weak-nerved as to notice a Scottish earthquake." Something of the same kind may be noticed with respect to real or alleged earthquakes in the moral world. Thus, the French Revolution was a decided earthquake in its way ;-thrones, pulpits, benches, tables, and chairs, were prostrated with the finest indiscrimination. But now-a-days, one hears of revolutions that really appear to us to be no revolutions at all. Unless we mistake, the newspapers have asserted nine national revolutions within two years; but on conversing with various ladies and gentlemen from those countries, where it is said they had occurred, our friends assured us that they had been present all the while, and that certainly had there been a revolution, some of them must have observed it. It is just the same with great battles. Thus, in South America, the Royalists and the people called Patriots engage, it is rumoured, in a mighty conflict. Blood flows in rivers, the soil is manured with brain, and one, or perhaps both armies, are totally extinguished. That is one account. Another is, that one man has been seriously wounded, and two others shrewdly suspected of having been taken prisoners; but on which side is uncertain. Not a drop of blood has been shed large enough to throw into the face of a fainting louse, or to afford a lunch to a bottled leech-brains there have been none-and both armies, after mutual extermination, march boldly into winter quarters all covered over with glory. So is it in the literary world. A book is published, and is said to have produced an earthquake. At Edinburgh, that mighty city-far larger than Athens-much liker to Nineveh, shakes from Stockbridge to Newington. St Paul's and St Giles's alike tremble, and there is but one cold shudder along a hundred streets. That is one account. Another is, that no book of any kind has been published at all-that honest people are following their usual occupations-that at the dinner hour they have all found the way to their mouths-and that Ambrose's, Young's, and Barclay's, have in the evening been crowded with their usual assemblage of rank, wealth, beauty, fashion, genius, and vertu. On one occasion only do we remember perfect consentaniety of emotion in this city, and that was on the publication of the Chaldee. Then was there an earthquake indeed. Lord forgive us, what a Stramash! We had gone down that morning to Leith ́to bathe and breakfast, and on our way up, we met many hundreds of the affrighted inhabitants, apparently flying down to the sea, either to plunge into it in despair, or to take shipping for a foreign land. The sight was most affecting to our tender hearts-old women of both sexes were seen hobbling along by the side of mere children— consternation was on every countenance;-Whig and Tory seemed to have forgotten all distinction under one common calamity-the oldest friends deserted each other in terror, and intimacies of years gave way in one little dreadful hour;-judgesjurisconsults-physicians-the clergy barbers, bakers, butlers, poets, painters, players, all felt alike-the trembling tailor looked down from his sky-light on a pale population. An eclipse, in the very darkest ages of astronomy, or an earthquake in its best days, never produced such an effect as the Chaldee; and even now, years after that great quake, there remain over all Scotland vestiges wide and deep of that hideous visitation. We have been insensibly led into this train of reasoning by the REPORT of the Edinburgh Society of Cognoscenti, on the Exhibition of the Scottish Institution for encouraging the Fine Arts. This REPORT has to some ears (pretty long ones) seemed louder than thunder, and we have been credibly. informed, that the whole city is in commotion. We have also been credibly informed, that devil or deuce a person minds this REPORT, any more than if it had been the report of a pop-gun, charged with a single pea. In this dilemma, we purchased a copy of the Report, to judge for ourselves respecting its probable effects on our metropolis. Pop-gun or MonsMeg, we were resolved to lay our hand on this piece of Liliputian or Brobdignaggian artillery; and we found the charge at least moderate-two shillings only; whereas the paper and printing could not have cost less than threepence. We have listened to the KEPORT; and if it has frightened any person whatever-man, woman, or child, their liver must be white as snow. But we chance to know that it has frightened a considerable number of persons; and on that account, we shall inquire shortly into the cause and rationality of their fears. Fear and Anger are of one family-the children of Folly. And accordingly the persons in question, (some of them, at least,) exhibit at one time faces pale with fright, and at another red with rage, alternating between the physiognomy of a gander and that of a bubbly-jock. The gentlemen