letter of their constituting laws compelled them into such exertion. Those laws recognize the existence of schools" for the benefit of the trades and manufactures of the country"* solely; yet in time the Dublin Society had its Committee of Fine Arts, and the schools described in its own laws as schools for artizans, and "for admission into which scarcely any thing but the application is necessary," became schools for professional artists also. This Society, further, applied to, and received from Parliament, additional grants for the use of the Fine Arts, and during many years legislated, in every way that appeared to them best, for the interests and name of Art in Ireland. Behold the subject of my complaint! The original pretensions of the Dublin Society did not extend to the manufacture of artists; and had they been content with the useful discharge of their imposed duty, we could have no possible objection, but the contrary, to their laudable efforts. We should have witnessed and praised the beneficial results, in the ornamenting of chimney-pieces, of tomb-stones, and of the fronts of fancy shop-windows. When, however, they invite Fine Art students into their mechanical schools, establish a life-academy, and distribute prizes when, at their leisure, they build a national exhibition-room, and, mark you, with money obtained from our Government for the purpose -under such circumstances I must beg leave to consider their first arrogation of the ability to be umpires in all questions of Art, as, at the least, not very modest; and I have no hesitation, from patient examination of facts, to declare, that the money so obtained has been injudiciously appropriated. If to these considerations we join the curse of their periodical crop of quack artists, sent out with their counterfeit stamp alone, without the sanction, as is the case at Somerset-house, of bodies of accomplished professional men, who must be the sole judges of the fitness of professional candidates-without, in a word, the sanction of a single artist-yet thrust forth to jostle and scramble among established artists; if we contemplate this consequence of uncalculating and unqualified pretension, this leprous multiplication of bad art ;—and if to all we add the swagger and domineer of the self-elected, self-called, selfendowed patrons-the very contumely with which they treat the Arts and every thing bound up with and clinging to them,-in such a view I am fairly warranted in denouncing the Dublin Society, not only for the insult of its system, but also for the temerity of its interference.

Until within a few years, you have before you, in the existence and policy of the Dublin Society, the only opportunities for self-assertion afforded to the Irish artists. Lately, however, appeared the Royal Irish Institution-a body imitative of our British Institution. Much was naturally expected from this high-sounding establishment, upon whose list of members-though in no other, as necessary, places--we meet all the rank, title, and talent of the country, to say nothing of the royal blood that typically meanders through the printed names of its patrons. The Irish Institution, by the persevering tingle of its professions in the ears of the public, accumulated a round fund, and proposed premiums for native pictures; premiums that became the mouthbell. Historical and landscape painters rubbed their hands and

* Quoted from reports of the Dublin Society.

+ Ibid.

smacked their lips; set their pallets and strained their canvasses. One curious codicil was, however, soon tacked to the liberal promises of the Institution. They begged to be understood as reserving to themselves the right of giving nothing at all when the aspirants for premiums in the first classes of art should come into the field. The artists stared, as well they might, you will say; and no professional gentleman could be found to hang up his character for the re-adjustment of a connoisseur jury. Other evidences of the good taste and good feeling of the new patrons rapidly followed; until at last the riddle became soluble in the detection of a melancholy fact. The old Committee of the Dublin Society had passed, almost individually, into the Committee of the Royal Irish Institution. The same men, who, for a series of years, had catered with but a step-mother's liberality for the well-being of Irish art, now re-appeared as governors of the new fund, carrying into office all their habitual incompetency and inveterate pettiness of view. A rather amusing proof of the identity of these nominally distinct bodies is on record, and may be worth subjoining. The Royal Irish Institution had need of the exhibition-room of the Dublin Society, to bring forward their periodical display of old masters: their committee accordingly met, and drew up a request for it; then proceeded to the Dublin Society house; there sat as the committee thereof; gravely presented themselves with their own petition, and were graciously pleased to consider and grant the prayer it contained. Having thus shewn you the constitution of this second assemblage of Irish patronage, I am surely saved any farther comment upon its worse than inutility. When you recollect the true statement already made of the economy of the Fine Arts Committee of the Dublin Society, and when you here recognize the same men, and, of course, the same measures, it does not become necessary for me to add, that, since the establishment of the Royal Irish Institution, no novel advantages have resulted to native art, and no yearnings of sympathy or confidence grown up between artists and their patrons. I have now to lay before you some facts of considerable interest and importance. Very lately the artists of Dublin awoke to a sense of their disgraceful dependence on the smile, frown, or shrug, of a few unqualified lawgivers, and applied to his Majesty for permission, by charter, to form themselves into a Royal Academy. Immediately previous to his Majesty's visit to Ireland, the permission was granted, and they became an independent, and, what is better, a recognized body; remaining however without any means to build a house, or, in other respects, surround themselves with necessary appendages to their new rank and character. Soon after his Majesty's visit, the great event was followed by a public subscription to commemorate, in a national testimonial, a national era, which Irishmen of all sects and classes seem willing to regard as the most auspicious one in the annals of their country. It was expected that the fund would have been able to accomplish great things; such as the erection of a Royal Palace, I believe;-but poor Ireland, widowed as she was, could only come forward with her widow's mite, and the subscription stopped short at between 12 and 13 thousand pounds. A question arose as to the appropriation of this sum, and there were many opinions on the point. Among the rest, in Jan. 1822, an advocate for the Fine Arts gave his,

