men to have it thus shewn unto them, that British subjects consider their capital, when fixed and employed in distant foreign countries, more secure than it is, or can be, under the dominion of their own country! It might have been prudent and politic in this country never to have had any thing to do with colonies so peopled and so cultivated, as our tropical colonies are, and it may now be politic and prudent to abandon them. The first point I am not called upon to discuss, neither am I called upon to discuss or to determine the latter, further than to observe and to maintain, that having established these colonies, the property in them can neither be destroyed nor taken away without a fatal departure from true national policy, 'and the most profligate violation of national character, honour, and justice. The government recommended and called for by all the Anti-colonists for our Colonies is a pure and unmixed despotism. MR Twiss, late Under Secretary for the Colonies, when lately writing to MR STEWART, of the Treasury, about the liberated Africans, who swarm idle in our Colonies, stated, that if they did not forthwith become industrious and independent," the Crown would reSUME ITS ARBITRARY DISPOSAL of them," in order, as Sir George Murray, in a circular letter, states, that they might be "constrained to labour." If these British pets, the free blacks, are to be thus governed, what are the white Colonists to expect from the sway of a country, the ears of which are every hour poisoned against them?-What are they to expect-but that which they feelnamely, degradation, insult, and ruin? I observe, with regret, that MR HORTON's first, and otherwise able and excellent letter, addressed to the Electors of Yorkshire, is disfigured by such anti-British and anti-constitutional principles and sentiments. He boasts how the Orders in Council had been enforced in the Crown Colonies, although these orders, by their direct interference with private property, violated the capitulations on which the colonies surrendered, and also the resolutions of the House of Commons of 1823, which both alike guaranteed the inviolability of private property. Having done this, Mr Horton proceeds in a tone wholly unbecoming the statesman of a free country, to inform his readers, that unless the old British Colonies surrender their birthright and privileges as Britons, and submit to be ruled as the conquered colonies are ruled, that" their ruin would be as inevi table as the case of the infatuated Ministry of Charles the Tenth ;" and, moreover," that they might depend upon it, they will neither have success nor pity," if they perish in their attempts to resist such authority. Mr Horton never attempts to shew the justice of the application of this authority. On the contrary, he tells us, that" they are not called upon to approve of the change" which its application will create, but, nevertheless, that it must be obeyed. No act of Polignac or his colleagues, or of any other ministry, however" infatuated," ever can be compared, in danger and folly, to Mr Horton's threatenings. The framers of the Orders in Council were, in fact, the Polignacs and "infatuated" ministry, and not the ill-treated and ill-ruled colonies. In order that the colonists "may have the country with them, to secure them equitable compensation for loss," Mr Horton requires of them-for such is the real meaning of the words, when the declarations are stripped of the veil thrown over them by the jargon," public opinion" that, after having denuded themselves of a large portion of their property, they should in future, and in order to make African savages industrious, moral, and civilized, apply their time, their talents, their industry, their capital, and their credit, to enforce such regulations as the arbitrary will of the mother-country, and a prejudiced party in it, may think necessary to accomplish their objects;-in other, and in a few words, that, politically speaking, the slaves should be emancipated, and the masters constituted slaves! Such would be the results; but such doctrines are not yet become "public opinion” in Great Britain, and I trust they never will. "Who are the West Indians," said a limb of office, " that they should complain of the proceedings of go vernment, or consider themselves entitled to dwell in streets and squares in the West-end of London? In early life, they were only accustomed to receive bread and beer, and they never ought to have any thing better." Such is the language of men who, if we had not colonies and of fices to govern them, would never have had any thing but bread and beer, and never seen either the West-end or the East-end of London. Their country disowns men who trample in this manner upon the feelings of their industrious countrymen, and it would be well for such individuals to remember that insult from public servants is worse to bear than injustice and oppression. ing proceedings of open violence which go on without