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HUSH-'tis the old man's funeral!

"Toll on! thou mournful Herald to eternity!! -thou hast carried anguish to his soul ere this-but now he hears thee not!

THE many ingenious methods which have | been discovered of multiplying works of art, by engravings, lithographs, woodcuts, and photographs, now renders it possible for every person to furnish his rooms with beautiful pictures. Skill and science have thus brought art within the reach even of the poorest.

We have seen some woodcuts in recent cheap publications, which, if cut out and framed, or hung against the wall in the simplest way, would shed a glory round the room-of a peasant or of a lord. Of this sort of cheap cuts, we may particulary mention the Madonna and child, after Rafaelle, so admirably executed by Mr. Linton. That head reminds one of the observation made by Mr. Hazlitt upon a picture, that it seems as if our unhandsome action would be impossible in its presence. It embodies the ideas of mother's love, womanly beauty, and earnest piety. And any picture, or print, or engraving, that represents a noble thought, that depicts a heroic act, or that brings a bit of nature from the fields or the streets into our room, is a teacher, a means of education, and a help to self-culture. It serves to make home more pleasant and attractive. It sweetens domestic life, and sheds a grace and beauty around it. It draws the gazer away from mere considerations of self, and increases his store of delightful associations with the world without as well as with the world at home.

A portrait of a great man, for instance, helps us to read his life-it invests him with a more personal interest for us-looking at

his features, we think we feel as if we knew him better, and were more closely related to him. Such a portrait hung up before us daily, at our meals and during our leisure hours, unconsciously serves to lift us up and sustain us. It is a link that in some way binds us to higher and better natures.

There was a Catholic money-lender who, when about to cheat, was wont to draw a veil over the face of his favorite saint. Thus the portraiture of a noble man or saint is in some sort a companionship of something better than ourselves, and though we may not reach the standard of our hero, we are to some extent influenced by his depicted presence.

It is not necessary that a picture should be high-priced in order to be beautiful and good. We have seen things for which hundreds of guineas have been paid, that have not onehundredth part of the meaning or beauty that is to be found in Linton's woodcut of Rafaelle's Madonna, which may be had for two pence. Picture-fanciers pay not for the merit, so much as for the age and the rareness of their works. A rich man may possess a gallery of 1,000 great paintings, and yet be able to appreciate none of them. The poorest may have the seeing eye for beauty, while the millionaire may be blind to it. And the cheapest engraving may communicate the sense of beauty to the artizan, while the thousand-guinea picture may fail to communicate to the lord anything except the notion that he has got possession of the work which the means of other people cannot compass.

Does the picture give you pleasure on looking at it? That is one good test of its worth. You may grow tired of it; your taste may outgrow it, and demand something better, just as the reader may grow out of Satan Montgomery's poetry into Milton's. Then you will take down the daub, and put up a picture with a higher idea in its place. Thus there may be a steady progress in art made upon the room walls. If you can put the pictures in frames so much the better; but if you cannot, no matter, up with them! We know that Owen Jones says it is not good taste to hang prints upon walls-he would merely hang room papers there. But Owen Jones may not be infallible, and here we think he is wrong. To our eyes, a room always looks unfurnished, no matter how costly and numerous the tables, chairs, and ottomans, unless there be pictures against the walls. and homes ought to be made pleasant, instructive and satisfying.

It ought to be, and no doubt it is, a great stimulus to artists to know that their works are now distributed in prints and engravings, in all ways, to decorate and beautify the homes of the people. The wood-cutter, the litho grapher, and the engraver, are the interpreters of the great artist to the people. Thus Turner's grand pictures are not confined to the wealthy possessors of the original works, but may be diffused through all homes by the Millars, and Brandards, and Willmotts, their engravers. Thus Landseer finds entrance, through woodcuts and mezzotints, into every dwelling. Thus Cruikshank preaches temperance, and Ary Scheffer purity and piety. The engraver is the medium by which art in the palace is thus conveyed to the humblest homes in the kingdom.

The Athenæum, in a recent article on this subject, urges the desirableness of a higher style of cheap engravings for the people. The writer says:

"Let us have good, simple, cheap works, eschewing all that is merely costly and wholly profitless. We prize cheap books, provided all concerned have their hire; wherefore, then, not have cheap abstracts of pictures, instead of considering for evermore that the art of engraving is only a compact between engraver and publisher? Fear not, selfsacrificing engraver and boldly speculative publisher, that your vocations will dwindle beneath this breath of popularity. The excellence of the graver's work will always minister delight to the refined mind; but it is not expedient that the public should bask in the sunshine of poetry before it has mas

tered the alphabet and scraped acquaintance with grammar.

