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The Magazines , mindful of the necessities of -the ' season : —something a little lively being necessary to keep up ' attention in the dog-days- —ate better than usual this month . Blackwood is botli instructive and entertaining , the opening articles of the number belonging to the former , and the closing ones to the latter head . Three articles are devoted to the army , the first of which , entitled . " The Soldier and the Slirgeon , " is a sensible discussion of that , most pressing and . important question the sanitary condition of the army . It does seem strange—monstrous , indeed—that -while the resources of sanitary science have been employed for years in renderiuq : the condition of the criminals in
our gaols thoroughly healthy , the commonest precautions against disease should have been systematically neglected in our metropolitan barracks . Important and expensive as our army is to the nation , the whole subject of the common soldier ' s health , the sanitary condition of men in barracks , has hitherto been ^ as one of-the witnesses examined l ) y the commission expressed it , " lost sight of . " The writer in Blacfcwoocl points out with great force the ruinous results of such a state of things , and urges many improvements-that-ought to be introduced to secure not only the health but the social comfort and general welfare of the men . The two other articles connected -with the army refer io the doings of our soldiers in India—in tlie Punjab and before . Lucknow . The account of-the final capture ol" the latter city—written by one who was not only an eye-witness but a sharer in that perilous exploit—is written with-vigour and spirit , and abounds with minute and ' graphic incidents of the siege .
The three last articles of the number , respectively literary , political , and artistic , are very readable . "My First and Last Novel , " a charming little story , scarcely more than a domestic incident indeed , is full of nature and truth , and dramatically told . "The Great Imposture ''—in other words , the promised Whig Reform Bill—is the burlesque political article , as the last paper , ¦ ' Mr . Dusky ' s Opinions on Art 3 " is the burlesque ; art-criticismof the number . This paper is a very amusing and not very unfair satire—in some cases , indeed , parody—of Mr . Huskin ' s pamphlet on the Exhibitions of the present year . The following extract will give a taste of the critic ' s quality : — The first tiring that strikes me , in thewcrk of the present year , is , that though all other seasons and times of the day are reproduced in landscape ( except the pitch dark of a -winter ' s night , which it would be difficult for aii 3 one , in the present stale of art , to place satisfactorily on canvas ) , j'et that particulnr state of the atmosphere which
exists in the month of August from about five minutes before two to about twenty minutes after , when the sun ' s sultry and lavish splendour is tinged with some foreboding of his decline , and when Nature is , as it were , taking her siesta , is nowhere sought to be conveyed . 1 thought , on first looking at a small picture in the east room of the Academy , that this hiatus had been tilled up ; but , on further study , I perceived that the picture in question had leen painted rather earlier ( about iive-andtwenty minutes before two is the time I should assign to it ) , and is therefore deficient in many of the chief characteristics of the TcmarUable period 1 allude to . How comes it , too , that , amid nil the rendering of grass and flowers , there is not a single dandelion—a flower which has often given to me ,. no less than to Wordsworth , " thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears ; " nor a group of toadstools , which can give
interest to a foreground else bald and barren j nor , among the minute studies of insects , a daddy-long-legs , swaying delightedly across the path , and dancing to inaudible inusic , as the mid-day zephyr waves the slender fabric « . f his gossamer home . I am surprised , too , to find ( so far aa my survey has enabled me to note ) that there are nowhere any frogs , though every artist wlio painted out of doors in the first warm days of spring- must have heard their choral music from the- neighbouring ditches . The old heralds , speaking of the manner of the frog ' s holding his head , talk of the pride and dignity , or , as they phrase it , " the lording" of frogs , and gave them a place in heraldry ; and their ideas are generally valuable to artists , and worth studying , both for their literal exactness and their allegorical significance . Let us have some frogs next year . .
No . 18 . — " A Man Washing his Hands" ( J . Prig ) . A step in the right direction . The painting of the nail-brush , showing where friction has worn away and channelled the bristles in the middle , is especially good , But how comes it that , the nail-brush having been evidently made use of , the water in the basin is still pellucid , with no soap apparent , either superficially or in solution ? This oversight 1 should not have expected in so clever an artist . Even grunting clearness to the water , the pattern of the bottom of the basin visible through it is of a different character from tho exterior of tho vessel , which is not the case in any specimen of that particular delf which has come under iny notice . No . 24 . —This is directly imitative both of Titian and George Cruikshauk , with Smith ' s handling , and a good deal of Bro-wn ' s manner .
