought chiefly to guard against and shun, is given with great discrimination, and with that kindliness of spirit which tends most to recommend it.

In 1847, Mr. Leslie was appointed to the professorship of painting in the Royal Academy, and the present work contains the substance of the lectures delivered by him while discharging the duties of that office, for which he seems admirably fitted, not only by his accurate and extensive knowledge of art, but by his power of communicating that knowledge to others. In one respect especially this book is deserving of the highest praise; it has been too much the fashion, in similar works, to slight and depreciate the abilities of our own artists, to underrate the position of the British school, and almost invariably to select examples of excellence from the schools of Italy, Holland, or Spain. Not so with Mr. Leslie. He is not ashamed to recognise true merit and high art in the works of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Wilson. He does not hesitate to believe and to avow that the divine element of genius may exist under the cold skies of England as well as in the sunny clime of Italy. He is

* A Handbook for Young Painters. By C. R. Leslie, R.A., Author of “The Life of Constable." London: John Murray, Albermarle-street. 1855.

thoroughly national, and his work is eminently calculated to point out and illustrate the artistic excellence of our native school.

The reasons for the publication of this Handbook are thus clearly stated by Mr. Leslie in his preface:-" It is not from the want of sound dicta, or because enough has not been given to the world in the way of theory and criticism, that something still remains to be said; but it is because far too much has been written, and because it is the nature of error to be more prolific than truth; and because those points on which the best writers may be mistaken, or, what has more frequently happened, those points on which they have been mistaken by inferior minds, have generally become starting-places from which plausible, but unsound, criticism has spread itself out through all the avenues of the popular literature of the day.

"The fine arts are often selected as themes affording opportunities for the display of eloquence and learning; and in apparently profound dissertations, accompanied often with much valuable information, theories are not unfrequently advanced utterly adverse to the right progress of art-theories the more dangerous for the talents with which they are advocated; and from the peculiar fashions at present dominant in criticism, I have no hesitation in professing my conviction that the thing, just now, most in danger of being neglected by painters, is the Art of Painting; and that want of patronage is far less to be dreaded than the want of that which patronage should foster."

Some of the recent purchases made by the trustees for our National Gallery are strongly, and we think deservedly, censured by Mr. Leslie. "It is clearly not sufficient," he says, "that there should be, as there always have been among these gentlemen, one or two who know the difference between good and bad art, and whose professional or nonprofessional acquaintance with the works of the great masters enables them to judge of the value or originality of the pictures that may be offered to the nation, either as gifts or in the way of purchase; for when the pictures to which I have alluded were added to the Gallery, such gentlemen must have been absent or outvoted. The abilities required to govern a country are so far from including the accomplishments necessary to the formation of a fine collection of the works of art, that it may be safely asserted they are scarcely compatible; and the taste and knowledge of this kind, even of a Pericles or a Lorenzo de Medici, must always be as nothing, compared with the taste and knowledge of an artist."

Great poets, Mr. Leslie tells us, have frequently no relish for art, and are bad judges of it. Coleridge has remarked that, though Milton must in his youth have seen the greatest works of art in Italy, yet he makes no allusion to them in any part of his writings. Neither Byron nor Scott had knowledge or love of painting, as art; and Mr. Rogers, in possessing such a taste, was the one exception among the poets of the day. Statesmen and princes, also, are rarely good judges of art; even Leo X. shamefully misemployed Michael Angelo, putting a stop to his great works in the Sistine Chapel, and sending him to the mountains of Pietra Santa to do the work of an engineer.

Mr. Leslie makes some admirable remarks, in the second section of his work, as to the misuse of the word "sensual," and the great importance

of technical excellence in painting. "Let us remember," he says, "that what is technical in painting has not yet been achieved with the perfection that may be imagined, even by the greatest artists; that what is ornamental is an imitation of the ornaments with which the Creator has decorated every work of His hands; and that what is sensual is only so in an evil sense, by an abuse of His gifts.". These remarks are not uncalled for, as it is at present too much the fashion, with many, to praise the early Italian masters at the expense of the greater painters who succeeded them; and a certain school, misled by their admiration for the intense religious feeling and expression displayed by these early Italians, have sought to transfer to their pictures not only the beauties, but even the defects of their great models their meagre drawing, hard outlines, erroneous perspective, and conventional glories.

In his third section, Mr. Leslie clearly points out the difference between laws and rules of art: "I conceive there are no absolute laws in art but those that are traceable to the laws of nature; while by the rules of art I understand the many forms or modes that have accumulated in the practice of the schools, and which, however occasionally valuable, are far from requiring invariable obedience."

A most important and ably treated section is that which is devoted to the consideration of the ideal and of beauty of form. According to Mr. Leslie, the ideal is select nature; a selection from and a combination of the beauties of nature are the only means by which art can compensate for its unavoidable short-comings: "The ideal I conceive to be not only the result of an inborn aspiration of all taste, but it is the sole condition of the very existence of art; and therefore, where there is no selection, or where the selection is not under the guidance of judgment, there may be very good painting, as far as it is merely copy, but there can be no art; and it should be impressed on the student that though a good painter or copyist of nature may obtain immediate fame, yet, unless he can rise to the rank of an artist, he will not outlive his generation;" for the ideal is the poetic element by which, properly understood, and not by any classification of subject, high art is distinguished from low or ordinary art."

It will thus at once be seen that although Mr. Leslie repudiates the notion of the pre-Raphaelites-that the true principle of the fine arts is the closest possible imitation of nature as she is in all her details-still he does not adopt what is commonly called the ideal theory of the fine arts -that which regards their legitimate province to be, not the copying of individual objects as they are in nature, nor even the imitation of select or sought-out nature, but the production of generic or typical formsthe representation of ideas of loveliness, grace, strength. Such are the statues which remain to us from the best period of Grecian art-the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, the dying Gladiator, the Laocoon-representing, not individual or even select nature, but humanity uninjured by accident or disease, untrammelled by improper clothing, untarnished by exposure to labour or weather, freed from all external and contaminating agencies, as she might and ought to be, rather than as what she is. This section concludes with some just and eloquent remarks on the peculiar beauty of disease, old age, and death, and upon the mistakes frequently made by artists in the representation of death. The profile of Napoleon, in the cast taken by Dr. Auto