and published for the first time. It is a tale to which there are two sides; MM. Goncourt have given us the favourable side from beginning to end. Marie Antoinette was a queen given by a corrupt court to one still more corrupt, and in whom there was not only much to pity, but much to blame.

De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l'Eglise. Nouveaux Principes de Philosophie Pratique adressés a son Eminence Monseigneur Matthieu, Cardinal Archevèque de Besançon. Par PROUDHON. Paris: Garnier Brothers.-The Cardinal Archbishop Matthieu has been party, it seems, to what M. Proudhon deems a libel on his character, and he has retaliated against the priesthood in which his eminence holds so conspicuous a place. The book has been condemned and seized, but is still widely circulated and read. It presents a vigorous anatomy of French Romanism as the ally of French despotism, and its author evades a heavy fine, and heavy imprisonment, only by keeping clear of the French territory. A church which gags the press, and then uses it to circulate libels in her favour, is a doomed church on the soil of modern France. The day of retribution may tarry, but it will come.

Histoire de l'Angleterre, &c. ('The History of England from the Earliest Times.') Par M. BONNECHOSE. Vols. I., II.-A history of England which does not profess to furnish any new material, but which aims to give an intelligent view of the great changes in our history from the earliest times, marking carefully the steps in social progress, and the causes of them. It is written in genial spirit towards our country, and the second volume brings the narrative down to the death of Elizabeth.

Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier. Par S. CHERNEL. Tom. I. Paris: Charpentier.-This work appears in the Bibliothèque Charpentier. The works in this series are admirably edited, and the memoirs of Madame Montpensier greatly needed to be taken in hand. The editors of the earlier editions took great liberties with the original narrative. But everything of that nature will be guarded against in the present edition.

Mémoires du Comte Miot de Melito. (Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito.') Three vols. Paris.-These volumes contain an account of French affairs from before the first Revolution to the battle of Waterloo. The Count was a shrewd and pliant gentleman, he served in offices of some importance under the Bourbons, the Republic, and the first Napoleon. He saw much of the chief actors in public affairs through all those changes, and has recorded his impressions concerning them. On the whole, they are an interesting contribution to the works of this class in which French literature is so rich.

Une Page d'Histoire du Gouvernement Representatif en Piémont. Par M. LOUIS CHIALA. Paris.-An intelligent, moderate, and truthful account of the progress of representative government in Piedmont. The service rendered to the cause of Piedmontese freedom by Massimo d'Azeglio and by Count Cavour, is, here justly estimated. Nor are their patriotic coadjutors overlooked. Without a strong following

there could be no effective leadership. Offensive, indeed, in the eye of surrounding despots must be the existence of such a state; and the sympathy of England is a feeling on which the Sardinian patriot has a right to calculate. M. Chiala's book is written in French, but with great mastery of the language, and with great ability.

La Société Française au Dix-septième Siècle. Par VICTOR COUSIN. Paris: Didier.-This is the title of a work in which M. Cousin is forsaking the philosophy of the present and the future for the society of the past. It is not the change of subject we would wish to see in the declining years of M. Cousin; nor are we sure that his principles as a citizen are quite what they once were. Great men sometimes live too long-long enough to do much towards the undoing of the good they may have done. An aged philosopher should see little to attract him in French society in the seventeenth century.

Scènes de la vie Russe. Par M. T. TURGENOFF.-Pictures of Russian life, if real, would be welcome; but these pictures get their colouring from Paris more than from Moscow or St. Petersburgh.

Variétés Littéraires, Morales et Historiques. Par M. S. DE SACY.In France, just now, honest journalists have time at their disposal. M. de Sacy, who for thirty years contributed so much to the power of the Débats, is here employed in collecting, revising, and republishing such of his articles as may be safely put forth under the present state of things. Many of these papers are on topics of bygone days, and stand quite apart from modern politics, and the learning and skill with which they are treated give us a high conception of the knowledge and talent which have served to make the journalism of France so powerful, whether for good or evil.

Le Roi Voltaire. Par ARSENE HOUSSAYE. Paris. It has pleased M. Houssaye to make a king of Voltaire, and to write a book to show his kingly influence on society. But when the author makes the French Revolution, and the Napoleonism that has followed, to be alike the fruit of his labours, we are obliged to suppose that M. Houssaye is a very poor logician, or that the influence of Voltaire for good is a very doubtful affair. That the kingship of Voltaire may be truly French, his reign is divided into epochs, which are determined by the succession of his different mistresses!

