Ward's Princes in the Tower' is a picture of tender pathos, painted with rare skill and care, and admirable for an even moderation, which bespeaks calm strength and balanced judgment. J. Hayllar's 'Queen's Highway in the Sixteenth Century,' a road then deemed mår vellously good, but which we should now hold as villanously bad, the Queen's coach being by the country "hinds and folks of a base sort lifted" with poles out of the mire, is a clever composition, spiced with satire. In the same room, not far distant, is G. Storey's 'Meeting of William Seymour and the Lady Arabella Stuart at the Court of James I.' We are told that "the nearness of the Lady Arabella to the English throne seems to have inspired James with an unworthy jealousy, and to have caused him to form the resolution of keeping her single." How ever, here at the Court she meets with a friend of her childhood, Mr. William Seymour; they converse, they fall in love, they are secretly married, then separated and imprisoned, and five years after the Lady Arabella dies in the Tower a pitiable lunatic! Mr. Storey has told the incident of the meeting at the Court with point and perspicuity, but the execution of the painting is so sketchy as barely to escape being slovenly. J. Pettie's picture of George Fox refusing to take the Oath at Houlker Hall' belongs to that class of works in which biography widens into his tory, wherein an act in the life of an individual is made to stand for a principle, and to operate as a public protest. This picture, like the last, would have been better for more elaborate detail: canvasses on this moderate scale have no right to indulge in a large dashing hand. Ranging as they do between the wide region of history and the narrow confines of domestic incident, they ought to reconcile a certain largeness of manner with somewhat of the finish which was bestowed on a Dutch interior. W. F. Yeames is another of our, artists who, with E. well-considered intent, can put together an episode just as it might have happened in the side-scenes of our national drama. 'La Reine Malheureuse' represents the devoted queen of Charles I. a victim to the Parliament wars. She had just returned from Holland, whither she had been seeking supplies, and was scarcely landed when five ships entered Burlington Bay and commenced an active cannonade. The Queen and her companions take shelter in a ditch, yet in this humiliation is no safety: "the cannon bullets," writes Henrietta Maria in a letter to the King, "fell thick about us, and a servant was killed within seventy paces of me." Mr. Yeames contributed a noteworthy picture to the Academy of last year; his present work evinces steady advance: we shall expect of this artist good fruit in coming seasons. Crowe has also been quietly winning his way to renown, and must now rank among the expectants upon whom the Academy will at no distant period confer well-won honour. His chief picture of the year, 'Luther posting his Theses on the Church-door of Wittenberg,' is conscientious and literal even to the portraits well known in the land of the Reformation. Mr. Crowe is a little hard in his execution, and rather forbidding and unalluring in his treatment, as specially seen in a smaller composition, Dean Swift looking at a Lock of Stella's Hair,' a picture callous and devoid of emotion as the Dean of St. Patrick's himself. Lastly, among our rising artists who give themselves to the pages of history, we must mention P. H. Calderon, this year represented by a powerful and impressive work "The Burial of John Hampden.' The sun has gone down among the hills and woods of the Chilterns just as the bier which carries the patriot's corpse is borne by his devoted followers to its last resting-place. His comrades in arms, sturdy fellows of bold hands and brave hearts, are bowed down in sorrow.' Their heads are un covered, their drums muffled, their ensigns furled, and as they march, the ninetieth psalm is chanted: the colour, which sinks into sombre, has been kept in consonance with the solemnity of the scene. Painting, when it passed, some two centuries ago, from the sacred to the secular sphere, ran the danger of becoming coarse or commonplace, as witness the schools of Caravaggio in Italy and of Teniers in Holland. An escape from the lower world of everyday life was for a season sought in the regions of Greek and Roman mythology. But of late years gods and goddesses have fallen to a discount, and so the painter is once again brought down to the level and reality of earth. To soar upwards, however, is the instinct of imagination, to spurn the ground is the impulse of winged genius; and accordingly our painters essay pretty poetic flights, just as fledglings venturing from their mother's nest may be seen with a hop and