instrument, the assassin, appears with the dagger unsheathed in his hand, and with an affected fierceness in his countenance. This is too theatrical, and violates the dignity of a historical painting, which should be modelled on its sister Grace, "philosophy teaching by example." But although this is not a first-rate picture, it evinces high promise, and entitles Mr. Briggs to every encouragement in this difficult and too rarely trodden walk of the art.

We have no national prejudices, and have, therefore, no difficulty in saying that we do not like the portrait of the Countess of Jersey, (No. 24,) by the Baron Gerard, the president, we believe, of the French School. We take it for granted that the picture must have been designed at least some years ago, though it has been but recently finished. The head has not an English look, the drapery hangs like lead upon the canvas, and the figure has a bend in it which looks more like infirmity than grace. The colouring is quite French, and the whole style of the work mediocre.

Who are those two merry old souls who seem to have hid themselves behind the door that leads into the school of painting? They are two "auld friends," seated by a table, and quaffing with great delight a pitcher of nut-brown ale. They look as if they had never touched any other liquor, and that even of their favourite beverage they drank with due moderation, for they are the very models of a green and cheerful old age. The picture is a bijou. Had we been in partnership with Rothschild, we should have shaken J. Knight by the hand, and given him a hundred guineas for this production before he could say Jack Robinson.

Sir W. Beechey's Psyche, (No. 40,) does not appear to us to be a very successful representation of a subject which has given rise to an infinite variety of experiments. The point to be attained is the embodying, as it were, of the intellect: mind, spirit, must be predominant in every feature, nay, in every limb and attitude, This is a pretty girl with a scarf. Her raiment seems to have faded in its colours. She forms, however, a favourable contrast with another Psyche, by Dubufe, (No. 339,) in the School of Painting. In order to give lightness to the figure, she is half immersed in water, which, however, does not conceal her naked figure. Independently of its offensive indecency, the form is any thing but intellectual.

"

The spasmodic attack," by Mr. R. W. Buss, (No. 49,) is an entertaining subject, but it approaches too closely to the precincts of caricature, to be fit for so large a picture. A favourite dog is the invalid several old maids and old bachelors are interested in his malady, and express their anxiety with characteristic primness. The figures are all on too large a scale, and the whole effect is unsatisfactory.

A very pretty picture of a Greek Mistico, by Mr. G. P. Reinagle, (No. 51,) engages the eye in passing, and kindles in the mind a

thousand beautiful thoughts of Greece, and her lovely seas and romantic corsairs. Who would believe that the tenants of such a graceful ornament of the waves would be guilty of piracy, abduction, murder, &c.? When you have praised the Mistico, take a peep at the same artist's view of Milo Harbour, by Moonlight, and pass over Mr. J. Ward's Fall of Phaeton! Here is a Fall, indeed, my countrymen! Four Horses, (No. 53,) drawn with the most minute regard to anatomy, are tumbling down from Heaven in every imaginable variety of precipitation. The animals are respectively exquisitely represented, but we are at a loss to understand by what process they could have taken the different attitudes which the artist has given them. They are too near each other to allow of the convolutions in which they seem to be engaged. The subject is capable of being sublimely treated. Mr. Ward has given it a touch of the ridiculous.

During our visits to the exhibition, we observed that a little historical picture, painted by the son of the President, attracted a good deal of attention. It is numbered 56. The subject is the Discovery of Camilla, by Gil Blas, when, attended by an Alguazil, he comes to ruin all her fine projects, and punish her for her perfidy to him. The lady is placed in a situation very difficult for an artist to manage with graceful effect, that is to say-in bed. She presents the faded remains of a good face, and is attended by her old crone of a Duenna. Gil Blas enters the room with a candle in his hand, and the officers follow behind. It is, we understand, a first attempt, by Mr. Shee, Jun., in this class of art, and affords auspicious promise of what he may one day accomplish. The story is exceedingly well told, one of the most essential traits in a work of this kind. The colouring reminds us of the decision and tone of the Flemish school. It looks almost trifling or hypercritical to observe that the candle and candlestick are too large, but, nevertheless, that is the fact, and it has an injurious effect upon the whole picture. The circle formed by the rays of the light is too regular, and, if we may so say, too mechanical. We have not our Spanish translation of Gil Blas at hand, but we very much suspect that a lamp would have been the light which Gil Blas ought to have used on the occasion. It would have been more in harmony with the Spanish costume, and with the usage of the age. We fancy that this little alteration would wonderfully improve this picture.

