RA-A small whole length of his Royal Highness sitting reading, with his back to the window. This is admirable for its force and truth of light and shadow. The Duke is there-and we only wonder all the army list are not pressing their petitions upon him. The effect of the light shining through the white blind, and showing itself upon the carpet and floor under the window, is per fect. 135. The Parish Beadle. D. Wilkie, RA. This picture is thus mottoed, from Burn's Justice: "And an officer giveth sufficient notice what he is, when he saith to the party, I arrest you in the King's name; and in such case the party at their peril ought to obey him." A poor Italian boy, with his monkey and dancing dogs, followed by a man with a bear, and a woman with a hurdy-gurdy, is being taken to the watch-house. To the right of the picture, a man is unlocking the little prison door in the shade, and in the left hand corner, some boys are engaged in beckoning-we rather think to the monkey. The woman with her dark gipsy face, is entering her protest against the cocked-hat-who is lugging the poor offender along with great earnestness. The boy looks quite woe-begone, and the monkey on his shoulder is lost in sympathy. The bear is finely painted, and seems to have as much disgust at the watch-house as any of the company. We think the boys beckoning are too unobservant of the bear, who is evidently growling at their very knees. A fair is seen in the distance, and the freedom of it forms a beautiful contrast with the confined precinct of the prison. The expression is richly varied throughout this picture, and the light and shadow are most forcible. Indeed, Wilkie is one of the old masters. He may say what he likes, dress as he pleases, talk Scottishly to the utmost - we are sure he is an old master-a painter of centuries ago. 136. Christ crowned with Thorns. R. Westall, RA.---We are not aware that this picture is bespoke, and we were really not led to expect that Mr. Westall, who is known so well as a profit-making artist in the trade, would have ventured upon a large historical picture without a commission; the spirit which has roused him to this grand hazard, has had its fine effect upon the work-for there is more of the subject and less of Mr. Westall in the design and execution than we ever before remarked. Resignation and dignity characterize the principal figure-and other parts of the picture have much merit,-especially the head of the Pharisee on the left of Christ, and the figure of the Ecclesiastic with a long white dress and black cap, holding a roll of parchment, at the extremity of the canvas, opposite to the left hand of the spectator. This latter is finely conceived, and is natural. We doubt the propriety of surrounding the head of the Saviour with a glory at the moment of humiliation and suffering. Others have committed the same error-but that is no justification of its repetition. 142. Portrait of a Gentleman. Sir H. Raeburn, RA. A highly finished half length: -the head is excellent. 158. Dutch Market Boats, Rotterdam. A. W. Callcott, RA.-This is an admirable painting. The fine force of the fore-part of the picture is beautifully contrasted with the misty and indistinct buildings in the back. The distance between the two market-boats is forcibly determined-and the distance between them and the city is equally so. The flatness and transparency of the water is beyond all praise. It has the dark, brown, oily, glossiness of pool water. Thẻ water about a quay has a character of its own. 164. Portraits of Horses, the property of J. Allnutt, Esq. J. Ward, RA. An excellent little picture; the horses, five in number, are at liberty in a wild country, and are admirably varied in their attitudes and characters. The landscape is simple and appropriate. 179. Study of Trees. J. Constable, A.-This is painted with great boldness of pencil and force of effect, though apparently the work only of a day. 189. Portrait of J. T. Barber Beaumont, Esq. H. W. Pickersgill, A.This is a whole length sitting, and is an excellent and well studied picture. The legs and thighs are remarkably well drawn; the latter so skilfully This is a very masterly performance: the colouring is exquisite, and we must say that, in our opinion, it far exceeds any other work of the artist, both in conception and execution. The figure of the lady is shrunk up from every thing but its own beauty; and the luxurious flowing form of Comus, with his flushed cheeks, and easy symmetry of limb, seems to show her off doubly calm and fair. The cold gathered looks of the lady appear to defy temptation: in them is the chaste and fixed mind. She is seated in a marble chair, by the side of some white marble pillars of a temple; and all around are dancing and tumbling satyrs, overexcited with wine and music. The glowing shoulders and backs of these nutbrown revellers show off against the cooler tints of the picture, like ripe fruit in white porcelain. In this dazzling autumnal richness of colour, we are continually reminded of Rebens. The trees of the forest, the portentous sky, the wealth of colour, make this picture quite a poem in itself. 233. The Battle of the Angels. W Y. Ottley, H.-This picture, in its spirited drawing, and in its great conception, reminds us of a work d one of the old masters. It is a battle of the Angels; a study, in chiaroscuro, unfinished. In the extreme distance, at the top, the general com bat is alive---while nearer to the eye, the rebel army of spirits begins to give way before the phalanx of the good angels; and in front, where Michael has overthrown Satan, the rout is complete !