a chirp to launch into air. A Royal Academician, however, or even an Associate, is generally a bird of full growth, and so when he flies let no ignoble groundling croak. Mr. Richmond, a venerable name, in dulges in "a light fantastic round" from Comus' "Break off, break off! I feel the different pace of some chaste footing near about this ground: respect. Thus, Mr. Elmore's Excelsior' is altogether a different sort of thing from what we have been accustomed to see done on music-covers. This, indeed, is a figure which redeems once more to our admiration lines which have been sadly massacred and mouthed. A youth bears, "Mid snow and Ice, A banner with the strange device, Excelsior!" The spectral glaciers shine, and dark the tempest lowers, yet onward, by an upward impulse borne, towers the brave head, and climbs the firm foot to the mountain-height around which the eagle floats. Mr. Elmore has eschewed all grandiloquence of manner, and by an unadorned simplicity escapes the dangers of a subject fatal to a hand less firm. Contemplation,' by C. W. Cope, is another figure which calls for commendation less vigorous, indeed, than the brave mountaineer we have just left; for Contemplation is of the valley, serene and lovely, her eyes gazing heavenwards in rapt devotion, her bodily frame and the gentleness of her spirit not fitted to wrestle in the warfare of the world. This is a head which might have been painted by Carlo Dolce, who loved a liquid eye, tearful, and yet beaming as with pensive starlight. Undoubtedly the picture of the year pre-eminent for power and Run to your shrouds, within these brakes display is 'La Gloria, a Spanish and trees; Our numbers may affright; some virgin sure Beniguted in these woods!" Another of our Associates, Mr. Patten, who, we think, might by this time have known better, attempts semi-nudity-a sans culottism which obtained more favour with the gods of Greece than in our modern eyes. The Youthful Apollo,' by Jove, what a genius! Look at him, and love him if you can, as he prepares to show his power "in a musical contest with Paris"! Some pictures, nevertheless, there are, which, instinct with noble aspiration, merit Wake,' painted by J. Phillip, who seldom indeed has been seen in such force. The subject is well chosen, and the scene skilfully laid. The shadow of death on the one hand is thrown in contrast to the sunshine of the dance on the other. Woe has bowed down the head of a bereaved mother, couched nigh to her little child, lying ready for the burial. But the eye passes by this group given to mourning, to feast on the beauty and delight in the joy which fills to overflowing_the remainder of the canvass. Here does the painter exult in the revelry of the Spanish dance, mad dened by the stirring stroke of music, and passionate with love's outburst. Here are lavished the gay, est of colours; here are arrayed the most picturesque of costumes; here shine faces bright as flowers, sparkling with eyes brilliant as gems. In a scene such as this, which most travellers witness in Seville or Granada, Mr. Phillip is triumphant. Mr. Lewis may have portrayed Spain with minute detail, but no one has caught, like Mr. Phillip, the very life of these children sporting in the passionate south. shade upon the green and gold of the lady's robe-a dazzling effect, of which this artist has been long fond, here carried to consummate perfection. Several other painters, such as Webb, Herbert junior, Walton, Fisk, and Goodall, have either visited the East in person, or sent as their delegate a photogra phic apparatus. With one exception, we must pass these respective products by, and that exception we of course make in favour of F. Goodall's 'Messenger from Sinai at the Wells of Moses.' Mr. GoodThe post of honour in the large all may be quoted as the represenroom has, by an error in judgment, tative of that careful, well-balanced, been assigned to 'The Courtyard and eclective style, towards which of the Coptic Patriarch, Cairo,' by our English school is now tending; J. F. Lewis-a canvass which, as a a style in which accurate drawing mirror shattered in a thousand frag- gives truth and attains expression, ments, shows the too crowded life in which close and detailed study is of Cairo in direst confusion. Mr. directed to strict topographic accuLewis, to our mind, has never been racy, wherein colour is forced up able to give to his oil pictures the to a pitch little short of decorative matchless qualities possessed by his splendour; and lastly, where comdrawings. Even the opacity of his position becomes an intricate calwater-colour pigments was redeem- culation, whereby all these several ed by a brilliancy which in oil- elements may be set off to best adpaints is lost in dead density. We vantage. It