ring the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the strumpetsand more than one priest who, during repeated changes in the discipline and doctrines of the church, had remained constant to nothing but his benefice.

One of the most remarkable passages in the Pilgrim's Progress, is that in which the proceedings against Faithful are described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were conducted under Charles the Second. The license given to the witnesses for the prosecution, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancour of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms preliminary to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord Hategood performs the office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs himself could have performed it.

"JUDGE. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee?

"FAITHFUL. May I speak a few words in my own defence? "JUDGE. Sirrah, sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say."

No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times sinned up to it still,' and even went beyond it. The imaginary trial of Faithful before a jury composed of personified vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the real trial of Lady Alice Lisle before that tribuual where all the vices sat in the person of Jeffries.

The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect-the dialect of plain working menwas perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language-no book which shows so well how rich that

language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.

Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress.

ART. VIII.-The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Kt., LL.D., F.R.S., President of the Royal Academy. By D. E. WILLIAMS, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1831.

W E cannot recollect ever having witnessed a more striking or interesting exhibition, than the collection of the principal works of the late President, in the British Institution, in 1830. It was at once the noblest and the most appropriate monument that could have been reared to his fame; for he had himself furnished the imperishable materials of which it was composed; and the genius of the painter might almost be supposed to linger with complacency about the spot thus illustrated by the varied and brilliant triumphs of his pencil. It had all the interest of an historical collection, and such, indeed, it was. This is true history,' said Fuseli, speaking of that most impressive portrait, by Titian, of Paul III. and his nephews, in which the characters of the trio seem written on the canvass as legibly as in words. We feel the same sensation, generally, in contemplating the popes and cardinals of Raphael, or the doges, senators, and feudal nobles of Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoretto. Their stern, commanding, astute, or savage countenances, furrowed by passion, by mental or bodily toil, or wrinkled by habitual duplicity and cunning; their features, often so beautiful, but on which the evil spirit within has so visibly stamped its traces; their forms so majestic, and yet so natural; each in his habit as he lived,' and surrounded with the pomp and circumstance of his station-transport us back into the troubled times of Italian history-to Rome, with her conclaves and inquisitorial intrigues,-to Venice, with her sensual dissipation, and mysterious and cold-hearted policy,-and to the dark and blood-stained annals of the Medici and Visconti, with

a more vivid feeling of reality than could be effected by historical painting, in the ordinary sense of the term.

Such also was the impression produced by the above collection. In it, the history of the nineteenth century was portrayed in the only way in which it can as yet admit of being transferred to canvass. When the dust of a few centuries has descended on the fashions and habiliments of the present age, and coats and pantaloons have been admitted into the legitimate wardrobe of romance-when Waterloo is seen almost in the same misty distance as Cressy and Agincourt-then, perhaps, the eventful scenes of this remarkable time, may, with some chance of success, be made the subjects of historical painting.

To catch not the mere outward mask of the countenance, but to stamp on it the reflexion of the mind within-to make the soul speak audibly, as it were, through the combination of lines and colours-demands a tact and delicacy of observation, and a power of expression scarcely less than is required for historical composition itself. Portrait, in fact, when executed on right principles, runs into history, as history, to obtain variety, disdains not to avail herself of the assistance of portrait. No one, we are persuaded, can be a great portrait-painter without that imagination and that grasp of mind which could have led to excellence in the department of history. Wherein, in fact, does a group of portraits, such as Titian's picture of Aretine, and his master-at-arms, or Paul and his nephews; or Lawrence's beautiful groups of the Baring family, the children of Mr Calmady, and others, differ from those which are usually styled historical pictures, save in greater calmness of action, and the expression of habitual feelings, rather than of more temporary and passionate impressions? Is there less of a romantic and elevated beauty in his exquisite picture of young Lambton-in the gentle and visionary expression of which, seems to be written that sentence of an early fate-Whom the gods love, die young,'-than in the St Cecilia of Domenichino, or the Madonnas of Guido? The calm philosophy, and stoic evenness of soul which characterises his Cato, the impetuous spirit of his Coriolanus, and the melancholy and princely beauty of his Hamlet in the churchyard;are these less imaginative or effective, because the outward form and features of John Kemble have furnished the model which his imagination has thus elevated and sublimed?

