pressed: or at least not where so ugly had treacherously violated. The Stubborn facts cannot wholly be supcommissioners will have credit for seeking to evade bloodshed, and to arrange the affair amicably. We shall be dishonoured by the imputation of vindictive feelings, a wish to profit by confusion, and most assuredly of perfidy in some acts known to the commissioners. What was meant is not always easy to collect from translations so false in every line: false, we are persuaded, from utter ignorance of the language under insufficient competition. If our European translators in every nation are false and ignorant by vast proportion, as they are and always have been, even in translating French, so that hardly ten accurate versions exist perhaps in modern literature, how much more a semi-educated supercargo under no austere revision of a learned public! What was the real sense, may therefore be doubtful. The fraudulent intention is scarcely doubtful: and the popular construction is not doubtful at all. We ask also, if any one pledge was asked, or thought of, for enforcing the removal of the army? In any case otherwise situated, the course would have been to deliver up some of the gates and central positions to the British army: from which, besides the more obvious uses, a facility might have been obtained for counting the troops leaving the city. Why these or similar precautions, so self-evident and common, were neglected-it is easy to understand. Arrangements of that sort would have brought on conferences with the military and naval heads. "The crown" of England in that case would have had its rights asserted. And then adieu to Captain Elliot's easy arrangement with his own creditors! The character of the whole transaction, and the ease with which such a character is impressed upon it, even in those features which were not bucaniering, revolves upon us after all is over, in the way of treaty, through the official report of the emperor's nephew. A London journal observes, that this report is not in the usual style of bombast and gasconade. As to that we have our own opinion: it is very difficult, except in a song, to tell the fact of being kicked down stairs by an enemy-but "with such a sweet grace That I thought he was handing me up." trophe pretty much in this light:—Sad work had gone on between the hostile parties, when suddenly, a truce was called for by the barbarians. Upon which the nephew, hanging his head from the wall, demanded what it was they wanted; and then took place an explanation, which quite altered the face of things. Mere necessity, it appeared, had driven the poor creatures to this violent course of outrages. Lin, or somebody else, had not paid for some opium he had imported. This non-payment naturally caused mere ruin to a petty tribe of thieves; and when the gracious nephew saw the affair in its true light, as an appeal to the bounty of the Celestial Emperor and the flowery people, he anticipated his Majesty's decision, and paid the rogues their little account, after which all settled back into halcyon repose. This nephew has besides taxed us with horrible offences upon helpless women, and even children; such as too certainly, we know, do not characterize any part of our native population; and when no storming of cities occurred, when all places were evacuated and left desolate on the first approach of the troops, and where a seasonable panic, on our side a most just one, of treachery aud bloody severities, created a solemn interval between ourselves and the Chinese, how could opportunities occur for such excesses ? Still we have debased foreigners of every eastern nation in our native Indian army and such atrocities, as individual cases, were barely possible. But how came Captain Elliot to slight the call upon him for a public Chinese explanation upon this point? Were it only for our justification throughout Europe, where these papers will all be read with intense interest, as arguing the laying of a foundation-stone for a fresh extension of our Asiatic empire, he ought not to have left such an aspersion without the amplest letter of apology and reparation in the last place-of explanation, and enquring into the where and the when, in the first. We pity Captain Elliot. He has got rid of his creditors; but in doing that, he has only effected a transfer of enmity. He will be shot assuredly if he stays in the neighbourhood of an army composed of many nations, whom he has defrauded of a great prize. It is more by one fifth part than the booty of Vittoria in 1813, by which every man in an army of 70,000 men was, or might have been, made comfortable for a year or two. But here a larger prize would have been divided amongst 6000 men at the outside, including even camp followers. Still, all this is but a trifle by comparison with his gross sacrifices of his own pretensions to sanity, and of the national honour so far as it could have been vindicated by him. A London journal of vast authority has affirmed-that " our sole connection with the Celestial Empire is mercantile ; and in no other point of view need we care one