the box-tree seeds for subsistence. No living creature || menced. The backward journey, which was marked was near; and the party retreated by the way they came, and bivouacked in the forest, by the well. But it was at length made apparent that to pene trate further into the interior was impossible. Water and pastures deserted the travellers' path, and nothing save a dry and scrubby plain extended in front. The following extract will illustrate the uninviting aspect of the country:

"Long parallel lines of sandy ridges ran up northwards, further than we could see, and rose in the same manner on either side. Their sides were covered with spinifex, but there was a clear space at the bottom of the valleys; and, as there was really no choice, we proceeded down one of them for twelve miles.

At this point, the open space at the bottom of the valleys had closed in, and the cart, during the latter part of the journey, had gone jolting over the tufts and circles of spinifex, to the great dstress of the horse. Grass and water had both failed, nor could I see the remotest chance of any change in the character of the country. It was clear, therefore, that, until rain should fall, it was perfectly impracticable; and, with such a conviction in my mind, I felt that it would only be endangering the lives of those who were with me, if I persevered in advancing. I therefore determined to fall back upon the creek."

by countless curious and interesting incidents, was soon commenced. We cannot pause to linger over the events of that retreat. It was a melancholy one. The expedition had failed just when it was so near the fulfilment of its objects; we can enter fully into the feel. ings of Captain Sturt -the indefatigable traveller, who succumbed only to invincible obstacles. We take leave of our author, thanking him for the entertainment and information we have derived from the perusal of his most remarkable and valuable work. It will take its place by the side of the narratives of Captains Stokes, Leichardt, Grey, Eyre; and, of those in other quarters of the world, of Brooke, Keppel, and Mundy. In saying this, we pay the highest compliment to Captain Sturt. It sufficiently characterises the merit of his work. Further criticism would be superfluous, save that we should not omit to say a word in favour of the numerous beautiful and delicately-executed plates which illustrate the volumes. As a narrative of adventures and incidents, of anecdote and information, the present has seldom been surpassed. It will be read with eagerness by all who feel interested in the progress of Australian discovery. Captain Sturt failed in the ultimate object of his expedition; but that failure was certainly owing to anything but want of energy, intrepidity, or ability on the part of the adventurous

The retreat to the creek was accordingly effected without delay. Captain Sturt had resolved to repeat the attempt as soon as a few showers of rain should have moistened the face of the country, and afforded a chance of existence for the wanderers in those barren solitudes; but the onward progress was never recom-leader of the exploring party.

THE WARNING.

A TRIO FOR MUSIC.

BY CHARLES SHARP MIDDLETON,
Author of " Hours of Recreation."

Be mindful how you wound a heart
That is so much your own:
The bonds of love, once rent apart,
Can bring but pain alone.

Nor think that I can soon forget

How blest we might have been,

If envious spirits had not set

So wide a gulf between.

We can have foes whene'er we will;

But seldom those that love

Are linked in holy bonds until
They join in peace above.
Be mindful, then; remember, too,

My heart is still thine own;

It clings to thee, and loves thee truc,

Though thine, alas, seems gone.

THE LOVER'S QUARREL.

Yes, yes, 'twill be better to meet thee no more;
I've loved thee too dearly till now,
And all I had cherished so fondly before
Must bring but a shade on my brow.

I knew not thy heart could so lightly esteem
The warm love that so fondly I gave;

But love is a blossom that floats down a stream,
That looks bright while it sinks in the wave.
Go, go, if thou wilt, for I would not retain
The heart that's not wholly my own:
I wish not to gaze on thy features again,
Since the gem I so treasured is gone.

But weak must have been the response of thy heart,
Which I pictured so gentle and true,

Since the foes to my peace could thus rend us apart :
But thou'rt gone-and, for ever, adieu!

THE RECONCILIATION.

Come, kiss me, sweet, and drown the past

In Lethe's fabled stream:

Let us have pleasures while they last,

For life is but a dream.

So soon its smiles will fade away,

Though bright they do appear;
They're like the light that shines upon
A fallen angel's tear.

So closely are they link'd with pain,
And yet so brief their stay;

As bright as stars that fall from heav'n,
As soon to fade away.

