A Life of Martin Luther, contained in fifty drawings, artistic and expressive, and of course decidedly Teutonic, by Gustav Koenig, the illustrative text by a Mr Gezler, written in paragraphs descriptive of each picture, forms one of the prettiest of the illustrated volumes of the season. The life is followed by a sketch of the Reformation, intended to supply the links between the events recorded by the pencil of Herr Koenig.

Another illustrated volume is a reprint of an old series of Picturesque Views in England, by Turner, and an artist whose name is too much forgotten-Girtin. This Girtin was Turner's early friend, and his teacher in the art of water-painting. Girtin, however, who was of a delicate constitution and social habits, died young -at twenty-seven years of age; Turner, who was the very reverse in both points, died at a good old age. The plates, which, from their rarity, were frequently picked up at comparatively great sums by collectors, do not seem to us worth sixpence apiece. The best part of the work is the biographical sketch of Turner, exposing, in a number of pithy and highly characteristic anecdotes, his insufferable meanness, and his misanthropic perverseness. The sketch is drawn up by Mr Thomas Miller.

Mr Macaulay's indignant letter regarding Vizitelly's edition of his speeches, has been replied to by that gentleman, who states that he had nothing to do with the getting up of the edition; that the speeches had been copied from Hansard; and that he should prosecute Mr Macaulay for slander. There was a passage in Mr Macaulay's letter, which will afford unmixed pleasure to a host of his admirers. Reports had got abroad that, from bad health, he was relaxing in his great work. Now, here we have the assurance that Mr Macaulay, in order to prepare, which he was very unwilling to do, an edition of his speeches, suspended with great regret the publication of 'that work which was the business and the pleasure of his life.'

Two works have been lately published-one within the month-in both of which Benjamin Disraeli is mentioned. In the first instance, the name occurs in the dedication of a couple of volumes by Miss Disraeli to her brother, which, as they consist of an unintelligible rhapsody about Mendelssohn and music, may be passed without more words. In the second, we have a political biography of the ex-minister, written for the purpose of displaying him in the least favourable light, every redeeming feature of his character being suppressed. It is a pity to have treated this subject in so partial a tone, because it certainly affords opportunity for an impressive lesson regarding the consequences of a career in which mere selfish ambition has been the main impulse. There was lately a paragraph in the newspapers, giving the recollection of a school-companion as to a resolution expressed in early life by Mr Disraeli to become a famous man. There was a text for a judicious writer! a youth enters upon life with the resolution to be great or famous. He makes himself be talked of or wondered at only. Had he set out with the design of accomplishing some great good for his fellow-creatures, with no thought of fame or greatness for himself, he would have obtained, with equal fame, a true happiness, instead of something little better than entire disappointment.

THE STUDIO.

The attention of artists is at present naturally directed to the report and the evidence taken by the select committee in the National Gallery. The recommendations of that committee seem to us limited, meagre, and unsatisfactory. It recommends a continuation of management by trustees-a system which has been found quite inefficient-and then contradicts itself by recommending that, as the trustees die off, the vacancies shall not be filled up. The trustees are

recommended to be appointed by the Treasury; but what does the Treasury know about art or its professors? A salaried director is recommended to be appointed-we presume to select the new pictures which he thinks ought to be bought a system practised in almost every gallery on the continent. Selection, however, according to the report, is to end his powers. The purchase is to be decided on by the trustees; but how are trustees to decide when, by the inevitable operation of nature, there are no trustees? Two of the best of the recommendations are-that a fixed sum be annually voted by parliament for the purchase of pictures; and that the present site not being well adapted for the erection of a new gallery, Kensington Gore, on ground which had been offered to the nation by the royal commissioners of the Great Exhibition, be chosen for the purpose. Still, all these are but matters connected only indirectly with art. The art-world and the country call for a great institution on the most liberal scale for schools of drawing, painting, sculpture, open at the smallest practicable fee; for models, specimens of every species of art; for the best teachers, and plenty of them; for the extension of the associates to any number that might be deemed proper; and for the election of new members by the general body. It has been even proposed to intrust the election of the academicians to the associates. At present, that body is nothing but a rotten borough ; and it is notorious that every one of the associates is capable of producing finer works than a certain twenty which might be named of the academicians, who, confident of having their pictures hung, take no pains to strike out new conceptions, but have sunk down into a conventional school of contented mediocrity. These are the days of the reforms of institutions, and we confidently expect that the National Gallery and the Royal Academy will come in for a sweeping share.