farthing for China, or China for us." Far different is our own view of the great scene dawning upon us. We are satisfied that a very different mode of connexion is now ripe for development, and cannot be much retarded. Let it be remembered, that ninety years ago our sole connexion with India was mercantile. Army we had none, beyond a few files of musketeers for oriental pomp, and otherwise requisite as a local police. Territory we had none, beyond what was needed for our cows, pigs, and a cabbage garden. Nor had we any scheme of territorial aggrandizement in those days, beyond what was strictly necessary as a means of playing into our commercial measures, were it by the culture of indigo for instance, and other experimental attempts, or with a view to more certain lines of transit and of intercourse, unfettered by hostile custom-houses. What was it that changed that scene? A quarrel with a native prince. By his atrocities, we were forced into ambitious thoughts. It happens too often in such countries-that to murder is the one sole safeguard against being murdered; insurrection the remedy beforehand against monstrous oppression; and, not to be crushed by the wheels of the tiger-hearted despot, you must leap into his chariot, and seize the reins yourself. We did nothing wrong, because nothing that was not essential to self-preservation. We usurped upon a pestilent usurper: and we consented to raise a great officer to the throne of his sovereign, because that sovereign had already placed himself under ban and anathema, by his infamous "Black-hole" massacre, and because, amongst his future schemes, the very foremost was With his our own extermination. murder, we had nothing to do. But unless it had been any duty of ours to lay our necks bare to the cimeters of the vilest amongst eastern bloodhounds, we were bound to take the steps we did. We could have taken none that were essentially different. No Such a quarrel has opened upon us in China; and it will revolve through all the stages of an oriental quarrel. That is, there will be no real termination of malice on the side of our hateful enemy. Manet altâ mente repostum, is the legend and superscription upon every memorial or record of an Asiatic quarrel. forgetting from generation to generation—no forgiving. Such sentiments are unintelligible to such hearts. A mother who does not teach to her children, as her earliest lesson in morality, some catechism of vengeance against the supposed violator of the family rights or dignity, would not take rank in man's esteem as one who realized the ideal of gentle feminine and maternal nature, but as an abject brutified creature, incapable of raising her thoughts to the nobler duties of humanity. Even Greece, in elder days, as we know by the tragic tradition of the Heracleida-even the Jews when removed into captivity, as we know by the fearful vengeance of the gentle Esther upon the children and household of Haman-adopted that savage maxim, universally binding in the east-" Exterminate thine enemy root and branch, lest his children, if spared, should hereafter exterminate thine." Deadly will be the thoughts of vengeance over which the Imperial counsellors will brood in Pekin. And well it may be thought for us, should our Chinese counterpart of the Benour Chinese gal tragedy - should Black-hole-whensoever it occurs, involve no greater number of victims than in the original case. Of the treacherous resurrection to the Chinese vindictive subtilty, when we are thinking least of such an event, we feel perfectly assured; and from the generosity of English nature, its habitual tendency to bear no malice, its carelessness of confidence, and indisposition to suspect, we foresee a fatal catastrophe yet to come, and more than one, perhaps, as indispensable to place us effectually on our guard. Be that, however, as it may, nothing can be more inevitable than the vast political connexion with China which will grow out of the present commercial quarrel. It cannot be evaded. Now, to maintain even our commercial connexion with this people, we must rise to the level of the exigency, and make our connexion more than commercial. More we must make ourselves, or the Chinese will make us less than nothing. Sir Henry Pottinger, from the semi-official explanations already made public, appears to have instructions for founding a number of presidential stations at Pekin, and the other great cities of China, on the model of those in India. But it does not follow that our Indian model of political influence and supremacy will be transferred to China, even by initial tendencies or preparations. There will arise, however, in this way, the occasions and handles for modifying, so as ultimately to revolutionize, China-so far as she can be prepared for centuries to face a thorough, searching, and creative revolution. The course which Sir Henry's foundations will take, after being vainly resisted with childish fury by the court of Pekin, will probably be this:After the first return of tranquillity, when the political envoys are all posted at their stations, and the vigilance of suspicion