No . 29 . —As 1 told this artist lust yeur , he is deficient in fulness of form and looseness oC texture . He should , therefore , for some years , paint nothing' but mops of various colours ( without tho handles ) , which would give him woolliiiesa and rotundity . On the other hanil , the paiutor of No . i ) 2 bus too much of these qualities , with too little firmness in his darks ; and I should recommend him , as a counteracting influence , to study only blocks of conl ~ not the common coal ( which ia too dull ) , but the kuunel or cundle coal—u perseverance in which practice ho will find attended by the happiest results . " The . Nativity . "—This is nearly perfect , Tlie infant , which at first appears to bo wearing a broad-brimmed straw-hat , is distinguished by u pcculiur halo , in which there ia no trace of servile imitation of those absurd pro tenders known us . thu old masters . Thoughtless and superficial observers havrt objected to tlie angol holding the luntern , us an oflice inconsistent with tl » e dignity of the angelic nature ; Haying , too , that tho act liua some ofHciousness , tinco the lantern might have been placed on tho ground or hung on a nail . l \> r my own pint , I consider tho idea eminently happy , And it ' ouo of tho other angels had been represented as snulllng the caudlu with lu-r fingers , my admiration would have been complete . Fruiter commences two new stories this mouth ; the first , " Ilunworth , " u regular magazine talc , apparently by uu old IhukI ; the second , " Caturiua in
V enice : a Study of the Lagoon , " a short sketch , to be completed , in three parts , as evidently by a new writer , of peculiar powers , and considerable promise . The opening chapters of tlie sketch show a rare union of descriptive and analytic power . With the fullest enjoyment of nature and life on the surface of the story , there is a poetic insight in it 3 side glances and casual allusions that iuvests with , an indescribable charm the description of wellknown places and persons . We are all tolerably familiar with Venice—in description at least . Yet tlie following passage brings it vividly before us in new beauty and power : — The inevitable railway has crossed the Lagoon since then , rather , as I think , marring the impression of tlie approach . But on the 1 st of June , thirty years ago ] we quilted the mainland at Fusina , and turned th « boat ' s prow right out to sea . The night breeze , blackening the waves , blew in sharply and shrilly from the Adriatic .
The Italian shore from which we had started quickly became distant and indistinct , until it disappeared in the growing darkness—all but one snowy peak of the Euganeans , on which the sunset lingered . Then tlie night came dbivn upon us in grim earnest , and found us still labouring in the sea-trough . Vox a moment it seemed a wild and extravagant whim—the mad freak of an Englishman—at such an hour , in our crazy craft , and as the wind drove the foam into our faces , to tempt the caprice of the sea . liut the boatmen held on their way collected and undisturbed , and hummed at times to their oars short snatches of monotonous song . For why should they fear ? This silent and desolate water was one of the beaten highways of the nations , for centuries it had formed the main road between the monarchies of Europe and . its most polished and warlike republic . And now , as we turned our faces to the East , and looked through the drifting foam , the red moon rose from the Adriatic , dispersed the clouds , and discovered along the horizon , amid a charmed pause in the waves , the white domes and cupolas of Venice .
At present the Trieste boat is to be preferred . Though by this route you do not obtain perhaps the same vivid impression of a city driven from the land and adrift among the breakers , yet the labyrinth of narrow and squalid canal , through which by the other you must pass ere you arrive at your hotel , is avoided . You are ushered at once into the presence of the Republic . All the noble edifices associated with its national and historical life are grouped together on thi 3 its furthest shore . No land is visible on the Piazza except the Lido . The winged lion , as he paws his lair , looks out upon the sea . The breeze that sweeps through the pillared screen of the ducal gallery comes salt from the Adriatic . 'Twas bravely done . She had been spurned from her native soil . She lnul been forced , like a sea-mew , to build her nest upon the surf , and to stay it among the reeds . And lp ! she accepts her doom ; and turning with beautiful scorn from the betrayer , casts her white arms , Queen-like , upon the waves . . ¦ ; ¦ ¦ .- ¦ ' ¦ ' . ' ¦ . . ¦ ¦ ¦¦• • . . '¦¦' . -.- ¦ ' - . ... :- ' . ¦ . ¦ - . ¦ ... - '¦ . ' I
We have most of us travelled from Kensington to Hackney on the top of au omnibus . Here is the panorama of the journey in its picturesque variety :- < - Have you ever . journeyed , dear reader , from Kensington to Hackne 3 ' , and looked down on the City from the heights of an omnibus ? journeyed , not for the sake of moving , but of seeing ? I have the pleasure to know an eminent modern philosopher who mounts the box-seat once or twice every week , and who tells me that he is indebted to the drive for any little insight he may have gained into the framework of the human understanding . And merely in an artistic point of view the experiment is ¦ wo rth making . The series of sparkling kaleidoscopic effects which , it offers could hardly be matched in Kubla Khan ' s metropolis .