in the shape of a public letter, recommending that the testimonial fund should be applied to the building of a national house for the new academy, and of which they stood so much in need. A good general impression was made by this advocate, and the proprietors of the money appeared, eventually, favourable to his view; when a certain public body stepped forward, and-within the last few months-applied to the Marquis of Conyngham to lay before his Majesty their printed proposition to expend the amount of the subscription fund "in erecting a gallery for the encouragement of the Fine Arts in Ireland-under the protection" of themselves, the memorialists. I will not keep you in suspense, or rather, I hasten to assent to your "foregone conclusion" upon the name of this certain body: it is--could it be any other? -it is the Royal Irish Institution!

of

I deem there can be little question of the certain and speedy ruin of Irish art, if the application to which I have alluded meet with success. We know our men now. We know the qualification and sentiments of the Irish Institution, in its capacity as arbiter of the pretensions of the Fine Arts, and it would be idle to expect from their future legislation any thing different from their former practice. Supposing we had not our experience of the past, still should we be warranted to reject, on principle, their proferred "protection" of the infant academy. There never has been, and there never can be, any true sympathy between artists and connoisseurs, in any relative situation. Since the time that Michael Angelo sported his dust in the eyes of the sagacious cardinal, down to the present day, all we have heard and seen illustrates this position. There is little real fellow-feeling this moment between the Council at Somerset-house and the managing Committee of the British Institution. And here a natural question presents itself. If at the formation of our Royal Academy, the last-named body had also been in existence, and if the academicians had been handed over, at the moment of their very election, to the surveillance of a quorum -allowing every thing-elegant and accomplished connoisseurs, would the character of the British school of painting now stand as high as it really does stand? Could the English academy have carved out for itself the independent station which it now occupies? In reason and in nature, no. The patrons and protegés must have eternally gone wrong together. They have not one idea in common on the subject of patronage; not one concord in their whole separate theories; how then should they have harmonized in practice? The fact is, painters and connoisseurs mutually distrust each other. They interchange compliments and flatteries, no doubt, but they mean nothing by this lip-homage; and the moral discordance continues ever the same. that the project of an amicable, not to say advantageous connexion, between an academy of art and a committee of gentlemen, appears, altogether, Utopian and impracticable. You might as well set a bevy of critics, that is, of reviewers, to superintend the quarterly or monthly lucubrations of a college of authors. Reasonably speaking, why should such a system be at all supposed feasible? Painting is an art that requires long practice, even from a man of genius, for reputable success. It is as difficult to paint a good head as it is to write a book, or to pass an examination for a fellowship, or to note a brief, or to take up an artery. And if the author must be allowed to go on without

So

¡ caring for the critic,-if a board of fellows are not superintended by another board of amateur scholars,-if lawyers do not permit the suggestions of every Saddletree who may condescend to offer them,-and if the College of Surgeons have emerged from the reign of old women, why should we-how can we, with taste, propriety, or judgment, expect, that a Council of R. A's shall patiently or profitably submit to be " protected" by a junta of private gentlemen?