to whom we allude are the ARTISTS OF EDINBURGH; and the following is a precis of their proceedings, dictated by their Fear and their Folly. A few days after the publication of this Report, a few of these Artists, (we never mention names of individuals in this Magazine,) with mealy faces, and ragged hair, and eyes endeavouring in vain to jump out of their sockets, were seen hurrying to and fro, sorely distraught. It was suspected that the gate of some Lunatic Asylum had been incautiously left open, and that some crazy folks had escaped into the city; but this conjecture unfortunately did not prove true. The persons alluded to have not yet been in confinement. They have hitherto been supposed sane; but their friends now begin to shake their heads. Well, then-these gentlemen having recovered from the speechless passion inspired by the Report, determined to discover who had let it, and to visit him, or them, we presume, with the full measure of their most formidable and destructive vengeance. They accordingly got some person to write for them a Manifesto, declaring their contempt, scorn, abhorrence, and so forth, of this Report; and with it they marched about in a state of the most pompous trepidation, from the house of one artist to another, demanding that he should instantly put his signature to it-or what? or be excommunicated from the fellowship of human beings, and be forced thenceforth to associate with Cockneys. To this manful and maledictory Manifesto, as its issuers no doubt deem it, we really are sorry to see appended several distinguished, and a good many respectable names. Raeburn, Nasmyth, W. Thomson, Andrew Wilson, Allan, and John Watson, have absolutely put down their signatures to this paltry and pitiful paper. Where were their wits a wool-gathering at the time? Did they read it, or hear it read? or were they one and all, altogether, or at sundry times and in divers manners, incapable of reading it, or of hearing it read? Devoutly do we trust, that they were all in a state of civilation when they put pen to paper; for more creditable to any man would it be, to get bowzy once a-day for a year, Sundays, perhaps, excepted, than to have signed this calumnious circular-this railing Round-Robin. Can any thing be more pitiable than to see two or three full-grown men, such as they who carried about this affair for signatures, able to walk, we presume, without any more than mutual assistance, and not altogether unable to articulate, we repeat, could any thing be more pitiable than to see these blockheads blundering about, up one stair and down another, in search of signatures of excommunication against a writer, who exhibits in every line of his Report the utmost candour, goodnature, chearfulness, and philanthropy? O doughty deputation of dunces! Missionaries to convert men from the principles and practice of Christianity! Sneaking-snivellingsmoking subscription-seekers, full of gall and guile! Why, what right have you, answer me that, to prevent any brother brush from brandishing a pen occasionally as well as a pencil? Though neither of you probably can write a single sentence of grammar yourself, is that any reason why David Dreadnought, and Paul Playfair, and Samuel Small-text, and the other members of the Cognoscenti, should wrap up their talent in a towel, except indeed it should be an oaken one? Where have you been living all your days? Have you been crawling on the surface, or sunk in the bowels of the earth? Have you been imprisoned for thirty years in the dungeons of the Inquisition? Have you been engaged in some mining speculation; and has your hair The society consists of upwards of forty members, ordinary and extraordinary. 4F got grey fifty fathoms down in a seam of coal? Have you tenanted a tunnel? Or been paid for sitting as hermits during the last half century in a sparry grotto, in the policy of some philosophical squire? If not, the Lord have mercy upon you, for you have shewn yourselves blind and deaf to every thing seen and heard by all other men, and are beyond all question the most unexceptionable asses now extant in the world. Gentle reader, methinks we see you smile-that we hear a titter-a laugha guffaw. But it is no laughing matter it is a most serious business indeed, and there is no saying where it will end. We should not be at all surprised to see it brought into Parliament, for the great bulwark of the age, the palladium of British liberty, has been attacked;-we mean the Freedom of the Press! (hear, hear, hear.) Will these Circulating Inquisitors dare to gag the mouths, padlock the lips, and manacle the hands of our Scottish Artists? And if they make such an attempt, will the NATION, THE PEOPLE, stand by lle? What will the PUBLIC say? Our own dear PUBLIC, whose virgin love we won in a single hour's tête-atête; and who, although all Venus to