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upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on to say,

revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras

and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice prepended-there was the "labour," there the "work."

that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder exaction. Man goeth forth to his work until the evening" from a reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a hours, at that time of life, had generally to slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious do with anything rather than business, it operants ever turned out for half the tyranny follows, that the only time we could spare which this necessity exercised upon us. for this manufactory of jokes - our supple- Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays mentary livelihood, that supplied us in every too,) why, it seems nothing! We make want beyond mere bread and cheese was twice the number every day in our lives as exactly that part of the day which (as we a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly exemptions. But then they come into our denominated No Man's Time; that is, no head. But when the head has to go out to time in which a man ought to be up, and them-when the mountain must awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that Mahomet time of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to wait for his breakfast.

--

go to

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelvemonth.

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon-the Public - like him in Bel's temple-must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.

O those head-aches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed · (for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising we like a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us - we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless-we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken While we were wringing out coy sprightour degrees at Mount Ague- we were right linesses for the Post, and writhing under the toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and toil of what is called "easy writing," Bob they) but to have to get up, as we said Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, his impracticable brains in a like service for with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea, the "Oracle." Not that Robert troubled in the distance-to be necessitated to rouse himself much about wit. If his paragraphs ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag had a sprightly air about them, it was of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise;" and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber door to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers in future

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Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head

far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and
that no very important one, was not seldom
palmed upon his employers for a good jest;
for example sake-" Walking yesterday morn-
ing casually down Snow Hill, who should we
meet but Mr. Deputy Humphreys! we rejoice
to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to
enjoy a good state of health.
We do not ever
remember to have seen him look better." This

days.

gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow commencement of the present century. Even Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or the prelusive delicacies of the present writer gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the the curt "Astræan allusion" - would be small paragraph-mongers of the day; and thought pedantic and out of date, in these our friend thought that he might have his fling at him with the rest. We met A. in From the office of the Morning Post, (for Holborn shortly after this extraordinary we may as well exhaust our Newspaper rencounter, which he told with tears of Reminiscences at once) by change of property satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying anticipated effects of its announcement next exchange to the office of the Albion day in the paper. We did not quite com- Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in prehend where the wit of it lay at the time; Fleet-street. What a transition- from a nor was it easy to be detected, when the handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, thing came out advantaged by type and and silver inkstands, to an office- no office, letter-press. He had better have met any- but a den rather, but just redeemed from thing that morning than a Common Council the occupation of dead monsters, of which it Man. His services were shortly after seemed redolent-from the centre of loyalty dispensed with, on the plea that his para- and fashion, to a focus of vnlgarity and graphs of late had been deficient in point. sedition! Here in murky closet, inadequate The one in question, it must be owned, had from its square contents to the receipt of an air, in the opening especially, proper to the two bodies of Editor, and humble awaken curiosity; and the sentiment, or paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat moral, wears the aspect of humanity and in the discharge of his new editorial functions good neighbourly feeling. But somehow the (the "Bigod" of Elia) the redoubted John conclusion was not judged altogether to Fenwick. answer to the magnificent promise of the premises. We traced our friend's pen afterwards in the "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveller," from all which he was successively dismissed, the Proprietors having "no further occasion for his services." rights and titles (such as they were worth) Nothing was easier than to detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly appeared the following-"It is not generally known that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms of Lombardy. The Lombards were the first money-brokers in Europe." Bob has done more to set the public right on this important point of blazonry, than the whole College of Heralds.

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the

of the Albion from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern-for it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers F. resolutely deter mined upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven The appointment of a regular wit has weeks and more did this infatuated democrat long ceased to be a part of the economy of a go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, Morning Paper. Editors find their own and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands jokes, or do as well without them. Parson of the Stamp office, which allowed no credit Este, and Topham, brought up the set to publications of that side in politics. An custom of "witty paragraphs" first in the outcast from politer bread, we attached our "World." Boaden was a reigning para- | small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our graphist in his day, and succeeded poor friend. Our occupation now was to write Allen in the "Oracle." But, as we said, the treason. fashion of jokes passes away; and it would Recollections of feelings-which were all be difficult to discover in the biographer of that now remained from our first boyish Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and heats kindled by the French Revolution. fancy which charmed the whole town at the when, if we were misled, we erred in the

company of some who are accounted very | Treasury, had begun to be marked at that

good men now rather than any tendency at this time to Republican doctrines-assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under tone to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing directly that the keen eye of an Attorney General was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There were times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gentleman-like occupation under Stuart. But with change of masters it is ever change of service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at the

office, with a view of its being submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers - when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir J—s Mh, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of his apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly worth particularising,) happening to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived F. at once of the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had stuck by us; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart made that curious confession to us, that he had "never deliberately walked into an Exhibition at Somerset House in his life."

BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART.

reeling satyr rout about him, re-peopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story -an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmonious version of it, saw no further. But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a god,— as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant-her soul undistracted from Theseus-Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore in as much heart silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at day-break to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian.