restraint, censure, or punishment, in Tortola; and look at St Lucia, where proceedings are going on which are an indelible stigma to a British Government, and which continued must bring ruin on the colony. Look at what was done by a Judge in Grenada, and at what was attempted by an Attorney-General in Tobago! Look at the important colony of Jamaica, connect ed with which the Colonial Secretary of Great Britain is compelled to insult the constitutional understanding of the British empire, by placing the fables of the anonymous informer, and the irresponsible and unconstitutional authority of the upstarts of Aldermanbury Street, above and before the enquiry, and the decisions by the laws and the legal tribunals of that colony! Good God, my Lord Duke, are such proceedings to be permitted to continue, without check or control, to degrade our country, and, by oppressing parts of our dominions, produce a mischief which will go to dismember our empire? Impossible! Such feelings and such principles having obtained a seat in high places in the mother-country, they quickly, and in every shape, and on every occasion, find their way into the colonies, where they are acted upon without shame and without compassion. The colonies are thus for every valuable purpose abandoned by the mother-country. They are oppressed and fleeced at the will and pleasure of every theorist and hypocrite. Complaint is unavailing, remonstrance is set down as " contumacy;" and on which ever side we turn our eyes upon our colonial possessions, we find injustice and oppression the order of the day, and capital, industry, and character in despair, languishing, and becoming heartbroken, and extinguished under the galling rod which is permitted to rule them. Law and justice are prostituted and trampled upon, until there is no longer any security for character, liberty, or property. Look, my Lord Glasgow, 4th Jan. Duke, at the desperate and unblush From the slavery to, from the galling chains of, that ambitious party which has brought my country to this contemptible and degraded state, by SAVING HIS MAJESTY'S MINISTERS THE TROUBLE OF THINKING," I pray, and most sincerely, my Lord Duke, in the language of the Liturgy, "Good Lord deliver us," this country, your Grace, and every Statesman who may in future be called upon and appointed to direct the affairs, and to watch over the interests, of this country! I am, &c. 1831. JAMES M'QUEEN. IGNORAMUS ON THE FINE ARTS. "PAINTING is a mystery." Strange that an art which addresses the most perfect of the senses should not be plain as daylight. Yet the more pictures I see, the more I read, and hear, and reflect about painters and their works, the more I am convinced that. Pompey the clown is right in his observation. The more I seem to know, the nearer I approach the Socratic conviction," that I know nothing!" I speak not of the mystery of making pictures, but of that which involves their merits and demerits, when made. That there should be technical secrets, mysteries of the craft, is no more than might be expected. I can easily conceive, that to paint air, may be as difficult as to raise the wind, and that I never could do by whistling-that middle tint, like other happy middles, is hard to hit, and harder to keep-that a true carnation is as skilful a compound as a haggis-that to group a picture successfully may be as delicate a concern as to marshal a country dance at a country assembly, (and that would puzzle a modern herald, or seneschal of the olden time,)that the inner light of the Venetian colourists may be as unaccountable as the inward illumination of the elect -nay, I apprehend and appreciate the science and dexterity which can distinguish a horse from a crocodile, and a tree from a birch-broom. As for chiaroscuro, tone, keeping, contour, repose, &c. they are words which I venerate and understand as well as your worthy precentor doth Selah, Michtham, Negonoth, or Hallelujah. Yet I doubt not they have a meaning, as precise and categorical as the polarity of moral truth. Of the executive difficulties of art I may be allowed to judge-inasmuch as, after many years' self-instruction, and six lessons from an itinerant drawing-master, I never could represent a joint stool in just perspective, or delineate the correct profile of a gibbet. As for colouring, though I was early aware that light and shade in nature do not lie in jagged patches like the skin of a spotted negro, nor resemble London snow, or a damsel in a white gown newly emerged from the embraces of a chimney-sweeper that Spring, the lightsome lassie, does not wear green grogram, nor Autumn invest her maturer charms in a red and yellow Manchester print-I was totally unable to make any practical use of the knowledge, except indeed to convince myself, that a precocious passion for pencils and colour-boxes is no infallible sign of a genius for the fine arts. In truth, I am well contented to be ignorant of the mechanical arcana of