If the loftiest efforts of the art lie within the province of a great portrait-painter, and may be attained by him almost without diverging from his own particular path, the position in which he is otherwise placed would seem to be one of the most enviable. We speak at present of one, like Lawrence, whose

pre-eminent talent, in his own department, has raised him above competition, and, if it could not disarm the envy of others, has at least extruded from his own mind those feelings of rivalry and jealousy, which too often disturb the artist who sees, and at the same time cannot bear, a brother near the throne. In the first place, such a one alone, in the present condition of British art, can aspire to opulence; for vanity and good feeling-the love of contemplating our own features, or the wish to be remembered after death by those whom we have loved when alive-alike combine to smooth the way for him. Then, the most distinguished of all classes, the great, the beautiful, the brave, the wise, are his companions; he refines his taste and enlarges his knowledge by their society; and descends to posterity side by side with those whose images he has perpetuated. If to these advantages be added, health of body, and that equability of temper and ever-springing kindness of heart, which are the health of the mind, what element seems wanting to make up the complement of human happiness? Whose life should have glided on with a more lucid and tranquil current than that of Sir Thomas Lawrence? And so as a whole it did;-its brilliancy was indisputable, its real happiness, we believe, was great, and would have been much greater but for some imprudences;-for Lawrence, of careless father careless son,' was habitually inattentive to those minor morals' on which so much of the comfort of life depends.

We can only afford to glance at a few scattered scenes in the life of this great artist;-his rise, his meridian of fame, and his death, not to follow out year by year the successive triumphs of his pencil. Nothing in fact can be less interesting, except to an artist, than to pursue the details of the life of a portrait-painter, after his popularity has once been established and his style formed. To this, in some degree, and also, in a great measure, to the absurdly periphrastic vein in which his biography is written, we must attribute the impression of tediousness which the volumes before us, with the exception of some beautiful letters by Sir Thomas, have left upon our minds. If the extent of the letters and of the text had only stood in an inverse ratio to each other, the interest of the work would have been very materially increased.

No English artist of eminence, with the exception of Morland, so decidedly evinced an almost infant genius for drawing as Lawrence. Morland's drawings, at the age of six, it is said, were fit to compete with those of the younger students of the Academy. When little more than five years old, young Lawrence had acquired the power of taking the most striking likenesses in pencil. At that early age he executed two drawings of Lord and

Lady Kenyon, who had spent a night in his father's Inn, with great accuracy and delicacy of effect, though, as might be expected, with some feebleness and indecision of contour. Some drawings of eyes, executed by him at a still earlier period, excited the admiration of Mr Prince Hoare;-a circumstance worthy of particular notice, because, throughout the whole course of his professional career, the painting of the eye was perhaps the point in which Lawrence most excelled his contemporaries. Fuseli, indeed, used to swear he painted eyes better than Titian. His talent for reading and recitation was not less surprising. At four years old he used to read the story of Joseph and his brethren with the most wonderful propriety of gesture and emphasis. So remarkable indeed was this turn, that at one time the theatre appeared likely to be his future destination. Garrick, who frequently stopped at his father's Inn in passing through Devizes, used generally to adjourn with the young orator to a small summerhouse in the garden, and listen with much pleasure to his recitations. At seven, the child had attracted so much attention by his personal beauty and his various accomplishments, that his picture was engraved by Sherwin. His appearance and precocity of talent at the age of nine, are described with some liveliness by Bernard, the actor, in his amusing Retrospections of the Stage.

There was something about little Lawrence, however, which excited the surprise of the most casual observer. He was a perfect man in miniature. His confidence and self-possession smacked of one-andtwenty. Lawrence frequently brought his boy to the Green-room, and we would set him on a table and make him recite Hamlet's directions to the players. On one of these occasions, Henderson was present, and expressed much gratification. The little fellow, in return for our civilities and flatteries, was desirous to take our likenesses, the first time we came to Devizes, and Edwin and myself afforded him an opportunity soon after, on one of our non-play-day's excursions. After dinner, Lawrence proposed giving us a reading as usual, but Tom reminded him of our promise. The young artist collected his materials very quickly, and essayed my visage the first. In about ten minutes, he produced a faithful delineation in crayon, which for many years I kept as a curiosity. He next attempted Edwin's, who, startled at the boy's ability, resolved (in his usual way) to perplex him.

No man had a more flexible countenance than Edwin. It was not only well featured, but well muscled, if I may be allowed the expres sion, which enabled him to throw over its surface, as on a moral prism, all the colours of expression, minutely blending or powerfully contrasting. He accordingly commenced his sitting, by settling his face into a sober and rather serious aspect, and when the young artist had taken its outline and come to the eyes, he began gradually, but imperceptibly, to extend and change it, raising his brows, compressing his lips, and