A question imported from Italy relative to painting marble statues, and which is at present being much debated in the sculptor world, is one which we hope the good sense and good taste of English artists will never permit them seriously to entertain. An admirable protest against the system and its upholders has been written and published by Mr Power, the American sculptor, with every word of which we fervently concur. The gist of his argument is, that sculpture has to do with form, and nothing but form; that the spirit, the soul of the statue, is to be indicated by the nobleness of its expression and the grace of its attitude; while, if coloured, it would convey the gross idea of flesh, and in an instant the goddess would wither down to a mortal. The spirit, instead of residing in noble proportion and tenderness, or majesty of expression, would be degraded into something closely connected with the sensuous, dependent for its existence on the free play of blood and the unimpeded action of certain fibres. In pictures, these ideas are not excited; but from the incongruous junction of two anomalous arts, they undoubtedly are so. The advocates of coloured sculpture contend that the tints would be made exceedingly light; that the hair would be adorned with a bright golden hue, like that of the Venetian Madonnas; that lightly purple veins of a hair's breadth should wander over a pearly skin, the whole to be viewed under a subdued medium-green or blue light, we should not wonder-with a gauze between the object-in the worst sense of the word-and the spectator. Such are the miserable tricks which a certain clique would have art submit to. Let such persons become artists to the representatives of Madame Tussaud— that is their proper element-or paint the spotted dogs and the green parrots that English venders of English art carry on their heads on boards!

Pre-Raphaelitism is dying out. Good sense has prevailed in spite of Mr Ruskin. Those who liked flat men and women, flat towers, flat hills, flat

everything, with no perspective whatever, but leaves and vegetation at twenty yards' distance, painted as though they were at twenty inches' distance, must make such monstrosities for themselves. The leaders of the movement-Mr Millais and Mr Holman Hunt-are rapidly returning to reason. The former has painted a scene in the Trosachs, in which Mr Ruskin is introduced gazing at the rainbow in the spray of a waterfall. We have reason to believe that Mr Millais and others consider this painting as the finest of his works; Mr H. Hunt, we hear, is engaged upon a Scripture subject from the Old Testament; Mr Dyce is at present at work in painting the frescos in the beautiful church of St Margaret, Margaret Street, near the Polytechnic. For a wonder, Mr Ruskin praises this church, the spire of which is certainly one of the noblest we have ever seen-wonderfully light, and exquisitely proportioned. It has got among artists the name of Beauty.' Mr Ruskin writes that there is no Gothic artist in England, save the architect of Mr Hope's church, in Margaret Street, which challenges fearless comparison with the noblest work of any time;' and in which, if either Holman Hunt or Millais could be prevailed upon to do even at least some of the smaller frescos, the church would be perfect.' Another favourite of Mr Ruskin's is Mr Watts, an able fresco painter; and it is whispered that some unpleasantness has occurred between Mr Ruskin and Mr Dyce, by the former in one of his volumes placing Mr Watts as an artist above the latter-one of Mr Ruskin's unaccountable whims.

Art has lost a patron and a professor-Mr James Wadmore, and Mr G. P. Harding. Both died at the same age-seventy-three. Mr Wadmore's face was well known at all private views, and he was always seen amongst a group of contemporaries.

He was

also a great frequenter of the studios, and a ready buyer, when his judgment, which was excellent, was satisfied. His collection of Turners is said to be extensive and choice. It is rumoured that the gallery will be sold. Mr G. P. Harding may be recognised as the indefatigable copier of family portraits; hardly an historical portrait-book exists without his name being upon a corner of the plate. His life was not a prosperous one, but he laboured on steadily and faithfully, and increased his annual income by periodical sales of his

works.

PROGRESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

The establishment of the Royal Society was opposed because it was asserted that 'experimental philosophy was subversive of the Christian faith; and the readers of Disraeli will remember the telescope and microscope were stigmatised as atheistical inventions which perverted our organ of sight, and made everything appear in a false light.' So late as 1806, the Anti-vaccination Society denounced the discovery of vaccination as 'the cruel despotic tyranny of forcing cow-pox misery on the innocent babes of the poora gross violation of religion, morality, law, and humanity. Learned men gravely printed statements, that vaccinated children became 'ox-faced,' that abscesses broke out to ' indicate sprouting horns,' that the countenance was gradually transmuted into the visage of a cow, the voice into the bellowing of bulls-that the character underwent 'strange mutations from quadripedan sympathy.' The influence of religion was called in to strengthen the prejudices of ignorance, and the operation was denounced from the pulpit as 'diabolical,' as a tempting of God's providence, and therefore a heinous crime; and its abettors were charged with sorcery and atheism. When fanners were first introduced to assist in winnowing corn from the chaff by producing artificial currents of air, it was argued, that 'winds were raised by God alone, and it was irreligious in man to attempt to raise wind for himself and by efforts of his own.' A route has just been successfully opened by Panama between the Atlantic and Pacific. In 1588, a priest named Acosta

