alive all over, not merely to have the look and texture of flesh, but the feeling in itself. For example, the limbs of his female figures have a luxurious softness and delicacy which appears conscious of the pleasure of the beholder. As the objects themselves in nature would produce an impression on the sense, distinct from every other object, and having something divine in it which the heart owns, and the imagination consecrates, the objects of the picture preserve the same impression, absolute, unimpaired, stamped with all the truth of passion, the pride of the eye, and the charm of beauty. Rubens makes his flesh-colour like flowers. Titian's is like flesh, and like nothing else. It is as different from that of other painters as the skin is from a piece of white or red drapery thrown over it. The blood circulates here and there, the blue veins just appear, the rest is distinguished throughout only by that sort of tingling sensation to the eye which the body feels within itself. This is gusto. Again, Titian's landscapes have a prodigious gusto, both in the colouring and in the forms. We shall never forget one we saw many years ago in the Orleans Gallery, of Acteon hunting. It had a brown, mellowed, autumnal look. The sky was of the colour of stone. The winds seemed to sing through the rustling branches of the trees, and already you might hear the twanging of bows resound through the tangled mazes of the wood. 'Rubens has a great deal of gusto in his fauns and satyrs, and in all that expresses motion, but in nothing else. Rembrandt has it in everything; everything in his pictures has a tangible character. There is gusto in Pope's compliments, in Dryden's satires, and Prior's tales. "The Beggar's Opera" is full of it.' William Hazlitt (1778-1830). NOTHING. What the contented man desires- MILESIAN HUMOUR. There was a row in the gallery of a Dublin theatre, a scuffle, and one voice shouted, "Turn him out ;' another, 'Throw him over.' 'Ay,' added a third, a very bloodthirsty Milesian, and don't waste him, boys-kill a fiddler with him.' TO A PROUD KINS WOMAN. 'Fair maid, had I not heard thy baby cries, Nor seen thy girlish sweet vicissitude, Thy mazy motions, striving to elude Yet wooing still a parent's watchful eyes, And lovely all: methinks thy scornful mood,— Thy brow where beauty sits to tyrannize O'er humble love, had made me sadly fear thee; Whose gentleness gave grace to so much pride. RHYME. Seven or eight years ago an amusing controversy was held in the 'Graphic,' between Messrs. Burnand and Gilbert, that captivating pair! on the subject of Rhyme, and not without reason too, for there is no doubt that, at present, the English rhymer has an uncommon hard time of it. There are some quite common words which have no rhyme at all, and which ought to have one, and there are others which have only one or two rhymes, and which ought to have more. To lessen this difficulty, a difficulty which troubled Milton, and which now encourages a large number of otherwise well-behaved people to take refuge in, what they are pleased to call, Milton's blank verse, Mr. Gilbert ingeniously suggested that as inventors, often gave arbitrary and irrational names to their inventions, they might become still further public benefactors, if hereafter in selecting these names they would have an eye to enriching our language with rhymes to words which at present are rhymeless. Such, for instance, as 'silver,' and 'month;' and he added something to this effect, that if only the mechanist had been still more ingenious, and had called his invention a' Chilver, and the chemist had christened his discovery a 'Ronth, there would not have been the necessity for such a controversy. I agree with Mr. Gilbert, but I am inclined to go further. Why should not the Poet-Laureate, and Mr. Gilbert, and Mr. Burnand, and the other sons of song, agree, in conclave, to select, say a couple of dozen words (I would limit them to a couple of dozen or so) as rhymes to parts of speech which, at present, have either no rhyme at all, or only one or two? Anguish, for instance, has not it been long enough doomed to languish for a fresh echo to itself; and is not it annoying that when we mention the one, our readers know that the other is not far off? When once these words have been selected, their exact significance can be decided upon; and, after that, there should be no power of appeal. To give an idea of what I propose, it might be determined that a new word, lupid for instance, should hereafter, and for all time, represent the crescent-moon (the crescent-moon is useful in poetry). Ranguish, for the same reason, might signify a half-blown rose. And could not a pladow do duty for a blonde beauty, and a graiden for a brunette? A few such words, well chosen, would be an immense boon on the slopes of Parnassus, a boon to all the poets, excepting Mr. Browning, who finds an echo to every part of speech in the language, and as many as he desires. ABSENCE OF MIND. 'Some people like lizards, but there is too much affectation about the lizard to make him altogether admirable. In the first place, his laborious assumption of a thoughtful demeanour. Pretending to be abstracted in deepest cogitation, he will remain motionless on your wall for the hour together; and I deny, with "Christopher North,” that any man has a right "to leave his carcase in a room without the mind " (or without appearing to have the mind) " that belongs to it." Mr. P. Robinson's 'In My Indian Garden.' It had occurred to me that lizards might be |