Louvre); and let us confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only for the space of this letter. I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gaiety. The colour is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one of these so much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washerwoman. "Pope Pius" at the Louvre is as bad in colour, and as remarkable for its vigour and look of life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life, but must attempt the heroic, -failed signally; and, what is worse, carried a whole nation blundering after him. To have told a Frenchman so twenty years ago, he would have thrown the démenti in your teeth, or at least laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us, that we don't know when we are beaten they go a step further, and swear their defeats are victories. David was a part of the glory of the empire, and one might as well have said there that "Romulus" was a bad picture, as that Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people who believe in the emperor, believe in the Théâtre Français, and believe that Ducis improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion. Still, it is curious to remark in this place how art and literature become party matters, and political sects have their favourite painters and authors. Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead. He died about a year after his bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott, from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders, who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes and demigods of Greece and Rome. Notre Dame à la Rescousse! Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle. Andromache may weep; but her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See Robin Hood twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. Montjoie Saint Denis! down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder taken Dr. Lemprière by the nose, and reigns sovereign. Of the great pictures of David the defunct we need not, then, say much. Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is because the costume became him, and shews off his figure to advantage. But was there ever any thing so absurd as this passion for the nude, which was followed by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the heroic and the sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow; the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their legs too, and to thrust forward their arms thus, X AAA Romulus's is the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michael, I don't think would. The little picture of "Paris and Helen," one of the master's earliest, I believe, is likewise one of his best; the details are exquisitely painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the varnish? Girodet's pictures are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers have universally the jaundice. Gerard's "Psyche" has a most decided green sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the enthusiasm which this performance inspired on its first appearance before the public. In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man who possessed, they say, a fortune of his own; but pined because no one day would purchase his pictures, have a grand cachet: he never did any thing mean. When he painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar, probably, with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea-a raft beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and far away, black against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,-deeper, because more natural, than Girodet's green Deluge," for instance; or his livid "Orestes," or red-hot " Clytem 66 nestra." Seen from a distance, the latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-inspiring air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold of a tree. On the green man's shoulders is his old father, in a green old age; to him hangs his wife with a babe on her breast, and dangling at her hair another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful head); and a green sea and atmosphere envelopes all this dismal group. The old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree which the man catches is cracking, and just on the point of giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French tragedy. For this reason, I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,-the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things-melancholy antitheses-sparkling undertaker's wit; but this is heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly. The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures: they put me in mind of the colour of objects in dreams, a strange, hazy, lurid hue. How noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts Diogenes: the air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom. Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dufardin, I believe, conceived in quite a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A henseman is riding up a hill, wench. O matutini rores auræque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs (" the breath of Nature blowing free," as the Cornlaw man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapours are rising up from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning, and the time of the year: you can do any thing but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin abovementioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David's sansculotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face! There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness and gaiety it is what a delightful affectation about yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades; what splendid dandies are those ever-smirking, turning out their toes, with broad blue ribands to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere, rise a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in clusters as out of a champagne bottle, and melting away in air. is, be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxica There sue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude, calm, fresh, delicate, yet full of flavour, should be likened to a bottle of château-margeaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but romanée-galée,— heavy, sluggish,-the luscious odour almost sickens you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it,-you feel as if you had been drinking hot blood. An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off this mortal stage in a premature goutfit, if he too early or too often indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of pretty thirdrate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates. Confess how many times you have read Béranger and how many Milton? If you go to the Star and Garter, don't you grow sick of that vast luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this subject,-say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton they never grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with exquisite Titania. Let us thank Heaven, my dear sir, for according to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I have never heard that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys; and if it nothing profits us, aerias tentasse domos along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble. I have now only to mention the charming "Cruche Cassée" of Greuze, which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the colour, a thought too blue, perhaps, is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and colour; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very fine picture by Bon Bollongue, "Saint Benedict Resuscitating a Child," deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigour and richness of colour. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has produced, as deep as Poussin, of a better colour, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects. Every one of Lesueur's churchpictures are worth examining and admiring; they are full of "unction," and pious mystical grace. "Saint Scholastica" is divine; and the taking down from the cross as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the Jardinière is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a bad picture,—a bad composition, badly drawn, badly coloured, in a bad imitation of Titian-a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when Raphael painted this picture, two years before his death, the spirit of painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; it was time that he should die !! There, the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is no time to speak of Lesueur's" Crucifixion," which is odiously coloured, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most difficult to translate into words,- one lays down the pen, and thinks, and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colours are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which, for the present, adieu. Your faithful M. A. T. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE CONNEXION OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. IN requesting the attention of our readers to the connexion of crime and punishment, some apology might be requisite, but that at this time that connexion seems to be in some cases misunderstood, in others misapplied, and in many wholly overlooked. Indeed were this not the case, men are so liable to allow their reason to be led astray that they cannot be too often invited to a consideration of matters important to the peace and happiness of society. A multitude of springs are ever at work to warp the judgment of a people; and it is dangerous they should be ignorant, or be left in that stage of knowledge in which men are apt to consider themselves knowing: for the flatterer of prevailing prejudices, the panderer to excited passions, can at such times lead "the masses" to the destruction of themselves, and frequently of society itself. History informs us how prone mankind are to rush to extremes; and the student must see the necessity of a constant recurrence to first principles, if we would hinder mischief. The way of truth is not less troublesome to regain than it is to keep the guides which assist our return are hard to be found; and men had rather they should be brought together for them, than be at the trouble of collating. It is therefore a duty of periodical literature to be constantly reiterating the truths which have resulted from experience and revelation. To attain a correct idea of the connexion of crimes and punishments, it will be necessary to enter into a brief consideration of their origin and nature, and in what consists the right of society to punish. Uncontrolled liberty of action is a characteristic of wild beasts of a solitary nature; a limited liberty of action is the characteristic of animals of a social nature. Whether man was in the beginning created for a solitary nature, or not, but little signifies; for that he is at present of a social nature, is undeniable. If man began at any period subsequent to the primeval days to live in a social state, the inexpediency of using to its full extent the liberty which is natural to him must soon have become apparent, and occasioned compacts to the effect that as given up as interfered with mutual peace and security. These compacts would give rise to certain rules of action or laws, a non-observance of which would be a resumption of the sacrificed portion of liberty. That such resumption should occur is natural, and hence the necessity of punishment. But it is doubtful if at first man had any idea of absolute individual liberty, for it would seem that societies were originally formed of families, and that in the beginning the father of a family was submitted to by its members, that his word was law, and that against his authority none dared to rebel. We find the patriarchal form of government the basis of all early associations of men. It was ages long after that the present principles of social compacts were first acted upon. When the evil of our nature had dissolved the natural or original bonds of society, the mutual interests of men usurped their place, and the principle of individual liberty shewed itself as a base upon which to build a social compact. Under the patriarchal social system there was no principle of punishment, the will of the head of a family or body supplying its place; but now that another system is recognised, which may be called a social system, founded on mutual interests, a principle is necessary. Crime may be defined to be a resumption of sacrificed personal liberty by individuals; for, as a certain portion of that freedom is given up, or the use of it refrained from, in every social body to ensure mutual benefit, any resumption of that portion must endanger the continuance of mutual benefit. Punishment may be defined as the resumption of sacrificed personal liberty by society, for indiviuals committing crime sever the bonds by which society is withheld from the use of absolute liberty towards them. The compact is broken, and what the individuals resume towards society, they, by the very act, enable society to use also. But society is not at liberty to attach any punishment it may please to any particular crime. The nature of the punishment depends upon that of the crime; the one must be analogous to the other: what is the crime in the in-. inflicted by society; or where this cannot take place, the punishment should be of so similar a nature to the crime, that the inconvenience it produces to the individual may be similar to that the crime may produce to society. This is not only the just, but the best principle upon which to frame a penal code. An individual will soonest be convinced thus of the inexpediency of criminal conduct; and what the criminal perceives by the action of resumed liberty upon him, in the particular way he resumed it himself, other members of society perceive by observing that action. This relative connexion of crime and punishment has been greatly lost sight of; nations having gradually crept out of savage life to civilised, have retained with various modifications the punishments used by their nomadic ancestors; to whom a "wild justice," as it has been called, supplied the place of a true principle of judicature: moreover, crime has been confounded with sin; that which is inexpedient, with that which is wrong; and, consequently, punishments have lost much of their beneficial effects. * Crime, as we have said, is a disrespect of the conditions under which it is agreed to live; but sin is a disrespect of the laws of God: the first is inexpedient, the latter wrong. Hence greatness of sin does not constitute greatness of crime, and the degree of one is no standard by which to measure the other. God can alone decide upon the sinfulness of our actions; we but judge of their effects upon society; and according as they are mischievous, so should punishments be apportioned. Crimes have been classed under four heads: 1. Crimes against religion. 2. Crimes against morality. 3. Crimes against public tranquillity. 4. Crimes against personal security. Punishments also may be classed under four similar general heads : 1. Deprivation of the advantages to be derived from religion, or religious disabilities. 2. Ditto, ditto, attached to purity of morals, or public infamy. By inexpedient J 3. Ditto, ditto, to be derived from public tranquillity. 4. Ditto, ditto, ditto, personal security. We come now to a consideration of the proportion that punishments should bear to crimes. It has already been said that this depends upon the mischievousness of the effects they may produce, which is determined by the difficulty of discovery, difficulty and necessity of prevention, and the degree of injury done. The first influences the degree of punishment, because the more easily a crime may be committed, the less easy is it to discover the criminal, and the greater should therefore be the inconveniences resulting from discovery. So likewise of difficulty and necessity of prevention, for the greater that is the greater must be the means required to accomplish prevention. In the same manner, severity of punishment must increase with degree of injury, because the resulting evils are greater. Crimes against religion are of two kinds. Simple sacrileges; and sacrileges which, by disturbing the exercise of religion, interfere with the peace and security of the person. The punishments for simple sacrileges are expul sion from the church and from the society of the religious, together with such similar means as may tend to excite a sense of shame. The punishments for the second kind of sacrilege should be those for simple sacrilege, with the addition of such punishments, natural to the third and fourth kind of crimes, as the degree of interference with public peace and personal security may justify. A sacrilege is inexpedient, because a contempt of religion is injurious to society. The futility of using punishments irrelative to the crime, has been remarkably shewn with regard to sacrilege. The man would now in this country be thought foolish or insane who proposed to punish profane swearing by cutting the tongue out or piercing it with a hot iron, by drowning, by removal of the upper lip, or such like; yet it is not very long since such penalties obtained. The nraductive of evil to one another; |