us, is all Fury to our foes at once Urania and Tisiphone? If we but let loose our PUBLIC upon you, you will change your names in terror (not per haps for the first time with some of you) and lament the day you ever at tempted to drum David Dreadnought off parade. wind-a douss on the aneller—a dimmer to the daylights, and a lárrup on the listeners of the Men of Manifestoes! Why, several of them had expressed their opinions in a way that prevented them from taking this oath, without notorious perjury. And others of them, who were too stupid and incapable to write a bad paragraph in a newspaper, had friends and relations, by blood or marriage, who praised them, and li belled their competitors to their hearts content. Stammering, stuttering, staggering, gaping, and every ugliest form of puzzled and perplexed speechlessness, were now the order of the day; and the very men who winced under the soft and silken lash of honest David, as if it had been a cat-of-ninetails in the fists of some Highland drummer-boy, stood now self-convicted of having committed the very same offence of which they, as we think, most unjustly accused Messrs Dreadnought and Playfair. Now, we beg leave to recommend to Mr Wilkie, or Allan, a subject for a picture, "The Artists who signed the Manifesto refusing the Test-Act." It is much better than " The Broken Fiddle," or "The Abdication of Queen Mary," or "The Death of Cardinal Wolsey," or " The Girl tying up her Brother's little Finger," or almost any historical subject that now occurs to our recollection. Indeed there may be two pictures for the first may be ous disdain-nose-upturning contumes ly, as if the subscriber were putting from him a rotten egg, and wide, deep, bright, and triumphant over all, the love of liberty, and a holy zeal for the advancement of Art all over the world. We shall defer our directions how to paint the second great Picture till next Number. Signing the Manifesto." In it the features of the subscribers must express lofty indignation-smiling scorn But soft-here comes the rub. Aflip-wreathing contempt-superciliter a number of innocent and smoothspoken gentlemen, in whose mouths butter has been known to remain un melted for the space of half a second, had with hands more or less steady, heads more or less muddy, and hearts more or less biley, signed the Manifesto against the writers of the Report, an artist, who saw all their motives in their proper light, proposed for their signature a much more sweeping Test-act, and called upon all who had signed the Manifesto against the Report, to swear solemnly by pen, pencil, and pallet, that none of them had ever, either directly or indirectly, had any thing whatever to do with any printed critique on any work shewn at the last Exhibition of the Scottish In stitution. Here was a graveller-a blow on the kidneys-a hit on the Now, must it not be quite a delight. ful and exalted thing to be an Edin burgh Artist? You are sitting some af ternoon asleep in your arm-chair by the fire-side, or perhaps putting the finish. ing touch to a young lady, when the door is flung open, and in comes a De putation demanding your signature to some manifesto or disclaimer, relative to some transaction of which perhaps you are just as guilty as Mr Hogg of the Chaldee. Would you not be praise worthy instantly to turn the Deputation down the spiral staircase? Or suppose you are the perpetrator of the enormity of putting pen to paper, and have actually written a pamphlet unlike the present one, as bad and stupid as any picture ever painted by any Depute, are you to fall down on your knees and confess, and supplicate mercy? Or to stand up with a face of ninefold brass, like the shield of an Homeric hero, and swear by art and artifice that you are innocent as an Embryo? No, no;-shewing down stairs is your sole resource. A regard to your own private character-to the peace of your domestic establishment and to the interests of the Fine Arts, imperiously demands that the Deputation be forthwith dismissed, neck and crop, into another spot of the terraqueous globe. Have any Whigs signed this Manifesto? We warrant they have. It breathes the small, puny, peevish, petty, fuming, fumbling spirit of the lowest and most contemptible whiggery. Some of these gentry have had their vanity tweaked by the nose with a most delicate and good-natured finger and thumb, and the dull devil within them has been roused. Why do they not bring an action,-an appeal at once to reason and taste, in the august form of the Law? We should not be at all surprised if they affirm that the criticisms of our honest friend David are attacks upon private character. Is it not, according to their views, a gross personal libel to say, that Mr Nasmyth's pictures "betoken the dexterity of hand of an able meehanic!" Might not Mr Peter Gibson prosecute the slanderer who