six o'clock, he enquired where Emma was, and Dr D——, and Mr F—, and myself. We severally answered, that we sat around him. "I have not scen you for the last twenty minutes. Shake hands with me!" We did. "Emma, my sweet love! put your arm round my neck -I am cold, cold." Her tears fell fast on his face. "Don't cry, love -don't-I am quite happy!-God -God-bless you, love!" His lower jaw began to droop a little. Mr F, moved almost to tears, rose from his chair, and noiselessly kneeled down beside him. "Have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed, looking steadfastly into his face. "İ DO!" he answered distinctly, while a faint smile stole over his drooping features. "Let us pray !" whispered Mr F-; and we all knelt down in silence. I was never so overpowered in my life. I thought I should have been choked with suppressing my emotions. "O Lord, our heavenly Father!" commenced Mr F, in a low tone," receive thou the spirit of this our dying brother” E— slowly elevated his left hand, and kept it pointing upwards for a few moments, when it suddenly dropped, and a long deep respiration announced that this great and good man had breathed his last! a No one in the room spoke or stirred for several minutes; and I almost thought I could hear the beatings of our hearts. He died within few moments of six o'clock. Yes -there lay the sad effigy of our deceased " guide, philosopher, and friend"-and yet, why call it sad? I could detect no trace of sadness in his features-he had left in peace and joy; he had lived well, and died as he had lived. I can now appreciate the force of that prayer of one of old-"Let ME die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!" There was some talk among his friends of erecting a tablet to his memory in Westminster Abbey; but it has been dropped. We soon lose the recollection of departed excellence, if it require any thing like active exertion. IGNORAMUS ON THE FINE ARTS. No .II. We now return in our ignorance to the exposition of the Fine Arts of old in England. Of ancient English painting our friend Allan gives a rapid and vigorous sketch; scanty enough, indeed, but ex nihilo nihil fit. The shallow rill was lost in desert sands, and the true fountain of British Art arose in the 18th century. Whatever may be decided as to the authenticity of Ossian or Taiessin, they certainly were not the fathers of modern British verse. Religious painting of some sort or other was introduced by St Benedict Bisiob, the friend and early preceptor of the venerable Bede, whose history you have read in Southey's Vindicia Ecclesiæ Anglicana, or if not, pray do. He ornamented the church of Wearmouth with the Visions of the Apocalypse. It would be curious, if it were possible, to compare those said Visions at Wearmouth with Mr West's Death on the Pale Horse, and other pieces taken from the same mysterious source in later times, all of which, whatever their historical merits, seem to fall into the same error of presenting simultaneously objects which the Prophet must have seen in succession. But it is quite impossible to paint a Vision, far more to convey to waking uninspired sense, the power and import of a Prophet's vision. The best that can be achieved in that kind is as impotent as the black pages in Tristram Shandy to pourtray primeval darkness. Of St Benedict, however, Mr Cunningham says nothing, but begins his survey with Henry the Third, a timid and pious king, who founded many Cathedrals, and enriched them with sculpture and painting, to an extent, and with a skill that me rited the commendation of Flaxman. The royal instructions of 1233 are curious, and inform us of the character of art at that remote period, and of the subordinate condition of its professors. In Italy, indeed, as well as in England, an artist was then, and long after, considered as a mere mechanic. He was commonly at once a carver of wood, a maker of figures, a house and heraldry painter, a carpenter, an upholsterer, and a mason; and sometimes, over and above all this, he was a tailor. This seems to surprise and offend Allan; but, for my part, I am so far from wondering that artists were tailors in the fourteenth century, that I regret that tailors are not artists in the nineteenth, and fearlessly affirm that no human being is fit to be tailor, mantua-maker, milliner, corset-maker, coiffeur, or even so much as to dress his own hair, who has not a taste for the arts of design. Are not the greatest masters almost as much celebrated for their drape ries as for their nudes? Does not the tailor, as well as the artist, require much knowledge of colour, much skill of hand, much experience in human character, an acquaintance with anatomy, a smattering of geometry, a fine sense of beauty, and adroitness at flattery, a nice observance of complexions, dexterity in concealing the defects of nature, and the talent of displaying and imitating her perfections? Does not a comely costume require a variety of parts, a unity in the whole, a harmony of colours, a tone, a fitness, a just magnitude, a proportion, a characteristic