Then kiss me, sweet, my lovely heart,
While yet we may enjoy
The pleasant dreams of pure delight,
We'll not that bliss destroy:

We will forget the wrongs of foes,
We will forgive them too;
For hate should be repaid with love,

And wrongs with kindness true:
The heart that will not keenly feel,
Nor change when thus repaid,
Oh, we will weep that it was not
For gentler uses inade.

1

THE PILGRIM IN SIGHT OF JERUSALEM."

A WALK IN THE NIGHT.

Inscribed to the Author of " Walks in and around Jerusalem." + North side of the City.

THE ROYAL SCOTTISH ACADEMY'S EXHIBITION OF 1849.

THE great refuge of the destitute Edinburgh || Thebes-has he done anything like this? Far loungers having resumed for the season, we care from it; he has filled up the atmosphere with natunot if we saunter in amongst the garish array of ral colour-the grey of the desert tells at once of leads and pigments, just to say what our annual the clime and country he depicts-still more does friends, the President, and Secretary, Bonnar, Bur- the fiery furnace of the Egyptian sand, amidst which ton, Crawford, Fraser, Faed, and all the rest of the Coptic crowds are walking, proclaim the rainless them, in alphabetical order, have been doing. We region of the African isthmus. When we look at don't pretend to criticise. The toute ensemble of the these works, we are forced to confess that our Scottish exhibition is not worth it. What would become of artists know nothing about expressing the sentiment us, were it not for the English paintings, it is im- of a landscape. How different was it with Thomson possible to say. Most of our own artists evince an of Duddingstone; an engraving of whose "Dunluce improvement in their little particular walks. But Castle, county Antrim❞—about to be presented to they have not contributed a single great work last year's subscribers to the Association for Proamongst them to the six hundred paintings in the motion of the Fine Arts-hangs in the doorway of exhibition-unless, indeed, David Scott's enormous one of the rooms! And to him we must add one or canvas might deserve the name, on the score of su- two honourable exceptions, amongst whom we inperficies. The majority are men of one idea. Scott clude D. O. Hill, and almost Edmund T. Crawford. himself, with all his gigantic grossièreté of imagina- The former has been extremely fortunate in his tion, reproduces himself incessantly. As for the large picture of "Ballochmyle" (220). The unothers, they manifest the same difficulty in escaping utterable loveliness of the spot, and, it would al. from the mill-horse track. Daniel Macnee must most seem, some of its associations (for one of the paint pink beauties by a well; Alexander Fraser, abutments of the great central arch is founded in with a hopeful partiality for an early era of the art, the rock where Peden had his hiding place) have never aspires beyond the painting of an alehouse been arrested. With singular candour, the artist sign. Scott Lauder himself has got hold of one has also contributed to the exhibition his original perennial female model, and we are sure to have sketch (176). To younger aspirants this must her wandering indifferently amidst oriental scenery, teach an admirable lesson; for it is quite evident or buckling the belt of a border knight. Even Sir that a further study of the subject has induced Mr. William Allan seems determined to stick to the Hill to open up the channel of the stream, thereby field of Waterloo; whilst D. O. Hill, having ob- imparting its very life to the scene, besides extendtained celebrity for striking out interminable dis-ing the play of his magical perspective. The cir tances, in the mild warm haze of his sunlit skies, cumstance of a masterly painting, of this railway has made more than one of them as mere matters scene of matchless beauty, being produced, is a of sunshine as Horatio Macculloch and the High- source of general surprise and delight; for it is land artists have made mere matters of moonshine not amongst the steam viaducts of the land that of others. Then there is that set-Perigal, Mac-artists instinctively seek for subjects worthy of their culloch, the late William Simson, the greatest of their school (de mortuis nil nisi bonum), one might|| take affidavit they had served apprenticeship upon steam-boat panels of the highest Birmingham polish. There is no mistaking the style. Perigal's "Glencoe," in the present exhibition, has an ultra papier maché finish. So have they all. The skies and backgrounds of these unfortunate landscapes are generally overgrown amethysts, topazes, turquoises-anything but the colours we behold in nature; whilst the foregrounds, which in general are admirable studies, both in colour and conformation -natural looking trees, lichened rocks, beautifully transparent water, or-if living figures of men or animals be intruded on the solitary scene, capital expositions of the pigmy existence amidst the lone majesty of nature, these only render the contrast and conflict betwixt the studied and unstudied parts of the picture (for thereby hangs a tale) painful to the beholder. The foreground details secured in their sketches, the rest is left to conventionality to complete; and hence the incongruity of the very finest of these productions. Now, has David Robarts, who has given us two of his magnificent pictures of the East-the Ruins of Baalbec in the Desert, and of the great Temple of Karnac at

VOL. XVI.-NO. CLXXXIII.

pencil. But, certainly, if any railway scene will bear pictorial management, the Bridge of Ballochmyle, railway bridge though it be, with or without the accessories of its "Braes," would stand the test.