ART.

ALTHOUGH the annual exhibitions have all closed weeks ago, and even the picture-dealers, during this dull interval, have ceased to solicit attention to their undoubted Raphaels which have most unexpectedly been discovered nobody knows where, and chef-d'œuvres of Titian most unaccountably hidden for two or three hundred years, it is well to remind our readers that the more important exhibitions of our national

French Literature—Art.

541

pictures are still open to them; and that, during this dearth of something new,' the intelligent lover of art cannot do better than turn to the great masters, and study them carefully and lovingly. It will be a healthful employment-not unlike taking up the works of our great writers after a course of desultory reading-bracing alike to the mind and the taste; and very soon the art-student will find how far more pleasant, as well as improving, it is carefully to study some dozen pictures-it may be but three or four-of the great masters, than to cursorily, and it must be carelessly, glance over some hundreds of second or third-rate merit. Let the reader, by all means, some clear morning-and we have a few even in November-pay a visit to the National Gallery on its reopening, where, besides its wellknown stores, the early Florentine pictures, scarcely noticed as yet, save by artists, claim attention alike for their historical associations and for their importance as forming the link between the formal conventionalities of the Byzantine school, and the free grace, and beauty, and spirit, of the earlier Italian painters.

A most valuable acquisition is this collection of Florentine pictures. Here is the very altar-front, painted by Margaritone for the nuns of St. Margaret, at Florence, and which Vasari, three hundred years ago, so carefully described. Ugly enough it certainly is, with its harsh outlined figures in black, red, and white, on a gold ground, putting us greatly in mind of an old japanned screen, but suggesting how great must have been the surprise and delight of all Florence when Cimabue, only a few years after, exhibited paintings so immeasurably superior. And here is a colossal half-length of the Virgin enthroned, attended by angels, by Cimabue himself, solemn, grand, as all Cimabue's figures are; and despite of his well-known defects, defects inseparable from first attempts, exhibiting a noble simplicity. Then the 'Triptych,' by Duccio da Sienna, but especially the curious altar-piece by Taddeo Gaddi, the favourite pupil of Giotto, with its attempt at a landscape background, but where the rocks and trees, instead of being thrown out by a blue sky, display themselves against the orthodox burnished gold-ground, prove how long the strife with Byzantine conventionalities lasted. The rich and elaborate altar-piece, although unfortunately divided into parts, must attract the notice of the visitor, but with far greater interest will he contemplate it when he learns that it is the work of the great sculptor and painter, Orcagna, the painter of that solemn pictorial epic, the Triumph of Death,' in the Campo Santo, at Pisa. Almost all the early Florentine painters are represented here save Giotto. There is a specimen of Fra Angelico, but a very inferior one, which we must regret, for a 'Holy Family' from his delicate and earnest pencil, would finely contrast with Filippo Lippi's altar-piece, where the Infant Saviour, with coral necklace and bracelets, and the wingless angels at his feet-not harp in hand, but with guitar and violin, well indicate the difference between the monkish artist, whose inspiration was the wine-flask, and whose models, even for the Madonna, were his mistresses, and that pure-minded recluse who never took pencil in hand save with solemn prayer. Ere concluding these slight

notices we must call attention to the exquisite 'Adoration of the Magi,' by Lippi's son, Filippino, the gem of the collection for beauty of design and rich colouring. In addition to these art treasures,' we are also promised a fine Ghirlandajo, which will take its place among them upon the reopening of the gallery.

The costly porphyry sarcophagus, hewn and polished at so much expense of time and labour, is now appropriated to its destined purpose, and encloses the remains of the hero of a hundred fights,' in the sepulchral crypt at St. Paul's. It is a noble work of art-noble in its grand simplicity-and we could not but regret that it should remain in that dimly-lighted chamber, where we can scarcely discern its beautiful veinings, and where, from the narrow space, no adequate view can be obtained, instead of being placed in some part of the cathedral. What could form a more appropriate centre for the sepulchral chapel than that rich sarcophagus, upon its granite base?