Mr. Wilkie has four paintings in the present exhibition, none of them in the style which may be called peculiarly his own, and which has justly obtained for him a wide-spread reputation. For two of these, his Majesty's visit to Scotland has furnished the materials. We think that both will be set down by posterity as among the least successful of Wilkie's productions. The portrait of the King (No. 63,) in the Highland dress, is unquestionably the best likeness of George the Fourth, which we have seen; but

there is a certain coarseness in the resemblance, which reminds one of the observation said to have been used by his majesty, on seeing a bust of his royal father-that "it was horribly like!" The little cap on the top of that fine head, gives the sovereign a smirking undignified appearance, which all the world knows forms no part of the character of the original. The reception of his majesty by the nobles and people of Scotland, upon entering his palace of Holyrood House, (No. 125,) is a most ambitious production. Its leading defect is, that it wants the air of a courtly scene. Some little ragged boys, stuck up in the windows, or climbing up the pillars, and a curious old woman with spectacles on her nose, may, perhaps, be intended to contrast with the Dukes of Hamilton, Montrose, and Argyle. But the association is outré. Strange to say, we like these said boys and old woman better than any other part of the picture, for this simple reason that they have more of Wilkie in them. The king would seem to have been painted by a 'prentice boy. Several caricaturists have of late taken the liberty to represent his Majesty in various characters, such as a Guard to a Coach, a Parish Officer, a Patron of Brummagem buttons, &c. Mr. Wilkie has produced his royal master in the character of a Drill Sergeant; at least, he has given him the formal attitude of one, though we apprehend he had no idea of adding to the number of the caricatures. Of this artist's two remaining pictures, the Guerilla's Return to his Family, (No. 375,) and a Spanish young Lady, with her nurse of the Asturias, on the Prado of Madrid, we regret that we cannot speak in favourable terms. We suspect, that having so long beheld Wilkie in a peculiar department of the art, in which he has no rival, we shall never like him in any other. His exhibitions this year forcibly remind us of Cicero's unfortunate propensity to write verses.

The President, possibly from having been much occupied in his new duties, possibly from a delicacy in using the privileges of his office too liberally in his own favour, has limited the number of his pictures also to four-all, except one, portraits. The exception is Lavinia, (No. 73,) from Thomson's Seasons. We thought at first, without looking into the catalogue, that this was a portrait too; but upon closer examination, we found that it was indeed the Lavinia of the poet. She is dressed in a russet gown, and seated under a tree, taking refuge from a storm, with the scanty harvest she had gleaned, in her hand. She seems defended from every danger, by the perfect innocence and modesty which characterise her whole form. You see that she is anxious only, lest her mother should be alarmed for her, and that she is thinking of the cottage,

"far retired

"Among the windings of a woody vale."

Mr. Shee, with a kindred poetic spirit, and the hand of a master, has combined in this picture in all the perfection that design, com

position, and execution could command, every part of Thomson's Her form is

ideal beauty.

*

"fresher than the morning rose,

When the dew wets its leaves; unstained and pure,
As is the lily, or the mountain snow.
'The modest virtues mingle in her eyes."

*

*

"A native grace

"Sits fair-proportioned on her polished limbs,
Veiled in a simple robe, their best attire."

*

*

Thoughtless of beauty, she is beauty's self,
Recluse amid the close embowering woods."