expression, suited to the age, country, profession, aspect, height, and manner of the wearer? If Albert Durer drew mathematically, and published a book of proportions for the instruction of his trade-our modern costumiers take measure by algebra, and cut out by diagrams. If a perfect connoisseur can ascertain the merits and dimensions of a colossus, of which no part is extant but the great toe, Snip can do morehe can make you an impeccable pair of inexpressibles, by simply taking the girth of your thumb. It would contribute marvellously, not only to the grace of our beaux, but to the health of our belles, if their advisers in affairs of dress had studied the VOL. XXIX, NO. CLXXVIII. antique, read Sir Joshua's Lectures and Hogarth's Analysis, and imbibed the principles of the Italian masters. So might they learn what to aim atany fashionable assembly will shew them what to shun. As the colouring of a picture may be at once chaste and rich, so may a dress be splendid, and yet simple. Bad pictures are often both tawdry and dingy-so are ill-dressed people. With regard to all drapery, whether stitched, painted, or carved, one rule is absolute-it should never challenge a separate attention, but seem a necessary congenital part of the person. Clothes, if we think of them on ourselves, must be uncomfortable-if in others, indecorous. The draperies of mere drapery-painters remind us of the silks and velvets displayed some years ago at Brandenburg-house, or a Sabbathbreaking Cockney in his Sunday toggery-or, to come nearer to the point, a lay figure in real clothes. Ill-fashioned garments have always more or less of this fault; you can neither wear them, nor see them worn, without thinking of them. But the best and most graceful offend on the same ground, if, however wellfashioned, they be very much out of the fashion, or anywise unsuitable to the age, rank, or character of the wearer. Sombre habits in a dashing woman of fashion have the effect of a disguise. It is possible to dress too plain for modesty. Sir Joshua advises that drapery should be neither silk, satin, gros de Naples, velvet, plush, sarsenet, calico, cambric, paduasoy, corduroy, bombazine, huckaback, nor any other fabric or manufacture. It should be drapery, and nothing else—a wise precept, which the tailor cannot follow to the letter, but to the spirit whereof he will do well to attend. To prove that I am not singular in my views of this subject, it is only necessary to mention that certain ladies consulted Kent, the universal genius, painter, architect, and landscape-gardener, about their birthday suits; and the wicked wag arrayed one in a petticoat, decorated with columns of the five orders, and another in a bronze-coloured satin, with ornaments of gold. In sober sadness, and conscious ignorance, I cannot conceive the mere 2 K colourist, or even the designer, who works for the eye alone,-whose designs contain neither poetry nor sense, and communicate neither knowledge nor power, as anywise superior to a tailor. His craft may, or may not, be the more difficult of the two; but Snip's is undoubtedly the more useful. As for the sensual pleasure which colour is capable of affording, Titian himself was a fool to the waved and watered, glossy, lightcatching, ever-varying hues of the silken bales, for which hungry Spitalfields too often receives the wages of starvation. Every vagrant Autolycus," each wandering merchant bent beneath his load,"-exposes to the covetous eyes of the village lass more gorgeous tints than ever lay on mortal palette! To proceed. When the arts were reviving in Italy, England, occupied with foreign and domestic wars, oppressed in her trade, exhausted in her treasury, devoted to ruin, expense, and senseless ostentation, profited not by the example. Italy exported Bulls and Legates a Ceitere, but kept the painters at home; yet, in the age of Chaucer, a great artist would not have been neglected. The third Edward was magnificent; his unfortunate grandson was profuse. John of Gaunt was the patron of Chaucer, but whether as poet or painter, does not appear. Richard II. noticed Gower.* What art The earlier copies of this strange poem contain many flattering notices of Richard, which the old bard thought proper afterwards to expunge when that unhappy prince had lost the popularity to which he "enfeoffed himself," and for which he forfeited authority and respect. Poets, vain men, in their mood, Travel with the multitude. Yet it was not much to Gower's credit, after receiving such condescension from his hapless sovereign, to hail the accession of the usurper Bolingbroke, in vile Leonine, or rather Assinine verses. The author who beshrives an established sovereign, has at least custom to plead for his folly; but he that hastens to salute the parhelion of revolution, runs the risk of being derided as a false prophet, and despised as a sycophant. Poets, it seems, could be as base in the fourteenth century as in the nineteenth. Nay, I will fearlessly aver, that the moral character of fine literature was never so high or so pure