---In chiaroscur only ought such a subject to be treated; for what pencil could give of angels, the fiery light of their wa the brightness, the heavenly histe fare, the gloom of their terror, the darkness of their defeat? We trust the artist will leave the study ast is, and not by temperate after-touches attempt to perfect what can caly approach perfection by being dose under the inspiration of the first co ception. 244. A Cottage. J. Constable.—A delightful cottage scene, true as ever woodman smoked beside! It is h tle, if at all, inferior to Hobbima 261. L'Improvisatrice. H. V Pickersgill, A. A very pleasing and cleverly painted half-length & an Italian female playing and singing to her guitar. She seems, however, scarcely up! Inspiration is wanting. We should have preferred the por trait of an Improvisatrice in full song, with all the light in her eyes and over her forehead, and with the music parting from her lips. Here for the present we must stop; in the next Number of our Maga zine we hope to be able to do justice to those artists whose works are left unnoticed. EPIGRAM, Written on a Picture, in the Exhibition, called "The Doubtful Sneeze." The doubtful sneeze! a failure quite— A winker half, and half a gaper Alas! to paint on canvas here THE DRAMA. COVENT GARDEN THEATRE. Clari, or the Maid of Milan. A SERIOUS Opera from the French is a serious evil. The light gossamer pieces which are woven from that source, on sultry summer nights, look bright and glittering for their hour, and then pass away. But a long solemn heavy drama of three acts, as long as Jenkinson's legs, constructed on a foundation of false sentiment, is too much. We can cry our eyes out with any gentlemen living, for three quarters of an hour, at a murder miraculously discovered by a brace of ravens flying over the ruffian's head on the night of Easter Monday, when he has his best clothes on; and can damp as many white pocket handkerchiefs as our betters, at the girl and the spoon, where she is involved in trouble by the natural means of a magpie, who puts the spoon in the spout of the church, until a person in the nick of the moment takes it out of the spout, or, to speak less slangly, redeems it. These temporary troubles please us well enough, and we love the gentle dishonesty. But when the extravagance and pestilent pathos of the French come to be forced upon us for three hours, we beg leave to dry our eyes, pocket our cambric buckets-button up our pockets, and protest as stoutly as we can, against our tears and our money being so plentifully drawn upon. Clari is the work of Mr. Howard Payne, the American Roscius; and, certainly, to adapt an expression of Mr. Coleridge, in this instance a very American Roscius. The story which runs, like Pickford's Manchester Van, solidly through the night, is of a girl who is trepanned, not seduced, to quit her father's house, and to make love at the mansion of the Count Vivaldi. The Count now opens his heart-aye-candidly, for he wishes to love without marriage; but though he wishes thus to be the master-she declines being the mistress, and the abomination of his deceit and villany drops her ladyship and the drop scene; ending the first act of Parisian dulness done into English by an American. The second act is taken up with Clari escaping from a room in the Count's mansion, by moonlight, in a light chip hat. The third act shows her return to her father's cottage; a sweet spot by the side of a waterfall (for, as Clari's French papa would moralize, water is liable to its falls, as well as woman): here Mr. Fawcett lives on a moderate income, with a corn-rick, a gun, a white head, a pair of gaiters, and a wife. The daughter comes home from her lover, and Mr. Fawcett from rabbit-shooting, much about the same time. He is in despair. She is in the farm yard. The mother brings her veiled to hear the terrible denunciations of an angry father against a fallen and lost daughter; in the course of which, the acting manager looks like Mrs. Chapone in gaiters. Clari takes off the veil (we hardly thought her pure enough ever to have taken it) at the moment when Mr. Fawcett has elevated himself to such a pitch of didactic retrospection, as to look the Editor of the Critical Review-she shrieks-the father hears she is innocent, and then very prudently forgives her. Count Vivaldi enters, unfolds his determination to marry Miss Tree (Clari), and all the difficulties are overcome-the third being made the Marriage Act. The characters are all old friends with very indifferent new faces. Clari and Louisa Venoni are two for a pair; and Fawcett is a revived parent, out of a play called (if we remember rightly) Grieving's a Folly. The Count is a moral seducer, not at all uncommon. The language is French-English, which is not the best of styles. The performers did their utmost. Miss Tree, in Clari, was interesting, and made it more natural than any other lady could have done. In the last scene, where she comes dejectedly in at the old gate, in the face of the bright old waterfall, crawling by the old golden corn-rick, as though they were the same on purpose to rebuke her for the change, she is beautiful, and, it would be unjust not to ad mit, deeply pathetic. The loud moral controversy that follows is, however, an overplus of pathos that undoes the truth abominably. Fawcett played his little bit of agony in the last act with so much zeal, that we really thought Miss Tree, or some young lady, had trod upon the toes of his moral indignation. He shook his white hairs, and worried the pathos like a terrier. Mrs. Chatterley, who played the mother, perceived like Desdemona "a divided duty," all the evening, and went between father and daughter every moment. The scenery was beautiful, and would have saved a worse play. (The music by Bishop had none of Bishop's power; but one song, "Home, Home,' was most tenderly composed and Miss Tree sang it delightfully. Our hearts beat to the truth of the words of this song all the Opera. "Home, home, there is no place like home." DRURY-LANE THEATRE. 