Whether we gaze upon that delicate form,

66

By beauty kindled; where enlivening sense,
And more than vulgar goodness seem to dwell,"

or upon the scene that surrounds her, the umbrageous tree, whose leaves mark the yellow season of the year, the near bursting of the storm, the breaking of the blue clouds in the distance, and the opening of light, which promises the speedy passing away of the tempest, we perceive a thousand charms to detain us before this matchless production. There is a quiet attraction about it, like that of nature itself. Nothing seems done for effect, and yet every part of the picture is effective. Close by Lavinia's feet springs up one. of those red flowers so common in the fields in harvest time. It seems to have grown there of itself, and, at the same time, without it, the picture would not have been finished. The work looks as if it had been painted by Murillo, or by one of his Italian masters; it might easily be supposed to have been executed two centuries ago. It is beyond all question the gem of the exhibition, and every body must agree, that the artist who created it, fully deserves to be the President of the Academy. Honour and merit never were more happily united.

The portrait of Mr. C. W. Wynn, (No. 179,) by Mr. Shee, is a most accurate likeness, but that is all we think that can be said in its favour. There is a harshness about it, which, at a distance, makes one imagine that it is a bust cut in black marble.

We are surprised that Mr. R. Westall did not make a better picture of the Princess Victoria, (No. 64,) or Elizabeth, as we hope she is hereafter to be named. The attitude in which she is placed is exceedingly awkward. She is supposed to be sketching a scene from nature. We should rather say that her Royal Highness was doing nothing at all, and that she was more inclined for a game at romps than any thing else.

The tendency to pastoral ballad has, we apprehend, nearly subsided amongst us, although we lately had occasion to notice, in a rambling article upon the minor poets, certain dramatic eclogues, in which the sweet names of Colin, and Bessy Bell, and Annie,

and Phemie, sound most musically. Mr. Kidd's picture of the Lover's Signal, (No. 70,) would furnish the author of those sketches with a fit subject for his muse. It smells of the Dairy all over. The young maiden, who, taking advantage of a visit paid by the drowsy god to her father and mother, goes to whisper with her lover at the window, is a fat buxom lass, to whom the sentiment of love must have appeared very odd. The ploughman outside the window is an equally unpoetic personage. There is nothing so difficult to be attained as the development of rustic manners, either in poetry or painting, in a form of expression that is at once natural and becoming. The Scylla of over-refinement on one side, is as hard to be avoided as the Charybdis of vulgarity on the other.

Calcott's fine landscapes are great ornaments of the present exhibition. There is one particularly, "The Passage Point," (No. 105,) in which he has displayed the creative power of his imagination, and has produced a scene, that for the richness and variety of its composition, is in every way worthy of Italy. No. 72, Morning," also an Italian composition, is an admirable production. The very soul of poetry seems to have prefigured every part of that brilliant landscape.

We have expressed freely our opinions upon two of Mr. Turner's pictures, which are out of his usual line. We are happy to acknowledge that those of his works which are within that line, are in every respect worthy of his fame. What a series of picturesque and elevated conceptions burst upon the eye in that fine piece of invention to which he has given the name of Palestrina! It were indeed worthy of Hannibal, at the moment when he "marked, with eagle-eye, Rome, as his victim." The towering pile of rock forms a grand object in itself, contrasted with the smiling scenery below. We have heard it observed, that the trees look as if they were combed, and had just been taken out of a band-box; that is to say, that they betray too much diligence in the finishing of the branches and the leaves. The remark is not altogether unjust. It is, we think, generally speaking, the fault of this distinguished artist, that he is rather formal in his details, as if he intended his landscapes only to be looked at by people in full dress, when their eyes are prepared for niceties. Nevertheless, his pictures will live, and his name will go down to posterity as that of the English Claude.

It was with a melancholy pleasure that we, in common, we are sure, with every visiter to the Academy, surveyed the portraits which were among the last of Sir Thomas Lawrence's works. The portrait of Thomas Moore, the face alone of which is finished, is decidedly the best likeness of the poet of Ireland which we have seen. That of the Earl of Aberdeen is also a most accurate resemblance. There are four or five others which will easily be distinguished from the surrounding paintings, by the style which every where indicates the hand of a master. We observe that all the