as at present. Gower has of late found a sturdy patron in Sharon Turner, who seems inclined to set him on a level at least with Chaucer. Sharon is a sensible man, a patient investigator of the past. English history is much indebted to his labours; but he is not quite free from that amiable partiality which we all are apt to feel for what is peculiarly our own. Well did Elia observe, one cannot make a pet of a book that every body reads. But a book that nobody has read but one's self, and perhaps half a dozen of one's particular friends, becomes part of one's personality-" bone of my bone." Sir William Jones equalled Ferdusi to Homer, and thought the Sacontala worthy of Euripides, Racine, or Shakspeare. Probably Dr Bowring thinks the Russian anthology superior to the Greek. According to "ancient Gower," love-making in his time must have been a very serious and erudite business; for his Confessio Amantis-a conversation between a young lover and the Priest of Venus-seems to be a metrical encyclopædia,—a brief, tedious abstract of the omne scibile,—a compendium of all the ologies then extant. Some of the love-tales, however, are related with much truth and simple pathos. Gower had certainly been in love himself; but whether he found alchymy and logic very serviceable in his courtship, is rather there was, lack'd not encouragement." Painting partook of the war. like spirit of the time, and became martial, instead of religious. But a passion for gilded banners and surcoats of arms, is not a taste for art. St Edward is as good a subject as St George and the Wiverns of Heraldry are as far removed from la belle Nature, as the Dragons of the Apocalypse. In fact, kings and princes cannot make artists; they can only employ and pay them; and mere pageantry is so far from art, that it hardly implies civilization. Well does Milton speak of " barbaric pearl and gold.' The spirit of art is proud, and brooks not the condition of a pampered menial; hence, though it may spring, and grow, and flourish amid war and tumult, and even survive under a despotism-under a military aristocracy, it searce can lift its head. It must be loved, honoured, esteemed, for its own sakenot fed, flattered, and despised. The knights and barons bold might be liberal, as the better kind of thieves generally are, to the minstrels who lauded their vices, and would have rewarded the limner who could emblazon images of blood or sensuality, as well as the largitores rapina commonly reward the instruments of their pleasures; but they cannot confer dignity. Those haughty lords dubious. The leading idea of his Confessio is this-that the suitor, to be worthy of his mistress, should be furnished, not only with every moral and Christian virtue, but with all divine and human learning, with every feat of skill, and every device of wit. Mr Turner has given copious extracts, which will probably satisfy the curious reader. He that wants more of the "moral Gower," will find the whole of his English works in the second volume of Chalmers's collection. His French verses, entitled Petitio Orantis, and his Latin Rhyming Chronicle, have not, to my knowledge, been printed. The Vox Clamantis is a half historical, half allegorical description of Wat Tyler's insurrection, and the disorders consequent thereon. It may contain some curious information, and should be carefully and learnedly edited at the public expense. Gower could not tell his tale of domestic troubles without converting it into a vision. This dozing somnambulistic fashion then in vogue, has of late been revived by poets, who have gone to sleep to dream over what they had read in the Times or the Annual Register,-to be informed, supernaturally, of the contents of the London Gazette extraordinary. It is remarkable, that almost all the allegorical compositions of the middle ages begin with a description of the weather, or the time of the year -a custom followed in the " Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates," and in the prologues to Gawain Douglass's Æneid. The Vox Clamantis accordingly begins with a florid delineation of summer, as Wat Tyler's rebellion broke out in June 1381. The poet innocently goeth forth to pick flowers, falls asleep, and dreams that a huge multitude of men-monsters, in the shape of wolves, apes, swine, &c., advanced towards him-who for their leader chose a jay, called Wat-committed terrible havoc, and drove well-disposed persons himself among the rest-to the woods and caves. His Wat, whom he sets forth as "Vox tetra, trux vultus, verissima mortis imago," bears small resemblance to the sighing sentimental Reformer, the Wat Tyler of surreptitious notoriety. The poem proceeds with a satirical description of the vices of the times-not exactly in the manner of the " Age," a poem; or the "Age Reviewed," a satire; or even of the "Reigning Vice"—and concludes with earnestly exhorting Richard to a radical reform of himself. As a specimen of Gower's Latin versification: Sylva vetus densa, nulla violata securi, Absque supercilio, mihi nubis sub tegumento; Nulla superficies