81. 10. 1d. If quite convenient. One joke will no more make farce, than one swallow will make a summer. This money piece brought no money. Elliston did not realize the name in his receipts. The farce was damned, as all pieces with clever names generally are. Listen had one request to make throughout two acts for he rode the joke to death, realizing the proverb that if you set a Beggar on horseback be will ride to the devil. The farce was damned. The one joke broke dow in the second scene. The audience yelled at 8l. 10s. Id. and the manager, to use a phrase out of Mr. Hume's calculating mouth, "too his change out of that." At the end of the piece, when all the better part of the audience had withdrawn, the piece took the hint, and was withdrawn also. Poor Liston! he dies a hard death. SONNET. Is there another world for this frail dust, And every thing seems struggling to explain Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace, As seeming anxious of eternity, To meet that calm and find a resting-place. E'en the small violet feels a future power, And waits each year renewing blooms to bring; And surely man is no inferior flower, To die unworthy of a second spring! J. C. RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE COMMERCE OF GREAT BRITAIN FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS. AT the commencement of the year the markets had not offered for some time any very remarkable fluctuations, and the chief interest excited, arose from the varying reports, importing the probability of war between France and Spain. As it was presumed that England would remain neutral, great advantages were anticipated to the English commerce, from the inactivity to which it was supposed war must reduc that of France; it being taken for granted that the sea would soon be covered with privateers under Spanish colours. In soch a state of things, all articles of maritime commerce must be obtained through the medium of the neutral powers, especially Great Britain, and all warlike stores would of course be in great demand and incresse E 1823.] Commerce of Great Britain for the last Six Months. in price. This naturally caused every report tending to favour such an opinion to be received with little examination, but the effect was transitory; till the speech of the King of France, removing all uncertainty on the hostile intentions entertained against Spain, all colonial articles continued to rise. Meantime a great sensation was excited here, by the information that Great Britain had demanded from Spain an indemnity for all losses sustained by English subjects from pirates under the Spanish flag, and that this demand had been enforced by a threat of sending a fleet, to detain Spanish vessels to the full amount of the indemnity claimed. As it was stated to have been acceded to, and it did not transpire in what manner, it was presumed that Bome very great commercial advantages were to be conceded to Great Britain, in the Spanish West India possessions, and it was hoped that Cuba would perhaps be given up to our government. Even now, however, the arrangements made between the two countries do not seem to be perfectly known and understood, but there can be little doubt that a perfectly good understanding subsists between the two powers. Thus it has been said, that Porto Rico was given up to a British squadron, and that the British flag had been hoisted, while other accounts only say, that the Governor of that island had given assurances, that Spanish cruizers from that island should not molest British vessels, even if bound to blockaded ports of the Spanish Main, unless they should have arms or It is supposed that ammunition on board." the same assurances have been required from the Columbian government, and that this has been the object of the mission of the commanders of his Majesty's ships that have been sent along the Spanish Main. Notwithstanding the actual commencement of the war, yet the effect has not been such as was anticipated, which is doubtless to be attributed to the manner in which it is carried on, and the great un certainty respecting its duration. Hitherto nothing has taken place that can lead to an expectation of any material advantage to the commerce of this country. Should the war be protracted, it is probable that considerable quantities of corn, rice, &c. may be required for the French army. This, and the permission to import a certain quantity of corn into Portugal, may clear our magazines of a large proportion of the bonded grain with which they have been so long filled. We now proceed to take a general view of the state of the markets, as far as concerns the principal articles of commerce, since December 1, 1822. Sugar.-In December, the prices remained nearly unchanged throughout the 701 month, rather tending to decline, though In consequence of the The refined market is in an uncommon state: there are very few goods on show except fine descriptions; no parcels of lumps to any extent can be bought except for forward delivery, yet the market is heavy, and the finer sorts offered at very low terms., 28. to 288. 6d. ; Molasses are 122 |