wrote respecting a proposal then made for this very undertaking, that it was his opinion that 'human power should not be allowed to cut through the strong and impenetrable bounds which God has put between the two oceans, of mountains and iron rocks, which can stand the fury of the raging seas. And, if it were possible, it would appear to me very just, that we should fear the vengeance of Heaven, for attempting to improve that which the Creator, in his Almighty will and providence, has ordained from the When forks were first introduced creation of the world.' into England, some preachers denounced their use as an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers.' Many worthy people had great scruples about the emancipation of the negroes, because they were the descendants pronounced. Many others plead against the measure for of Ham, on whom the curse of perpetual slavery had been the emancipation of the Jews, that the bill is a direct attempt to contravert the will and word of God, and to revoke his sentence upon the chosen but rebellious people. Abridged from the Scottish Review.

RETROSPECTION.

FOR A SWEDISH AIR

WINDS in the trees
Chant a glad song ;
O'er fields the bees
Hum all day long:

Night lulls the breezes, the bees' hum is o'erNature, like thee! changes evermore.

But sunshine bright

Wakens the bees: Airs warm and light

Stir the young trees:

Morn is returning with joy-laden storeThou wilt return to me-never more!

A BRIDGE IN CASHMERE.

The bridge over the Jhelum is not a couple of hundred yards from the Fort of Oorie, though considerably lower, and is not more than from thirty to forty yards long. The two piers are of equal elevation-that is to say, from the water-and are constructed of wood and unhewn stone. The bridge itself is entirely made of twigs, and the bushes which are despoiled for this material grow close to the These twigs are twisted into ropes

banks of the river.

of an inch and a half or two inches in diameter, and three or four of these twig-ropes form each of the sides of the bridge. The flooring of the construction is of twigs formed the gulf. The width of this footway is about six inches, just into ropes, and placed lengthwise from pier to pier, across enough for a passenger to walk across, putting one foot before the other. The side twig-ropes are about three feet where the passenger walks across; but these twigs are two high. Short ropes join the sides to that part of the bridge and three feet apart, and the trembling wayfarer has plenty few yards only beneath his feet, dashing madly on! Howof opportunity to gaze at his leisure on the roaring flood, a ever, I have seen many worse bridges of the kind; and the one below Khōksur, in Lahoūl, is twice as long and twice as frightful. The longer the bridge is, the more sickening is the swinging to and fro of the frail construction. Mrs Hervey's Adventures.

CHAMBERS'S REPOSITORY of INSTRUCTIVE and AMUSING TRACTS.-This Illustrated Work resembles in some respects the MISCELLANY of TRACTS published a few years ago, aiming at a higher, though not less popular tone, and will satisfy, it is hoped, the new requirements of the day in regard to literary elegance-the papers being original compositions, prepared expressly for the work by popular and practised writers. A Number appears every week, a Part every month, and a Volume every two months. Eight volumes (1s. each) have now appeared.

EDINBURGH Printed by ROBERT CHAMBERS (residing at No. 1
Doune Terrace), No. 339 High Street, and Published by him
for W. and R. CHAMBERS, at the same place, on
SATURDAY, January 23, 1854.

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE

No. 5.

THE GRACE AND GLORY OF LIFE. HAVE a respect for life. It is a great and beautiful thing, notwithstanding all the gloomy and depreciatory views that have been taken of it. The Giver puts it at your disposal, as so much raw material for you to work upon, leaving you, in accordance with that system of general freedom assigned to you, to turn it into silk or into serge as you may please. What a superb tissue it becomes in some hands, and what a horsecloth in others! Overlooking altogether the ambitious few who seek for mere distinction in the eyes of their fellowcreatures, as being set upon the glorification of their own little personalities, let us view the rational and cultivated man addressing himself to the duties placed before him, and the enjoyments within his reach, and making out of these a self-consistent respectable life, in conformity with the natural conditions in which he is placed that is, with the divine rules that hedge his being-and then turn to any one of the numberless unfortunates who abuse this inestimable possession by sloth, folly, and wickedness, and what a contrast is presented! the one so fair a scene, the other such a desolation-a queen's robe compared with a beggar's rag! Yet what the one makes it, the other may. Each and all of us, whatever our position, may cultivate in some degree the grace and glory of life.