But, from the wisdom and caution which must ultimately adjust this question, I have the strongest hopes in behalf of the young academy. If, unfortunately, those hopes should be disappointed, I cannot avoid thinking that the artists of Ireland will be placed in a worse situation than they ever yet experienced-worse than they held without a charter, without an academy, without the additional rank conferred by these changes, at first apparently in their favour. Before, they could scarcely have been worse off than they were; in fact, they had nothing to lose; the government of the Dublin Society left them bare of individual pretension, and collective form or social place they did not possess. Now, however, that his Majesty's gracious patronage has given them a name and called them into national existence, degradation would become visible in their public character, and they would fall from a height of some importance. If such is to be the case, better for them that they had never gained that height! better for them to have remained with nothing to compromise, than to be thus elevated into objects of officious interest, and to be invested with attractions which should only induce their own professional prostitution!

With the assistance of the subscription fund, honourably conveyed to themselves, as was at first proposed, the Irish Academy would have every means for legitimate exertion and creditable success; but to participate it through the caution, condescension, or charity, of a connoisseur quorum, would be to meanly exist on the mited wages of their own servility and dishonour.

N. M.

SONNET FROM PETRARCH.

"Son animali al mondo di si fiera."

SOME animals there are, whose stronger sight
Can stare undazzled on the noonday sun,
And some whose weaker eye must wait the night,
And shroud in darkness till the day is done.

Some like the moth enamour'd of the light
Around the torch in narrowing circles run,
But learn that fire will scorch, however bright:
Alas! for me and them; for I am one.

Too weak to bear the lustre of that eye
Divinely bright, and too unwise to lie

In sheltering cave till twilight's shadowy gloom,

I with unsteady wing, but steady will,
Around the flame that scorch'd me flutter still,

And move with open eyes to meet my doom.

1

FRANKLIN'S EXPEDITION.*

THIS splendid work is an additional illustration of the long esta blished claims of this country to preeminence in the improvement of maritime science, the discovery of new sources of human intercourse, and the advancement of those branches of natural history which are at once curious and useful. The arduous enterprize of exploring by land the northern coast of America, by the shores of Hudson's Bay, from the mouth of the Copper-Mine river to the eastward, with the view of facilitating the discovery of a North-West passage, was entrusted by his Majesty's government to Captain Franklin, who embarked on the 23d of May, 1819, on board the ship Prince of Wales, at Gravesend. The instructions given to Captain Franklin were judicious, full, and clear. He was informed, that the main object of the expedition was that of determining the latitudes and longitudes of the northern coast of North America, and the trending of the coast from the mouth of the Copper-Mine river to the Eastern extremity of that continent that it was left to him to determine, according to circumstances, whether it might be most advisable to proceed, at once, directly to the northward till he arrived at the sea-coast, and then explore westerly towards the Copper-Mine river; or advance, in the first instance, by the usual route, to the mouth of the Copper-Mine river, and from thence easterly, till he should reach the eastern extremity of that continent; that, as another principal object of the Expedition was to amend the very defective geography of the northern part of North America, he was to be very careful to ascertain correctly the latitude and longitude of every remarkable spot upon his route, and of all the bays, harbours, rivers, headlands, &c. that might occur along the northern shore of the Continent;-that, in proceeding along the coast, he should erect conspicuous marks at places where ships might enter, or to which a boat could be sent; and deposit information as to the nature of the coast for the use of Lieutenant Parry ;-that in the journal of his route, he should register the temperature of the air, at least three times in every twenty-four hours, together with the state of the wind and weather, and any other meteorological phenomenon ;—that he should not neglect any opportunity of observing and noting down the dip and variation of the magnetic needle, and the intensity of the magnetic force:-and that he should take particular notice, of any, and what kind or degree of influence the aurora borealis might appear to exert on the magnetic needle, and whether that phenomenon was attended with noise, &c. &c.

The Lords of the Admiralty, anxious to promote the principal objects in view, selected, with peculiar care, three gentlemen, in every respect, qualified to cooperate with Captain Franklin. They were Doctor John Richardson, a surgeon in the royal navy, and Mr. George Back and Mr. Robert Hood, two admiralty midshipmen, who were joined with him in the Expedition. Doctor Richardson united, with his professional attainments, considerable knowledge as a naturalist, and Messrs. Back and Hood were not only capable of assisting in all

* Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22. By John Franklin, Captain R. N. F. R. S. and Commander of the Expedition. 4to.