publishes to the world, that that excellent artist "has taken a most undue liking to Scots fir-trees, and that he enriches his fore-grounds with brambles?" Might not Mr Andrew Wilson get damages to some tune, against the base libeller who has dared to assert that he has no poetic fire." And if Mr Nasmyth should prevail in his action, would not his fair daughters prevail in theirs too, whose works are said to be " all so alike, that it is impossible to distinguish the works of father from those of daughter or sister?" These are, we suppose, to the ears of Whigs, most wicked and atrocious words. The anonymous rullian who wrote them, would, we presume, according to them, From the tone of that last sentence, ly improbable, then, in self-defence, our boot might be applied to the posteriors of the Depute. But the Devil waits; so we must bring our article to a close, or there will be the Devil to pay. Well, then, "Gentlemen of the deputation, when you went your rounds, had you, or had you not, a wish, a hope, and a belief, that you might fix the guilt of the "Report" on one particular individual ?" Answer that question without shuffling. You know that your consciences condemn you? But that individual had too much sense, too much spirit, to be humbugged or humbled by such heroes. He treated your Manifesto with that scorn which every other good artist and independent man ought to have grinned upon it, and let the noodles go braying off with their elongated ears as wise as they came. Now every person who knows Mr Peter Gibson, (be he the author of this Pamphlet, or be he not,) knows that he is a man of talent and learning in his profession, and that he is the very last person in the world to seek to injure any one of his brother artists. As an artist, he has always had great merit, at least ever since we have known his works; and his improve ment in almost the only point in which he was at one time somewhat deficient, is this year manifestly great. He now studies nature herself, as well as the rules of art,-and as he possesses a strong, original, and cultivated mind, we are confident that he will be, ere long, if he be not already, in the first class of our Scottish painters of landscape. But we have no intention at present of entering into any discussion of the merits or demerits of the Edinburgh Artists. We have been rather remiss on the subject; and in our next Number, and several succeeding ones, we propose taking the "Report of the Cognoscenti," as a sort of text-book, and giving our opinion of all these gentlemen. Meanwhile, we recommend the "Report" to the public, as a very clever and interesting report indeed,-dealing out praise and blame with the most laudable impartiality, full of the milk of human kindness, and calculated to please, amuse, and even instruct every one, but a few irritable and thin-skinned Ninnies, many of whom have been praised in it far beyond their deserts, and will wince in good earnest when our thong is laid across their shoulders. As to the distinguished Artists, whose names are given above, as appended to the Manifesto, we have no doubt that they are by this time heartily ashamed of it; they all know our respect for their character and admiration of their genius; and if we have been a little jocular upon them at present, they may lay their account with being well buttered in our next Number. " ON MR HALLS' PICTURE OF THE TWO MARYS VISITING THE In the days when Hippolito de' Me- "Upon my word, very tolerable figures dici was still a youth, and the Cardi--but not what I should have expectnal of Cortona governed Florence in ed neither. I see now, that this Mithe name of Pope Clement, a certain chael is no God Almighty upon earth, Abbot from Lombardy, on his way to as people represent him to be. The Rome, was desirous of seeing the new statues at Count Pepoli's would stand Sacristy of St Laurence, which had a comparison with these; yet they been recently adorned by the immortal were done by Noddo, or by some such labours of Michael Angelo. He accord- person, little better than a common ingly called for this purpose on the stone-cutter." Master Tasso, hearing Prior of that establishment, who, refer- this, immediately set down the revering him to a young man, (named Tas- rend visitor for a piece of solemn imso,) for his conductor, commanded the pertinence; but for the time said nolatter, in an especial manner, to point thing, and passed on toward the libout to his reverence all that was most rary. worthy of observation in that illustrious edifice. The Abbot, (who was a man of taste and critical judgment,) after having surveyed the divine sculptures with vast attention, observed, Passing through the church, in their way to that apartment, the Abbot asked many questions, as to when it was built, and who was the architect, and, without waiting for the answer, went |