There are the parks , with their ancestral oaks , and elms , and ashes , and pellucid waters , where the identical ducks are still to be met with which the monarch of merry memory was wont to feed ; and the still impenetrable mansions of Piccadilly , with their huge gates and green preserves , prison-like as the Sleeping Palace of our childhood ere the advent of the nimble-footed Prince ; and the great square of Trafalgar , with its pepper-boxes , and its statue of Nelson , and its funny little fountains , which blush in the sunshine , as if they were ashamed of themselves , and felt the absurdity of the situation painfully ; and its glimpse down Parliament-street to that tragic stage where Chatham died , and Burke flung his dagger at the House , and Sheridan wept or grinned as it was the tragic or the comic mask he wore , and Canning was basely stabbed , nnd Disraeli was jeered into greatness ; and the Strand , with its richly-decorated stream of various life , its shops , its temples , its theatres , its panoramic advertisements , its trenchant hansoms , its merchant-princes rolling westward from the City ; and the green oasis of the Temple , with its idle barristers and shabby suitors ; and St . Paul ' s crowded into a corner and afraid to move a muscle , though it is stiff and rigid all over with cramp ; and the Mansion-house , with its odour of
aldermen and turtle , and Ministerial speeches ; and the Bank , gorged and surfeited with gold , and raising in the mind wild visions of burglary , and the Old Bailey , and transportation beyond the high sens ; then beyond this brilliant turmoil quiet lanes and small disjointed squares , each with it ^ centre plot of greenery protected—God knows why—by prison-like iron rails , and its laburnum , wliioli pines sadly in the smoky sunshine , and its rich crop of grass on the footjmtli , and its strange population , which never reads thu daily pupers , never seems rightly to awake ; butchers whu stand placidly with white unspotted aprons at their d < Jois , guiltless of the blood of woollv victims ; nursery-maids , who have never been young , children who need never grow old ; a savage and incurious race , who stare blankly at tlie omnibus as it goes by , and know not that a potent enchanter is passing them—a wizard , who "in forty minutes " can transport them bodily from their primitive wilds into the wealthiest nn < l most xplendid civilization of the world ! And this brilliant panorama for a shilling—a single . shilling for leave to pass aloft through tliu golden turmoil ; to pas * alofr , and look down through tlie white incense of Lutukia , like Jove through the Olympian clouds , on the races of men who make haste to destruction .
And though wo have seen Ludy Macbeth a dozen times , the following account of "Cuturinu" in the part is so instinct with the deuper meaning ol ' that allccting vision , that we cannot , but lcsid it with interest : — Still Cutarina was not u « roat singer . Thorc she was matched often— sometimes probably excelled , liut < is an actress who stood alone . In this second seunii sliu had little to say—u lew pas . sionute words of anger amd entrcuty . But the vignette was perfect ill its way ; an elaborate picture could not havu been more curiously finished . She stood before thu house I ' or one breathless moment , a white-armed fury . Very beautiful , but lierco and unrelenting tiS the panther , us raising her white arm sho points pitilea . sly to the chamber wherein lies tlio king . Such an arm ! 1 have never Been its mutch . 11 spoke to tho people expressively , eloquently an her face . What often becomes an iiiciunuruiice to an inferior artint , wan with her the highcit H |> ell of her craft . In its strained and agitated muscles you could read anger , contempt , defiance , detestation ; most womanly weakness , when nt thu end it dropped oithuustcd and liclplci-a by her side . Sho caHt it up to licuvcn , mid its grand vehement , curve invoxed tlio vindictive godH ; it clasped the nede of her Roman lover with tho passion and tenderness of uu Italiun Aphrodite .
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——?—Critics are nottiaelegislators , but the judges and police oflikerature . They&o not raakelaws—they mterpretand try to enforce them ;—JSdinburyh Review .
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Ko . 432 , July 3 , 1858 . ] T H E LEAD ER , 641
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 3, 1858, page 641, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2249/page/17/
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