is notorious that in incline to the opinion, indeed, that art the world has arrived at an age for works within the limits of a in which everything has been in cabinet size, no medium which the generations past already attempted world has yet known attains ex- and done. The Roman school was cellencies which equal those now pre-eminent in form, the Venetian reached by the water-colour pro- resplendent in colour, the Bologcess, which is, in fact, tempera paint- nese skilful in composition, and ed on paper in lieu of the ancient perhaps in any one of these sepapanel. Therefore in the interest rate qualities it is hard for us now of art, and with the remembrance in these last days to make an adof such drawings as the 'Encamp- vance on the attainments of former ment on Mount Sinai,' we have again times. Yet a super-excellence which to question the policy of the step may be impossible in dissevered taken by Mr. Lewis, when he trans- units becomes practicable in a ferred his allegiance from the Old balanced and collective whole. And Water-Colour Gallery to the Acade- this is just that eclecticism to which my in Trafalgar Square. Perhaps, our English schools, whether of however, the very best work which painting, of sculpture, or of archithis artist has yet executed in oil, tecture, are now tending a procli is to be met with in the present vity, moreover, not limited to the doExhibition, under the title Caged main of the arts, but extending into Doves, Cairo;' doves of two species every realm of knowledge, - found caged in a diverse sense-a winged in science, through her accumuladove, the pet of a houri, who is tive stores; in metaphysics, by the herself caged in a harem. The lat- mass of chop-logic and seedy chaff; tice-work of the window floods a in political philosophy, by the heap sparkling light, and casts a dappled of compiled maxims and tabulat ed statistics; in prose literature, ting moment back to their former through the inveterate building-up and better selves; -why, all these of tombs to the prophets; in poetry, problems, we say, find in the preby the reiteration of approved me- sent aspect of English and Contitaphors, and the shooting down, or nental schools forcible and vivid rather the re-serving up, of whole illustration. cartloads laden with old materials. With the guidance of some such principles as those just enunciated, it were interesting to trace the pedigree and to pronounce upon the antecedents of the styles of high art, of domestic incident, and of Thus, as we have said, do we see on all sides, and in every direction, boundless stores wherewith to construct an elaborate eclecticism. And far be it from us to call in question the originality which may landscape, which are now dominant remain possible notwithstanding, in our Exhibitions. It were instructive to show how the grand school of Italy was carried to the shore of Britain, how it suffered shipwreck, and then, at a moment when all might be deemed lost, how up it rose once more into life, though in garb how changed, in the works of Mr. Leighton and Mr. Watts. In like manner, though with much more detail and precision, we should desire to set forth the causes which at this moment conspire towards the literal naturalism manifest on the walls of every gallery in the country. and even, perhaps, through the aid of this systematic copyism. We believe, for example, the picture already quoted, "The Messenger at the Wells of Moses,' is just as original as works produced in any prior epoch. A scrutiny into the history and development of art discovers a slow, sure, and accumulative progression, step by step. The building which we worship as a wonder of the world was put together stone by stone; and even the original conception of the architect, if original it ever were, will be found to be but a conglomerate of scattered elementary ideas, which prior men had conceived and put into rudimentary form. We dwell with emphasis upon this line of thought, because it is this eclecticism, this compilation, and the growth that comes from concerted power, which can alone enable the critic and connoisseur to adjudicate on the merits, and to decide upon the coming prospects, of our English school. Scarcely more certain are the laws which guide the planets, than the dynamics which impel, and yet control, the cycloid movements of the arts. How genius repeats herself, and yet is never twice the same; how the arts retrace their former steps, and yet never tread precisely along the same path; how they gather strength in their orbit, and gain progressive velocity as they approach to central nature, which stands as the sun in the firmament; and then again, at seasons, how wildly they wander into darkness, only to return at the fit And then coming to specific departments, it