art. Secrets of practice are profitable to none but practitioners. When I look on a fine picture, I would gladly forget the laborious, greasy, dirty-handed process that produced so much beauty, and believe it a living emanation of the inspired intellect a magic mirror of the artist's mind. What youthful poet, wooing his Fancy's Queen with tender poesy, would choose to have her witness to his "poetic pains"-the blots, the erasures, the gnawing of his pen -his stolen glances at the rhyming dictionary, his furtive forays into the "Elegant Extracts," and the "Beauties of the Living Poets?" What extempore preacher would expose his note-book to his congregation? For my own part I like a good beefsteak, but have no desire to follow it from the stall to the gridiron. I dearly love a Christmas pantomime. Old Prynne and Jeremy Collier, if their hearts were in the right place, (and Jeremy was a sound nonjuring Tory,) would have uncursed the stage, had they seen the bliss of wonderment, the bright, round, rosy, innocent faces of the children, the smug, rustic, half-childish delight of country cousins, and the glorious independence of the one-shilling gallery, at these silent dramas. But I would not, like the gallants of Shakspeare's days, place my stool on the stage during the performance, for fear of slipping through a trap-door, nor venture behind the scenes, lest I should forget to give Columbine her title, or mistake some venerable Peer for Pantaloon. But there is a mystery in art which I would fain dive into-a mystery of grace, of grandeur, of harmony—a power in lines and colours, which I cannot explain, and only half enjoy. : It never was my fortune to visit the foreign seats of art, and my acquaintance with English collections is neither intimate nor extensive; of .course, therefore, my notions of the grand style are vague, metaphysical, or at least poetical, for engravings of epic or tragic pictures, are as unsatisfactory as prose versions of epic poems. They shew what the work is about, not what it is. The temples of Greece and Italy, sublime in desolation, lovely in widow's weeds, are to me unreal as the hidden bowers of Izem. I never trode the long galleries of the Escurial, where the Titians slumber in peaceful beauty, ripening with mellow years. The Louvre and the Luxembourg are hard words, which I dare not pronounce, and scarce can spell. The Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the Florentine Gallery, are fair imaginations, or rather indistinct yearnings, not so definite or vivid as the hall of Valhalla. Michael Angelo is like Demogorgon, an awful name, and that is all,Raphael, Titian, Salvator Rosa, I have heard and read of. I believe in them-love them-but what are they to me? Were Raphael's miracles of grace decayed-if nought remained to shew where they had been, but such quaint mockeries of shapes as mouldy damps describe on the walls of a deserted mansion, I could dream of him still-still could I dream of faces whose beauty was no formal symmetry of outline, no bloom that Time bestows and takes away-but a permanent law and generative principle of loveliness, a visible efflux of divinity-still would I believe that what to me was but a dream, the fashion whereof I strove in vain to recall, was to Raphael a waking intuition, a clear idea, distinct in part and lineament, informing his skill, and ruling his hand, and substantiated in his human forms divine." Had Titian's colours been evanescent as the rainbow, I could yet believe (and alas! the time must come, when none can more than believe it) that his canvass glowed with the gorgeous light of prophetic vision, and melted with the voluptuous hues of lovers' fancy-that he clothed his naked goddesses with beauty as a garment-revealed young seraphs trailing clouds of glory, and shed immortal sunshine on Elysian plains. Salvator Rosanever was man so blessed in a name ! -But I once did see a landscape of Salvator's, which taught me what an imaginative thing a landscape may be, when drawn by a painter, not a land-surveyor-by apoet-painter, not a mere portrait-maker of wood, earth, and water (Nature's three flat notes, as Sir William Chambers* called them, like a flat as he was.) That shall positively be the last pun-this page-Such shaggy rocks-such dark and ruinous caves-such spectreeyed, serpent-headed trees, wreathed and contorted into hideous mimicry of human shape, as if by the struggles of evil spirits incarcerated in their trunks-such horrid depths of shade such fearful visitations of strange light-such horrid likenesses "Of all the mishaped half-human thoughts That solitary nature feeds," were surely never congregated in any local spot, assuredly not in merry England, nor Scotland either, for Robin Hood and "brave Rob Roy" were outlaws of another vein than Salvator's banditti,who seem not men of women born, nor fed with mother's milk," nor ever dandled on a father's knee," but natural kindred of the murderous woods and unholy dens they lurk in. They are no more sib to the free dwellers of Sherwood, than to the gentlemen of the Beggar's Opera. And then, such women! horribly beautiful! It is pleasant to talk of Corregio, Caravaggio, Julio Romano, Carlo Dolci, Domenichino, Parmegiano, and the rest of the Roman, Venetian, and Bolognese schools, their names are so musical. I have a superstitious reverence for See the "Heroic Epistle," attributed to Mason, one of the most vigorous satires of latter times.