has been calmed, some angry dispute will arise; a Mithridates frenzy, or a Sicilian vespers, will cause all the resident ministers to be strangled; a commission of vengeance will visit the land from Calcutta, sudden and stern; deep awe will be impressed; but from the shallow feelings of the people, and shortsightedness each way, backwards as well as forwards, for remembering the past or for calculating the future, another and another such tragedy will be repeated, until at length a necessity will be seen for taking military possession of a province, building a fortress for the safe housing of all English fugitives from treachery, and maintaining a permanent establishment of from six to ten thousand men, with every equipment of engineering, science, and modern improved warfare. To this result we shall come in the end. And then we shall wait on events as they arise, aided by the prodigious increase which we shall then begin to find annually in our statistical acquaintance with China. Then will the truth be known or guessed pretty nearly as to Chinese population, which (as we now conjecture) will turn out to be rather below than above eighty millions, instead of those hyperbolical numbers which their arrogance has hitherto imposed upon our too ready credulity. Then will vast accessions be made to all the objects which interest, and to all the subjects which employ, the naturalist. Then, also, will mighty deserts be discovered, such as may offer a new field of expansion to British population. And from such an inland centre it is, that eventually we shall operate upon China; for we must not believe that, because monstrous aggregations of human beings exist in the suburbs of mighty cities, there are therefore no vast unpeopled solitudes. Such there are and must be, in the real state of Chinese society. Thus far we look forward, and with a general confidence that thus far in the great outline of our prospects we are right. Especially, we are confident that ten years a-head will carry us onwards to the provincial settlement and the establishment of our own local army as the only ultimate dependence of our own local envoys. This result we predict with firmness, using no other pretences to such a reach of foresight, but simply our reliance upon the exquisite imbecility and exquisite profligacy of Chinese nature. Both features concur to the same issue. We know and are assured, that the Chinese are too weak to resist with firmness any present temptation offered to their base principles of vindictive cruelty. They will acknowledge no ultimate restraint but that of physical force. The trumpet must often speak to them in tones of warning; many times must the artillery score its dreadful lessons upon their carcasses, before they will be healed of their treachery, or we shall be allowed to live in the diffusion of peaceful benefits. Printed by Ballantyne & Hughes, Paul's Work, Edinburgh. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCXIV. DECEMBER, 1841. VOL. L. MODERN SCHOOLS OF ART IN FRANCE, BELGIUM, AND SWITZERLAND. Ir is one of the best points in the French national character, that at almost all periods of the history of the Gallic people, they have retained and evinced a warm sense of art, a lively perception of the beauties of imitative skill, and an innate taste for wellconceived decoration. Not to allude to the French monastic painters of the middle ages, their architects, or their sculptors and monumental engravers, whose admirable works made France, and have even yet left it, such a rich mine for the archæological connoisseur, we may observe, that an immense impulse was given to French artistical genius, by the great men, native as well as foreign, of the days of Francis I. That period, which was so bright for most of the nations of western Europe in all that related to arts and literature, confirmed the existence of a French national school of art; and the stimulus then given to the taste and inclinations of the people, has made its effects felt even to the present day. It is not our purpose to dwell on the merits of Jean Goujon and Jean Cousin, or their followers; nor on those of N. Poussin and Philibert Delorme, of a subsequent period; nor even on those of Puget, Coysevox, Lebrun, Mignard, the Mansarts, and all the host of the reign of the "Grand Monarque”— the task has been already performed; -we wish to make a few remarks on the state of art in France at the pre VOL. L. NO, CCCXIV. sent day-on the merits and demerits of the more eminent among her painters, sculptors, and architects; to add some brief observations on their imitators, if not their disciples, in Belgium and Switzerland, (the only two relative schools;) with a word or two of advice to the artistical world, and the amateurs of our own country. We are far from wishing to proclaim ourselves universal admirers of the French; we have too often had occasion to point out defects in their political and social systems, to allow of our being suspected of such an inclination; but, after a careful examination and comparison of the actual state and progress of the French