SCULPTURE-PAINTING-POETRY.

THUS all they

Whose intellect is an o'ermastering power Which still recoils from its encumbering clay, Or lightens it to spirit, wheresoe'er

The form which their creations may essay, Are bards: the kindled marble's bust may wear More poesy upon its speaking brow,

Than aught less than the Homeric page may bear.

One noble stroke with a whole life may glow,
Or deify the canvass till it shine

With beauty so surpassing all below,

That they who kneel to idols so divine
Break no commandment, for high heaven is there
Transfused, transfigurated; and the line

Of poesy, which peoples but the air

With thought and beings of our mind reflected,
-Then let the Artist share

Can do no more

The palm.

Byron.

RENOWN.

WHEREVER the polite arts appear, and flourish in a surpassing degree, the happy native of that soil may, without fear of refutation, arrogate to his country the rare triumph of universal renown. Other perfections shed their lustre like single stars in the canopy of heaven; the influence of the arts alone unites their distant fires, and presents the glories of a constellation. *

"O Greece! thou sapient nurse of finer arts,
Which to bright science blooming fancy bore,
Be this thy praise, that thou, and thou alone,
In these hast led the way, in these excelled,
Crowned with the laurel of assenting time."

In Greece, the arts were applied to the highest purposes
of society. They were employed to enforce religion,
morality, and obedience to the laws. * * * They mul-
tiplied enjoyments, and improved benevolence. *
Here then they accomplished the signal end for which
they are intrusted to man by his Creator.

In this progress of greatness, the course of the fine arts cannot be omitted nor neglected. According to the degree of their cultivation will be estimated the national portion of intellectual sensibility, and its capacity for advancement in mental elegance. * * * A nation is awful by its wisdom, tremendous by its arms, lovely by its intellectual arts.

P. Hoare.

MAN.

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes!
From different natures, marvellously mixed,
Connexion exquisite of different worlds!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity.

Young.

TASTE.

REFINED to the most acute perception of all the degrees which lie between the remote extremes of beauty and deformity, of pleasure and pain,-taste is any thing but a blessing; unless where there is judgment to go deeper into the essential qualities of things, and to discover a moral good beneath a physical evil; because the outward aspect of our world, even with all its loveliness, and the external character of our circumstances, even with all our enjoyments, are such as often to present pictures repulsive and abhorrent to perceptions more delicate than deep. But the cultivation of taste, when confined as it ought to be to its proper place, and limited to its proper degree, is eminently conducive to our happiness, and eventually to our good. Taste should even rule itself, and set bounds to its own existence, for its laws are as much violated when we are too sublime for useful service, and too delicate for duty, as when we descend to the use of vulgar epithets, and ape the absurdities of our inferiors. S. Stickney.

TASTE.

SPIRIT of heaven! descending to adorn

Life's brightest days, of peace and order born;

Thou mak'st life's rudest wild enchanted ground:

Whether the muse allures him to the shades,

Where meditation courts the tuneful maids;

Or touched by music's power, the shell he tries,
While crowding round responsive passions rise.
But chief his soul when Painting's glories sway,
Thou lov'st through nature's walks to lead his way;
To point her fairest features, and infuse

A keener pleasure as his eye pursues ;

O'er each wild scene to wave thy tissued wings,
And still present the picturesque of things.
Fair idol of the soul refined! whose sway
The graces own-the powers of art obey ;

Before thy glance life's awkward forms retreat,
Thy smile is triumph, and thy frown defeat!

M. A. Shee.

MENDICANT MUSIC.

IT is because music addresses itself to the most exquisite sensations of which we are capable, that its vulgar profanation is so peculiarly distressing; it is because of its own purity, and refinement, and adaptation to delicate feelings and high sentiments, that we grieve over its prostitution to low purposes; it is because it is properly the ecstasy of wo, that we cannot bear to hear it sold for filthy pence, grudgingly doled out, or still more grudg ingly denied. We hear, at intervals, amidst all the dust and tumult of the city, the tinkling sound of distant music, with the accompaniment of a voice that might once have been sweet. We listen to a lively strain that should have echoed through stately halls, amongst marble pillars, and wreaths of flowers. The voice of the minstrel is strained beyond its natural pitch, but no ear will listen; it is mo

dulated, but no heart is charmed. The discord of city sounds, the rattle of wheels, and the busy tread of many feet, carry away the sound, and the sweetness is lost. A plaintive lay comes next, but it is alike unavailable in moving the multitude, and the wretched minstrels wander on, a living exemplification of the impotence of music performed without appropriate feeling, persisted in without fitting accompaniments of time and place, and poured upon ungrateful and inattentive ears.

S. Stickney.

GREECE.

AND yet how lovely in thine age of wo,
Land of lost gods and godlike men! art thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,

Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now;
Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,

Broke by the share of every rustic plough
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well recorded worth.

Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;

*

Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,

And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.

Byron.