Among our miscellaneous notices, we may here mention that the eighteen bronze statues of the barons who signed Magna Charta have been completed, and, as well as the twelve marble statues of British statesmen, are now placed on their appropriated pedestals, in the palace at Westminster. The Government has, we find, also decided on the purchase of Sir George Hayter's huge picture of "The First Meeting of the House of Commons after the Passing of the Reform Bill.' As a kind of collective portrait-gallery, this acre of canvas has a certain kind of value; but we think it would be difficult to find any other.

Memoirs and Letters of the late Thomas Seddon, Artist. By his BROTHER. Nisbet. This is a very interesting, though mournful little volume, detailing the aspirations, and endeavours, and struggles, of a gifted young man, who had just surmounted his early difficulties, and had begun to take a prominent place among our rising artists, when he was cut off, after a few days' illness, in his thirty-fifth year. Thomas Seddon, the son and grandson of the cabinet makers whose names are so well known throughout London, evinced, like all children gifted with artist feelings, a love for design from his very infancy, covering the margins of his school books with all manner of drawings, but giving at the same time indications of that love of truth and nature which he afterwards displayed in his eager pursuit of natural history, and his interest in ballad-lore-indeed in all that related to the past. On leaving school, his father determined he should follow his own trade,-hereditary already through three generations of the Seddons. A less congenial trade might have been easily found, for cabinet making is an art manufacture, and although to the aspiring youth sideboards and cheffoniers were mean enough compared with historical pictures, still there was training both for the eye and hand in the cabinet maker's work-shop. But the poor lad yearned for an artist's life, and it was a first step toward this when his father sent him in 1841 to Paris, to study ornamental art. On his return, however, he did not, like too many young students, fling aside all chance of obtaining an honourable livelihood, to devote himself, like poor

Memoir of Thomas Seddon.

543

Haydon, to high art.' He resumed his seat in his father's office, diligently studied the best works on ornamental art, and strove to become foremost in the line to which Providence seemed to have pointed him. In 1848 he gained the silver medal of the Society of Arts, for an ornamental design, and ere long he attained a foremost name as a designer. But all this while, although his days were given to art-manufacture, his nights were devoted to artist's studies, and when in the following year he accompanied some members of the Water Colour Society to Wales, the professional artists found that the graceful designer of chimney-glasses and sideboards could rival them in the beauty of his trees, and surpass them in the delicate finish of his foregrounds. A visit made the following year to Barbisson, in the forest of Fontainebleau, afforded young Seddon opportunities for farther improvement. On his return however, he quietly resumed his profession as a designer, and anxious that others should participate in the benefits of correct training, he established a school for the instruction of workmen in the elements of art, generously devoting a large portion of his already heavily-taxed time to the office of gratuitous teacher. A hundred promising young students availed themselves of this liberal boon; but the generous, self-denied young artist, paid the penalty of his thoughtful kindness in a long and dangerous illness,-rheumatic fever, from which he never wholly recovered. This dangerous illness, however, released him from his former engagements; he now commenced an artist's life, and his first picture, Penelope,' proved that he had not mistaken his calling. And now arose strong yearnings to visit the East, to see with his own eyes those scenes which prophets and holy men of old' had dwelt among,-scenes dear to him because Bible scenes, that Bible which, since his illness, had become dear to him. Ere long a most favourable opportunity arrived. Holman Hunt was about to travel in the East, so Thomas Seddon set forth to accompany him.

Very pleasant, and remarkably suggestive are the young artist's letters; many passages are indeed word-pictures. There is no vague description, no mere heaping of superlatives together, but clear, vivid drawing and colouring too, for like all the pre-Raphaelites, Seddon had a fine eye for colour, and a keen delight in it. How he remarks again and again upon the exquisite beauty of evening in Egypt, compared with the harsh glare of noontide, the rosy light that bathes the 'tops, whilst the bases of the buildings and hills are half lost, and 'melted into the light blue mist;'-the gorgeous sunsets, too, with their floods of crimson fire, just as he has shown us in that admirable picture of his, the View of the Pyramids at Sunset.' We have had descriptions enough of the Holy Land, and we have had views enough too, but really how different the descriptions are in these delightful letters, and the views, as painted by the truth-guided pencil of Seddon and Holman Hunt. What a chorus of ridicule burst from all the wouldbe connoisseurs when that fine picture, the Scape-goat,' was exhibited. Such a back-ground! where did you ever see a pink and green sky?' Certainly it was not to be seen in England, but with that very