HOGARTH excepted, can we produce any one painter within the last fifty years, or since the humour of exhibiting began, that has treated a story imaginatively? By this we mean, upon whom his subject has so acted, that it has seemed to direct him—not to be arranged by him? Any upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? Any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey a story with clearness, but that individualizing property, which should keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and to common apprehensions almost identical; so as that we might say, this and this part could have found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this? Is there anything in modern art- we will not demand that it should be equalbut in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together Here are two points miraculously coof two times in the "Ariadne," in the uniting; fierce society, with the feeling of National Gallery? Precipitous, with his solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations,

with the accidents of the dull grey dawn | to battle for indecorous mastery. We have unquenched and lingering; the present Bac-seen a landscape of a justly admired neoteric, chus, with the past Ariadne; two stories, with in which he aimed at delineating a fiction, double Time; separate, and harmonising. one of the most severely beautiful in antiquity Had the artist made the woman one shade less -the gardens of the Hesperides. To do indifferent to the God; still more, had she ex- Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable pressed a rapture at his advent, where would orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable have been the story of the mighty desolation dragon (of which a Polypheme, by Poussin, of the heart previous? merged in the insipid is somehow a fac-simile for the situation), accident of a flattering offer met with a wel- looking over into the world shut out backcome acceptance. The broken heart for wards, so that none but a "still-climbing Theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a Hercules" could hope to catch a peep at the God. admired Ternary of Recluses. No conventual porter could keep his eyes better than this custos with the "lidless eyes." He not only sees that none do intrude into that privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none but Hercules aut Diabolus by any manner of means can. So far all is well. We have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra the damsels are snug enough. But here the artist's courage seems to have failed him. He began

a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, according to the approved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century; giving to the whole scene the air of a fete champêtre, if we will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and Watteauish. But what is become of the soli

Daughters three,

We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture by Raphael in the Vatican. It is the Presentation of the new-born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A fairer mother of mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of men since born. But these are matters subordinate to the conception of the situation, displayed in this extraordinary production. A tolerably modern artist would have been satisfied with tempering to pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the certain raptures of connubial anticipation, irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with with a suitable acknowledgment to the Giver of the blessing, in the countenance of the first bridegroom; something like the divided attention of the child (Adam was here a child-man) between the given toy, and the mother who had just blessed it with the bauble. This is the obvious, the firstsight view, the superficial. An artist of a tary mystery-the higher grade, considering the awful presence they were in, would have taken care to subtract something from the expression of the more human passion, and to heighten the more spiritual one. This would be as much as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of Somerset House to last year's show, has been encouraged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a lower expression yet, in a picture that, for respects of drawing and colouring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible within these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures should be as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or perhaps zero! By neither the one passion nor the other has Raphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not self-conscious of his art, in which neither of the conflicting emotions -a moment how abstracted!-have had time to spring up, or anecdote.

That sing around the golden tree?

This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this subject.

The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural designs, of a modern artist, have been urged as objections to the theory of our motto. They are of a character, we confess, to stagger it. His towered structures are of the highest order of the material sublime. Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder workmanship -- Assyrian ruins old-restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of the antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side, the imagination of the artist halts, and appears defective. Let us examine the point of the story in the “Belshazzar's Feast." We will introduce it by an apposite

The court historians of the day record, that | anxiety for the preservation of their persons, at the first dinner given by the late King such as we have witnessed at a theatre, (then Prince Regent) at the Pavilion, the when a slight alarm of fire has been given following characteristic frolic was played off. an adequate exponent of a supernatural The guests were select and admiring; the terror? the way in which the finger of God, banquet profuse and admirable; the lights writing judgments, would have been met by lustrous and oriental; the eye was perfectly the withered conscience? There is a human dazzled with the display of plate, among fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from restless, and bent upon escape. The other is the regalia in the Tower for this especial bowed down, effortless, passive. When the purpose, itself a tower! stood conspicuous spirit appeared before Eliphas in the visions for its magnitude. And now the Rev. ****, of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood the then admired court Chaplain, was pro- up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite ceeding with the grace, when at a signal to ring the bell of his chamber, or to call up given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and the servants? But let us see in the text a huge transparency was discovered, in which what there is to justify all this huddle of glittered in gold letters vulgar consternation. "BRIGHTON

EARTHQUAKE - SWALLOW-UP-
ALIVE!"

Imagine the confusion of the guests; the Georges and garters, jewls, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion! The fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by the sly courtpages! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name fainting, and the Countess of * * * holding the smelling-bottle, till the good-humoured Prince caused harmony to be restored, by calling in fresh candles and declaring that the whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden, from hints which his Royal Highness himself had furnished! Then imagine the infinite applause that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that "they were not much frightened," of the assembled galaxy.

The point of time in the picture exactly answers to the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and the mock alarm; the prettinesses heightened by consternation; the courtier's fear which was flattery; and the lady's which was affectation; all that we may conceive to have taken place in a mob of Brighton courtiers, sympathising with the well-acted surprise of their sovereign; all this, and no more, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this sort of consternation we have seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the report only of a gun having gone off!

From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. The golden and silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. Then follows

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In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one against another."

This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there present, not even by the queen herself, who merely undertakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are simply said to be astonished; i. e. at the trouble and the change of countenance in their sovereign.

Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, which the king saw. Не recals it only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt. "Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of the phantasm as past.

Then what becomes of this needless multiplication of the miracle? this message to a royal But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal conscience, singly expressed-for it was said,