We wake into this world, and, after seventy years, go to sleep again. Of that rounding sleep, the phenomena are unknown. The waking interval, which is the subject we have to deal with, is tolerably well understood. It includes labour for the supply of wants, thoughts, affections, aspirations; a pursuit of happiness that never appears quite successful, but only because, if happiness were attained, we should find in it just the misery of having no more to seek for. Well, then, we must work, and work is always more or less, you say, antagonistic to the grace of life. Grant that it is, God has at least made it a hardship to no man-so much the reverse, that its activities and excitements are indispensable to our having a pleasant life at all. What we have here to observe is, that, if work be conducted in the advantageous ways that our ingenious faculties suggest, it need not so much engross any of us, not even the humblest hand-labourers, as to preclude some decent share of attention being given to the cultivation of the grace and glory of life. The poorest drudges may have their times of cleanness and neatness; care may surround them in their dwellings with things lovely and pleasant to look upon; they may walk the upright walk of manliness and selfrespect, if they only will think they are men, and believe that to be a Man is something in this grand

PRICE 1d.

Economy. There is a spiritual life which such persons have often exemplified in fairer forms than those placed above them in this world; to none is this denied, not even to the slave, whose every bodily power is the property of another. It is a sad truth that, as things have hitherto been, the life of the hand-worker has everywhere been one in which hardening, coarsening toil has borne too large a part. But the existing modes of working are not necessarily permanent. Continually are men discovering means of reducing the amount of labour required to produce certain results; and this process goes on at an increasing ratio. It is a mistake to suppose that the condition of the labourer has not consequently been improved. Though it were true that he still worked as hard as ever, it would be for larger wages, or for wages that could purchase a larger amount of gratifications. But it is not true that labourers in general work so hard now as they did in the last age. They have very wisely determined to have more of their time exempt from toil, and we would fain believe that this time they have not wholly disposed on objects apart from the grace and glory of life. Where it has been given to mental cultivation, or to pleasures that awaken and gratify the higher feelings and tastes, it has been bestowed in perfect conformity with our maxim.

It were hard to say whether the worker, under the compulsion of the master's eye and the need of a trifling addition to his weekly wages, is under a greater temptation to neglect the grace and glory of life, than the master, who, having great and pressing affairs, feels called upon to give them his days and nights, that he may maintain his position, and have the chance of securing some provision for those dear to him. Lamentable it is that so many of our middle classes thus sell themselves to a self-imposed slavery, leaving scarcely a space for intercourse with their families, much less for the cultivation of any intellectual gifts or elevating tastes, or for the duties of social life. Such a man feels that all is not right. His neglect of the grace and glory of life cannot but tell upon his consciousness in some obscure way. But he always hopes that the leisure time will come at last and make up for past deficiencies. He might as well omit taking his breakfast for a week, and then think to take seven breakfasts at once. It is worse. Habits have set their chains upon him. The mind, narrowed down to a beggarly routine, is totally unprepared to enter upon the more refined pursuits and occupations proper to a wealthy retirement. The heart has lost its native liberality. A set of prudential maxims, very useful in different circumstances, assert an impertinent empire over him. Such, in a greater or less degree, is the ultimate state

of those who have neglected, for the sake of moneymaking, the true grace and glory of life.

Just as we believe that improvement of tools, machines, and working arrangements, will add to that leisure which the worker is enabled to employ in cultivating this grace and glory, so do we expect that better plans and maxims of business will by and by allow the middle classes to follow their industrial pursuits with the same results. The unsatisfactory character of a life wholly given to the materialities in which they deal, must be seen and acknowledged. They will find, that what they follow as the substance, is apt to prove but the shadow; while what they used to neglect as the shadow, is the true substance. Already, we are told, the progress of a conviction to this effect is beginning to be observed in some of our principal seats of industry. Streaks of rational, graceful, philanthropically social life are beginning to checker the once incessant round of business cares and duties. We begin to find men getting above considering things merely by their prospect of paying; a mean word which should be banished from all decent society. This is a great reform, and we sincerely trust it will go on, till no one shall have the face to sport Mammon's maxims as other than the partial and temporary truths which they are, but all will take a pride in promoting, by their precept and example, the true grace and glory of life.