and the English schools in the various branches of art, and after a conscientious weighing of their respective excellences and defects, we cannot refrain from expressing our opinion in limine, that English artists, and especially English amateurs, are guilty of great injustice in making those sweeping condemnations of the products of their continental brethren, in which they are so fond of indulging. It is a painful thing for the connoisseur, for one who has studied the immortal masters of former days, to witness the fantastic and unnatural flights of fancy displayed by the daubers and plasterers of what is, in many points, a degenerate epoch; but it is scarcely less painful to the conscientious amateur, as he walks through the Louvre, 2 z while the great spring exhibition of modern artists is open, to hear the flippant criticisms of the British loungers, nine-tenths of whom have never been initiated into the mysteries of the pencil, the palette, or the chisel, and who think to exalt the merits of their fellow countrymen by crying down those of all other nations. We wish to say this at the outset of our remarks, since our object is that of exercising impartial well-founded criticism; not with the view of discouraging the meritorious labourers of our own national school, but, on the contrary, to show in what points the French school is more or less advanced, and in what respects its artists may safely be imitated by those on the British side of the Channel. The justice and the necessity of making such a comparison, was most forcibly impressed on our attention, after a visit to the last exhibition at the National Gallery in London. We have already had occasion to record our opinion of that exhibition, and to notice the good and the bad things it contained; but we had previously inspected the annual exhibition, for 1841, at the Louvre-the Salon, as it is technically termed and the comparison of the merits of the two exhibitions was mortifying to those feelings of national pride, from which a Briton is probably never exempt. The exhibition at the National Gallery was not striking for its excellencecertainly not; but we have seen many at Somerset House not a bit better; whereas the exhibition at the Louvre was complained of by every artist in France, as one of the weakest which had been witnessed for many years; nearly all the great names were absent from the catalogue; they were the tyros in art whose canvasses, drawings, and statues, filled the galleries; and the English visiters were more loud than common in their condemnation of its contents. We were greatly disappointed with it ourselves, and lamented what appeared to have been a year nearly lost to the arts. Well! after rushing impatiently to Trafalgar Square to appease our artistical longings, and after going there "determined to be pleased," we were compelled to admit, that what we had seen in Paris was far superior to what we then saw in London; superior not only in manual execution, and in the special technicalities of art, but also in the life and soul of imitative skill, in the poetry of painting, of sculpture, and of design; in all that forms the serious solid qualities of creative imagination and recordant observation. In the French exhibitions, we had seen the strongly pronounced features of a divided school; in the English, we found no traces of any school at all;—in the former case, it was evident that there was a corps of artists at work, who would gain a name and reputation in future times; in the latter, it struck us as doubtful whether there were any just claims to immortality. We shall advert to the probable causes of this difference by and by; at present, we repeat our caveat against being supposed to wish to trumpet the praises of French rather than those of British artists, and we proceed with our remarks. Towards the end of the last century, when the great Revolution broke out, the French School of Art had fallen into a kind of elegant enervation, not unlike that of the upper classes of French society. The painters who depended for their support on the taste of their noble and royal patrons, were forced to accommodate themselves to the ideas and opinions of the epoch; and the prevailing characteristic of the French school at that day, was mediocrity sustained upon an ancient foundation of scientific and practical tradition. Historical painting had dwindled away, till it was scarcely to be met with; landscape painting was tolerated rather than encouraged, and the principal occupation of a painter during the * It may be said, that English artists are under a great disadvantage from having their works exhibited in such a place as the miscalled National Gallery; and the observation, as far as it implies comparison with the Louvre, is correct. Nothing can be worse than the rooms of the National Gallery in which the paintings and drawings are exhibited, except the hole in which the sculpture is piled; that at Somerset House used to strike us as the "lowest deep" for any purposes of this kind, but Wilkins's cellar is a "lower still," the very bathos of architecture. |