· One should hardly have expected it from so grave and reverend a gentleman. Yet who more grave and proper than Virgil, and he has displayed a strong satiric vein in more than one passage. "Qui Bavium non odit-amet tua carmina, Mævi," is worth a wilderness of Baviads and Mæviads. Gray, too, precise as he was, could wield the knout with a knowing spirit. See his lines upon Tophet. Albert Durer, a sort of bowing and speaking acquaintance with Teniers; I should like to be introduced to that pleasant, good-for-nothing Frenchman, Watteau, his pictures are such smooth, well-bred pieces of court scandal, as good as Grammont or Horace Walpole. I often quote Thomson's lines about "learned Poussin;" and am heartily tired of hearing English sun-sets always called Claudelike scenes. As for Beck, Bolswert, Bischop, Sceldt, Rottenhammer, Heere, Helmskirk, Hondekòtter, Hoskins, Howbraken, Ketel, Ralf, Cock, Block, Mengs, and Hink, I perfectly abhor their names, and am determined never to mention them in a sonnet as long as I live. With respect to Sculpture, my faith is great, and my knowledge very small. It is, however, much easier to conceive a statue than a painting, because the relation of parts to the whole is much simpler, and more obvious. Casts and prints give a very tolerable idea of what sort of excellence can be attained in marble or bronze. I have seen a copy of the Medicean Venus, and thought it an exceedingly clever model of a pretty loveable little woman. But I was neither "dazzled" nor" drunk with beauty," and must be excused if I doubt whether Byron was either. In Don Juan he speaks out, sensibly and plainly "I've seen far finer women, plump and real, Than all the creations of their stone ideal." "Loving in stone" must needs be Platonic love with a vengeance. Venus and common sense defend me from falling in love with a statue, either literal or metaphorical! In soft, fascinating, sexual loveliness, marble is a very inadequate representative of flesh and blood; and in bodying forth the beauties of the mind, the inexplicable combinations of thought and feeling, Sculpture is almost as inferior to Painting, as Painting to Poetry,-all are poor in comparison of Nature, who is true Poetry. Still the Venus de Medici is all it can or ought to be; it is more glorious to have given a title to such a work, than to have reigned over the vale of Arno. There is another Venus, known by the untranslatable epithet Kallipyga, which I have also seen in little-concerning which I shall borrow the rapture of that amiable cockney, Janus Weathercock, whilom connoisseur in ordinary to that dear defunct-the London-(Taylor and Hessey.) "Where shall we find a light sufficiently pervading for my exquisite coquette, my alluring bashfulness, that with such ravishing affectation gathers sidelong the thin robes high from her blooming limbs. long-stepping Thou beauteous-ankled nameless one, what country gave thee birth? Who was the god, or godlike youth, made blessed with thy love? What thrilling fingers Drew o'er the rounded wrist the elastic ring of gold? Is Nature now worn out? Or wert thou always as now, a vision of desire, the flower of a mind burning with the Idea of Beauty never to be realized, but by its own faint reflec tion?" Well done-now were I to try all night, I could not put myself into such an ecstasy. It is a very pretty figure, however, but my frigid barbarism has been far more affected by the sight of a rosy Westmoreland lassie, tripping over a swoln brook, with her basket on her head, looking behind and around her, to see if she were unobserved, and bursting out at the rustle of the copse hard by→ in a half-pleased, half-alarmed laugh than with any dim reflection of even Greek ideas. There is, methinks, a pravity of taste, a positive moral disproportion, in lavishing so much fond foolishness on an unsympathising block, a toy of mere mechanic craft. The legitimate pleasure to be derived from works of art is calm, austere, intellectual. The true object of admiration, is the intellect, that can so enshrine itself in passive matter, and fix a thought for perpetuity, awake the sense of beauty in a thousand minds through countless generations, and make us venerate the godlike in our possible selves.* * Since writing the above, I have seen another Venus, a copy from the antique, in the most immaculate marble. It is a crouching figure, supported on one knee, with exquisite gracefulness, half concealing the face and bosom with the round flexile |