"The glimpse of an engraving is good, the dwelling on it better: stealing on the sense with its suggestive variety;-no fear of its being snapped up-but remaining a household god for ever, at least, till paper crumble and ink fade, the children and their children reading day by day this wonderful silent world of instructive figures, that move not unto derangement of observing ideas. Grant this boon to the lately born and the unborn, and secure this household property to hewers of wood and drawers of water, who will treasure up their mites till the 'mickle' is 'muckle' enough to buy them into good company, and feel that, after their life's work, they leave their children heirlooms of sterling worth, to smooth the ruggedness of labor and turn away the arrows of care. The careless lounger from print-shop to print-shop knows little, perchance, of the fascination which the veriest scrap of the graver conveys to the untutored and unworn in the ways of art. It may not be that the remarks of eager unversedness in picturesque expression shall be very erudite, but, at any rate, a thought beyond self is a gain in any one. Much wisdom may not be elicited, but a good clearance towards it is effected. But, as the inhabitants of cottages are not generally indebted to the wealthy of their neighborhood for the loan of a courtly Landseer or Winterhalter for the illumination of their nights at home, it is desirable that in the small print-shop of their neighborhood they should find something more adapted to their cravings than the elegancies of life in the mixed style, and more conducive to their tone as hardworking men, than a remarkably elegant greyhound watching a superlative beaver hat. It would not be amiss to connect this with some spice of homely literature, so that in the text our honest friend should find wholesome instruction, and, in the illustration of home, something more improving than a lady in a saque or the latest ennuyée.

Honest George Cruikshank's homely truths, and in series, too, drive closer home than all the exotics which bloom for a season, and then lose even their Greek and Latin names. We want homely food; we want clear human topics, out of which man, without extra subtlety of intellect, can glean a better heart, form a more acute feeling and a larger intellect from a more extended survey of the history of man and his emotions.

"Honest wood, albeit implying something

Avarice may freeze the genial current of affection, and dry up all the springs of sympathy within the human soul; but it cannot diminish the pomp of summer, or restrain the prodigality of autumn. Fame may lead us on in pursuit of glittering phantoms, until the diseased mind loses all relish for substantial good but it cannot share the eternity of light, or the immortality of the minutest

atom.

He who has steered his bark ever so skilfully through the sea of politics, rarely, if ever, finds a quiet haven. His vexations and his triumphs have all been of an exciting character; they have depended on outward circumstances, over which he has very limited power; and when the turbulent scene has passed away, he finds, too late, that he has lived on the breath of others, and that happiness has no home within his heart.

And what is the experience of him who has existed only for wealth? who has safely moored his richly-freighted vessel in the spacious harbor of successful commerce? Does he find that happiness can, like modern love, be bought with gold? You may see him hurrying about to purchase it in small quantities, wherever the exhibitions of taste and talent offer it for sale; but the article is too ethereal to be baled for future use, and it soon evaporates amid the emptiness of his intellectual warehouse.

He that lives only for fame will find that happiness and renown are scarcely speaking acquaintance. Even if he could catch the rainbow he has so eagerly pursued he would find its light fluctuating with each changing sunbeam, and fading at the touch of every passing cloud.

Nor is he who has wasted the energies of his youth in disentangling the knotty skein of

controversy more likely to find the evening of his days serene and tranquil. The demon of dogmatism or of doubt may have grappled him closely, and converted his early glow of feeling, and elasticity of thought, into rancorous prejudice or shattered faith.

But the deep streams of quiet thought and pure philosophy gush forth abundantly from all the hiding places of Nature; there is no drop of bitterness at the fountain; the clear waters reflect none of the Proteus forms of human pride; and ever, as they flow, their peaceful murmurs speak of heaven.

The enjoyment that depends on powerful excitement saps the strength of manhood, and leaves nothing for old age but discontent and desolation. Yet we need amusements in the decline of life, even more than in its infancy, and where shall we find any so safe, satisfactory, and dignified, as battery and barometer, telescope and prism?

Electric power may be increased with less danger than man's ambition; it is far safer to weigh the air than a neighbor's motives; it is more disquieting to watch tempests lowering in the political horizon, than it is to gaze at volcanoes in the moon; and it is much easier to separate and unite the colors in a ray of light, than it is to blend the many colored hues of truth, turned out of their course by the sharp corners of angry controversy.

Finally, he who drinks deeply at the fountain of natural science, will reflect the cheerfulness of his own spirit on all things around. If the sympathy of heart and mind be within his reach, he will enjoy it more keenly than other men; and if solitude be his portion, he can, in the sincerity of a full and pious mind, say to all the temptations of fame and pleasure, "Stand ye out of my sunshine!"