were a task, if not tempting, at least profitable, to trace the various styles of portrait-painting back to their historic originals-to point out how Vandyke and Titian formed our English Reynolds-how their manner, broad in handling and senatorial or plebeian in bearing just as the subject might suggest, descended upon Watson Gordon, Knight, and others of the school and then how, when people grew perhaps a little tired of being painted after the good old fashion in which their grandfathers and grandmothers descended to posterity, suddenly set in a reaction; and so Sandys, with the detail of Van Eyck and Holman Hunt, in the severity of Albert Durer, rise to the zenith. The multiplication of small cabinet-pictures after the Dutch practice demands no elaborate analysis. A school so simply naturalistic springs indigenous to every soil; as a way-side flower it blooms in all hedgerows, and demands little culture save such as they do earnestly strive to get upon canvas -the truth and the beauty which dwell among the hills and the woods and the streams. This they seek after, and not in vain. Having launched into general dissertation, we must now, in a few supplementary notes, concentrate attention upon some leading works which still remain without comment. In portraiture we have distinguished between schools of breadth and of detail. The portrait by F. Sandys may be quoted as a favourable example of the high finish known to Denner. Two full-length figures, 'Mr. James Hodgson' and Mrs. Stewart Hodgson,' by H. T. Wells, are commendable for the happy combination of a detail loved by Van Eyck, with nature in shower and sunshine bestows on her favoured children. Wilkie was, we all know, one of the first among us who gathered this plant growing a little rudely and coarsely on the flat lands of Holland, and gave to the foundling a dressing more decorous. A glance into the Academy, or indeed at any of our Exhibitions, will at once indicate what industry and aptitude painters, whose names are legion, have brought to the formation of this Anglo-Scottish or Dutch school. Webster, T. Faed, Hardy, Smith, Provis, and Nicol, not to enumerate others, form of themselves a phalanx sufficiently strong. As for our English landscape, the glory of our native art, its pedigree is soon told. Salvator Rosa and Gasper Poussin, who were still towers of strength down to the commencement of the pre- a colour in which a Titian might sent century, are now wholly overthrown in their ancient dominion. Claude, however, is not yet quite forgotten. He still reigns in the elements of air and water; he yet, through the glories of Turner, who was more than a Claude for England, shines in the sunset sky and illumines the radiant sea; and even in the present year, when a Danby enthrones the sun in mid-heaven, can we not wholly forget the tribute due to placid and poetic Claude, whose soul never found its surfeit in serene sunsets. Yet in this our analysis of the present phasis of England's landscape-art, we were indeed remiss not to mention the master to whom every one of our painters is alike indebted. If we cast an eye to the works contributed by Creswick, Leader, the Linnells, Cole, Huline, Knight, and Brett, we cannot fail to see that these several artists in their studies have thought little of Salvator, Poussin, or Claude, but in simple carnestness devote their best days and years to nature. The old masters have been, for these modern men, dead. No resuscitation or resurrection of a form or a life which has passed away, is by our present school of landscape painters desired or attempted. But one thing glory. When we possess native artists capable of painting pictures such as these, we scarcely understand wherefore Mr. Jensen should have been called upon to perpetrate two parodies upon The Prince of Wales' and 'The Princess of Wales,' -pictures which, by the prominent positions which they usurp, disfigure the Exhibition. By far the most felicitous rendering of Royalty comes from the easel of H. Weigall. Alexandra, Princess of Wales,' painted by this artist, is certainly a work of much refinement and delicacy. Among the products which in balanced eclecticism happily blend varied excellencies, we must signalise Mr. Beccani's full-length figure of Lady Mary Fox, which ranks as one of the best portraits in the Exhibition. Lastly, as examples of the broad generalisation which has descended in the English school from the time of Vandyke or of Rembrandt, we may enumerate the portraits of General Cabrera,' by J. P. Knight; The Eal of Dalhousie,' by J. Phillip; and John Gibson,' by W. Boxall. In the treatment of female heads, this manner, sometimes sturdy, is mitigated and softened, as in the heads of the Countess of Home, by. G. Richmond, and of |