It would go some way to advance this great cause, could we convince all that life is a thing capable of being made as beautiful as we have asserted. We feel that it were equally out of place and needless for us to use arguments on the subject. We merely would wish those who come within our influence to observe what a wonderful work Man is, in his powers and susceptibilities, and how many fine things surround and stand in relations to him! To employ his powers on these things, so as to bring their benefits to bear upon his susceptibilities, is, in a word, the secular destiny of man. If, walking humbly with the Giver, and not forgetful of an ultimate and higher destiny, he could fulfil this perfectly, he would come as near to happiness as a being of indefinite desires ever can. Seeing what admirable things these powers and susceptibilities are, and what a beautiful relation it is in which they stand to external things, how sad to see so many men misusing them, making life, consequently, a mere series of blunders alternating with sufferings, till the designs of creative Providence itself come to be called in question! Not one of us but might do better with this fine thing called life, if we only believed it possible, and were to make a resolute endeavour.

A PREDICAMENT, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT.

PERHAPS few of our colonies are so little known as Guiana. Its very name, ten years ago, was seldom either heard or seen, except in the counting-houses and ledgers of the comparatively few merchants trading to one of its three great divisions-Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice. It is better known amongst us now, by name at least, as the home of the Victoria Regia; to say nothing of the impetus given to its timber trade by the fine collection of its woods shewn in the Great Exhibition. Perhaps I may just say, that Guiana is the north-eastern portion of South America, extending from the Orinoco southward to the Amazon. It is divided amongst the British, Dutch, and French. British Guiana is the most northern portion, extending on the sea-board from the Orinoco to the Corentyn, and inland to the sources of the last-mentioned river and the Essequibo-an area of perhaps 50,000 square miles. Dutch Guiana, or

Surinam, extends from the river Corentyn to the Marony, and between them inland to their sources-the area being not much less than 30,000 square miles. French Guiana, or Cayenne, extends coastwise from the Marony to the Oyapock, which separates it from Brazil. Its extension inland is uncertain, but the area is supposed to be 14,000 square miles. With all these divisions of Guiana, I have had occasion to become more or less acquainted, though chiefly resident at George Town, the capital of Demerara-indeed, of the whole colony, there being perhaps as many whites in George Town as in the whole of Essequibo and Berbice together.

My business in Guiana was an odd one. It was the collecting of skins-alike of beasts, birds, and reptiles and such other specimens of natural history as could be dried and transmitted to Europe, to become reanimated in the hands of the professional stuffer. Perhaps I do not overestimate my success, if I say that for some years two-thirds of the specimens exported from the colony were the produce of my expeditions. These were, of course, undertaken only in the dry seasons, of which, in Guiana, there are two-the long dry season, from August to November, and the short, February and March. The course of proceeding was this:-My Indian scout, an Arawak named Barra, got his corial ready, and laid in a supply, according to the time we purposed being absent, of Indian corn, cassava, &c. For the meat to accompany this, we depended on my double-barrelled gun or rifle, as the case might be. As to clothes, Barra's course was the reverse of that usually adopted by travellers. Instead of adding to his stock, he discarded the decent suit he used to wear in town, and contented himself with a single strip of cotton cloth bound tightly round his loins, and serving to hold a large knife. My own wardrobe was somewhat of the scantiest, but we each had a bag slung round us-Barra's to hold provisions when we left the corial for the forest; and mine to receive such feathered or other spoil as we might be able to collect. One part of our equipment must not be forgottena strong, but not thick rope, about eighty feet long, knotted at intervals of half a yard, and having at one end a two-pound iron ball. This was used when, by good-luck, we came on a bush-hog or other animal, and did not wish to scare the forest by our firearms. It was of still more essential service in another way, to be described presently.

It was a lovely morning in August, when Barra and I stepped into the little corial, and paddled leisurely up the noble Essequibo. As we landed at two or three islands on our way, we had not made above twenty miles when evening drew in; soon after which we pulled ashore to an Arawak encampment for the night. The next day and night were spent in the same way; and on the third morning we paddled a few miles higher up still, to the foot of the rapids, some fifty miles from the river's mouth, where we secured the corial. Having slung our bags, I took the rifle, Barra the fowlingpiece, and we started for the forest-which indeed came down to the water's edge-carrying the coil of rope by turns. As my object was to secure birds, we did not care to fire until we should see something worth firing at. We had been tracking the mazes of the forest, assisted by Barra's knife, for about two hours, when we came upon a small patch of savanna, at the further side of which stood a noble greenheart (Nectandra Rodiei) of large girth, and without a branch for perhaps fifty feet. The tree, however, might have been passed unnoticed, had it not been crowned by an unusually fine group of toucans. Had I fired at them from the ground, I must have used shot that would have commercially damaged them; while, if we could only get up the tree pretty near them, small-shot would secure them almost uninjured.

Uncoiling the rope, Barra tied to the end opposite