LONDON-PICTURES-RAPHAEL.

by Le Sueur, very good. great merit by Bolognesi. excellent, the other bad.

85

Several landscapes of Two Carlo Dolce; one

I cannot recover from the surprise I have felt on seeing Raphael's pictures, hard like cut tin; always the same Madona expression, or rather absence of expression, and then in the back ground indigo landscapes, with trees like brooms.

Raphael was not a landscape-painter, it is true; but then, why introduce landscapes at all, and not perceive that they were so bad? I have had the courage to confess all this heresy to a professed connoisseur, who comforted me with an assurance, that the pictures of which I complained, were before Raphael's good manner, and as, Raphael as he is, he must have been a bad painter before he was the very best that ever was, I feel a little reconciled with myself for the present. Leonardo da Vinci charms me with his transparent shadows, and perfect finishing, without being cold or hard. Although something older than Raphael, his pictures, with their three centuries, are as fresh as if they had been painted yesterday. It is said of him, that he carefully prepared his colours himself; as Sir Joshua Reynolds did, but with a very different success. Leo, who had called him to his court, conceived a contempt for him from that circumstance, and Raphael succeeded Leonardo da Vinci, who left his unworthy protector. Mr. Hope is particularly rich in Flemish pictures, executed by the best masters for that family of princely merchants, during the last 200 years; they have never been in any other hands, and are in high preservation,-most of them are wonderfully beautiful, and very few, if any, participate in the vulgarity of taste and subjects peculiar to that school. I shall

name a few only. St. John in the desert, by Breenberg;-not at all a desert, yet a fine picture. Van Huysen, very fine. Berghen, a great composition of rocks, and effects of light. Gerard Dow, a domestic scene, exquisitely finished. Polemberg, graceful and light trees, and female nudities, precisely the reverse. Brugo, his garden of Eden is a mere menagerie, where birds and beasts are crowded, but not grouped together,the colouring as gaudy as possible. Bactchuy, two highly-finished sea views. Weenix, two large pictures, dead and live game. The subject is certainly not very interesting, and yet I have never seen any thing more admirable, not only for the high finish, which is such as to distinguish the very down of the feathers, a hair, a blade of grass; but for the vigour of effect, as a whole, the originality, the simplicity, the truth of attitude, of motion, of composition. When you look near, the details appear to have been the principal object and great aim of the artist; step back, and all is freedom and bold touches; the bounding deer seems starting from the canvas. Ruisdale's landscapes are cold and black, and yet beautiful. Wooverman introduces always, it seems, a white horse in his pictures; there is at Mr. Hope's a white horse, par excellence, full of fire and impatience at the sound of the war trumpet.

A collection of pictures, of some reputation (Mr. Walsh Porter's) is for sale at Christie's ;—but I saw nothing there half so worthy of attention as the auctioneer himself. It is a received thing here, that a person of that profession is to play the buffoon, and amuse his customers with exaggerated and fantastical descriptions of the things he offers for sale,-odd digressions, and burlesque earnest

LONDON-AUCTIONS.

87

ness, particularly when he deals in objects of taste, of no very definable value, as china, pictures, an tiques, &c. What he What he says does not persuade any body; it is not meant to be believed, but merely to amuse the crowd of rich idlers, who go there to kill time, and being there, buy what they might not otherwise have thought of buying, precisely as the mountebanks at fairs attract the populace. These have a politer audience to entertain, and need more refinement in their jokes, and really shew sometimes a good deal of humour, and strokes of real wit. It must be owned, that the anxious solicitude of amateurs about trifles, the importance they attach to certain conventional beauties and merits of their own creation, and which none but the initiated in the mysteries of taste can discover; the little tricks they practise against each other, in pursuit of their common game, and manœuvres of various sorts, afford ample field to ridicule, and materials to amuse the amateurs at their own expense. Foote, who wrote farces, and played in them with equal success, drew for the stage a dilettante auctioneer from nature; the wit, and general application of the satire, has survived the mere personal mimickry intended; as the Tartuffe of Moliere, (if I may be allowed to compare these two writers) remains an incomparable picture of hypocrisy, while the original who sat for the trait is forgotten.

por

Another collection has been sold, that of Mr. Greville. The object of this connoisseur was to exhibit the progress of the art from its origin, by a series of pictures of successive ages;-many were very bad, but it was at least an acknowledged consequence of his plan.

We have just seen Madame Catalani;--she is a bewitching creature, and, notwithstanding our high expectations, she has exceeded them. Her voice, which is strong, clear, and harmonious, and produced without effort or contorsions, is the least of her attractions. The grace and the modesty of her appearance,-the naïveté,-the archness of her smile, tender and playful at the same time, charmed us still more than her voice. Des Hayes and Vestris are winged Mercuries; this Vestris is, however, said to be inferior to the others. Some of my countrymen have assured me, in confidence, that he would not be endured at Paris;-it may be so, I have not had the honour of being lately at Paris. The Opera-house of London is, like all the theatres I have seen in England, in the shape of a horse-shoe. The side-boxes are ill turned to see, and the front ones too far to hear. The height of the ceiling is so great that the voice is lost. It seems strange that the semicircular shape should not have occurred, or should not have been adopted. Each spectator would have the actors precisely in front of him, and at a mean distance, equal for all. Such a theatre would moreover contain more spectators. I would lower the ceiling onethird at least, dispensing with the two upper tiers of boxes. It would be a very small pecuniary sacrifice, this high region being always but thinly filled, and by spectators whose presence, or behaviour at least, is either a great scandal, or very inconvenient; that is to say, in the side-galleries, certain ladies, who carry on their trade quite openly, selling and delivering the articles they deal in under the eye of the public, and with a degree of shamelessness for which the inhabitants of Otaheite alone can furnish any precedent. That part

LONDON-OPERA-HOUSE-COVENT-GARDEN RIOTS. 89

1

of the upper region which fronts the stage is occupied by a less indecent, but a more noisy sort of people; sailors, footmen, low tradesmen and their wives and mistresses, who enjoy themselves, drinking, whistling, howling as much as they please. These gods, for so they are called from their elevated station, which is in France denominated the paradis, assume the high prerogative of hurling down their thunder on both actors and spectators, in the shape of nut-shells, cores of apples, and orange-peel. This innocent amusement has always been considered in England as a sort of exuberance of liberty, of which it is well to have a little too much, to be sure that you have enough. Some persons complain even that the gods are become much too tame and tractable, and like the French tenants of the paradis,—a good thing in itself, but a bad omen. Surprised to see sentinels with fixed bayonets at all the avenues of the playhouse, I inquired, whether, in case of disorders and violence, these soldiers might make use of their arms. By no means, I was told. A murder by the bayonet would be like any other.-Why then have bayonets? Is it to accustom the people to the sight of the thing before it is used?

The former turbulence of the lower ranks

seems to have reached the upper. There were, some months ago, certain riotous proceedings, which shook the very foundations, if not of the state, at least those of the playhouse. As it was before our arrival, I only speak from hearsay. The manas ger of the Theatre-Royal of Covent-Garden had become, it seems, guilty of two crimes of lese terre: first, of having raised the prices a little, under pretence of their being no higher than in the

par