tunc, quia trita fuit, Perque dies aliquot latitens omnemque tremiscens These verses would hardly escape flogging at Eton. Gower seems to have been a man of considerable wealth, which he devoted and bequeathed to pious purposes. Like most of our early writers, characterised at least as much by the garrulity of age as the simplicity of childhood, "full of wise saws and modern instances," an endless story-teller, who could conjure a Christian meaning into a heathen fable, and evoke a heavy moral from a light love-tale; a very honest man-politics excepted-with a fair allowance of honest self-importance; a severe censor of his age, which was indeed a bad one; and a bold monitor of his king, when that king was too feeble to resent the indignity. might have sense enough to admire genius; but the pride of caste would never allow them to esteem it. than the most degenerate of their descendants. We discover something of their way of living, which was far more genial and comfortable than we are apt to suppose. We may form some notion of their prevailing cast of features. Above all, the existence of such laborious luxuries of the eye, is a consoling fact. To read the books called Histories, we might imagine that murder and arson, tyranny and fraud, usurpation and persecution, were the sole employments of mankind-that the great were all wicked, and the poor all miserable. It is pleasant, therefore, to find that men have always had some leisure look out of their windows with calm, observant eyes-and that many can be amused with trifles in the worst of times—that is, at all times—which, thank God, are not half so bad as some malcontents would persuade Vanity is a bad patron, and Superstition a much worse. It is a great mistake that Popery was the nurse of modern painting; the more rigid Romanists are, and always were, as averse to real art as the Puritans themselves. Individual Popes, and wealthy orders, doubtless, encouraged painting; but this supposed misappropriation of church-treasures did not escape censure. Superstition is the child of Fear-the basest, cruellest, blindest, stupidest passion in human nature. It represents the Deity as an ugly and malignant De--that a few have ever been able to mon sees nothing but evil and deformity in the works of God. How, then, should it imprint beauty on the works of man? Idolatry, and her elder sister Allegory, have spawned more monsters than ever sprung - from Medusa's Gorgon blood. Nothing can be meaner or more hideous than the daubs and dolls to which the Papists fall down. Raphael's Madonnas work no miracles. In truth, the church of Rome has been as much divided against itself, as ever the Protestant Miscellany. There are High-church Catholics, and Lowchurch Catholics, bigots, and liberals, poetical enthusiasts, vulgar fanatics, and Utilitarian prosemen, united, it may be, by a nominal adherence, to Lord Peter, but far enough from being of one mind, either about religious painting or any thing else. After all, the most interesting artists of the Middle Ages were not the professors, with their omnigenous qualifications, but the monks and the ladies. The illuminated missals, and other manuscripts-as finely pencilled as time and patience could make them-as gay as gilt and glowing colours must be-not always so decorous as work of holy hand should be-have a value, which does not invariably pertain to the chef-d'œuvres of the classic schools--one may learn a great deal from them. From these, and the unceasing fulminations of the pulpit against excess of apparel, together with the yet more inefficient sumptuary laws, we find that our wise ancestors were even more expensive, and far more absurd and indecent, in arraying their persons, us. Many of these curiosities were destroyed at the Reformation, which, like all great changes, was brought about by the combined agency of the best spirits and the worst. Whether the havoc of that era proceeded from misguided zeal, and indiscreet imitation of the Israelites, or from the mobbish love of destruction, incited, as usual, by cold-blooded speculators in plunder, for us it is most wise to consider it as the price of a benefit, which could not be purchased too dear. It is some consolation, too, that we had no works of art worth regretting. We have cathedrals still in beauty and perfection; and though some are in ruins, they are not less honourable-perhaps more honoured, and certainly more poetical and picturesque. But the tapestry and embroidery, the curious needlework, the labours of the graphic loom, which employed the well-pricked fingers of the dames of old, could excite no religious animosity; but worms, and damps, and fire, and change of fashions, and perhaps more than all, the gold and silver thread which they contained, have mingled most of these products of domestic industry with the mass of things that were. But it is by no means true, as Mr Cunningham asserts, that this branch of art is entirely neglected at present. The ladies do not, indeed, work battle-pieces, or Scripturepieces, or naked gods, in worsted, |