Yet, the Braes themselves, sung in the lovestrains of Burns (and these strains were his best), were equally beautiful, without the bridge. This paradox, perhaps, requires a bit of explanation; and the explanation redounds immensely to the credit of the proprietor, William Maxwell Alexander, of Ballochmyle. The scene is a celebrated one, and cynosured within that gentleman's private policies; and we all know what price he might have put upon the passage of the Glasgow, Dumfries, and Carlisle Railway, through his romantic demesne. Mr. Alexander, however, stipulated, we believe, for nothing on the score of amenity, save that the engineer should design such a bridge as would not impair the beauty of the scene. The task was an easy one to Mr. Miller, who had already spanned the dizzy altitudes of the Pease Pass with an arch of unrivalled beauty and proportions; and Mr. Alexander had his reward in the present arch of 180 feet span, finely relieved by six smaller arches of 50 feet each, standing 178 feet above the level of the river, and even more exquisitely pro

N

which he has rendered and realised the mysterious architecture of these strange lands and forgotten oras, endowing them with all the attributes of their present life.

portioned than the Pease viaduct. The artist, in his treatment of this imposing subject, has thrown in some lovely touches of nature; we do not so much refer to his fine rocks, limpid water, and graceful trees, as to his distance and perspective, Mr. J. M. Müller, another favourite English arand to a sunny shelf of elevated sward, extending tist, has a tolerably extensive "View on the to the left of the picture, which is really senti-Thames." It is the property of Mr. Birch, of Har

mental.

We have spoken of the English pictures as the gems of the exhibition; and we mean to stand by the assertion. The late William Collins's "Skittle Players," the property of a gentleman in London, is the best thing in the collection. There is a pervading freshness and vitality, yet a perfect repose, in this picture, which is delicious. The life is life in earnest, whether manifested in the ardour of the combatants in the game, the anxiety of the onlookers, young and old, the indifference of the topers, enjoying their beer and tobacco, seated at the table under the tree, or the zeal of the little fruitseller and potboy, who ply them with apples and heavy-wet. The tone of the painting is masterly; the light and shade is distributed fearlessly, freely, but with unerring precision; and the harmony of the composition as a whole is, we should think, unrivalled. The very skittles seem to play an important part in the piece, so admirably are its details adjusted; but there is not a blade of grass, the leaf of a tree, a sunbeam, or a shade upon the paling, but does the same. It is a fine specimen of the manner of the artist, and does honour to the English school.

bourne Hall. It is novel, to a startling degree; and, we fear, with all its excellence, which is marvellous, betrays much unwarrantable eccentricty of manner. Nothing could be more admirable, for instance, than the dredging-machine or barge; mechanism is put together as if it were a working model. Sails, shipping craft, &c., are equally brought out. But the sea perplexes us. We know not what to pronounce it. There is a delicacy in finding fault with a great picture, the property of a private gentleman, whose only motive in subjecting it to general criticism must be to enhance the attractions of the exhibition. But we must say, that, by ripping up a feather-bed, and dispersing the feathers pretty freely over a ground of blue tick, a fair model might be realised of Müller's "painted ocean." It is a frothy ocean, a flaky ocean, an ocean of spray and broken billows; but marvellously like a disrupted feather-bed. And yet the piece has its fascinations. You sniff the fresh breeze, and enjoy the laughing spray. The only misfortune is that the sky is sprayed too; and, but for that, we could not give the picture up.

We are not forgetting, all this time, that there are two Wilkies in the room-very opposites, antipodes of each other-one of them (54), "Alfred in the Neatherd's Cottage." The sketch for the large picture, "Familiar as a household thing;" the other (145), "Benvenuto Cellini presenting, for the ap proval of Pope Paul III., a silver censer of his own workmanship." The sketch is interesting, and, to artists, instructive. It leaves room, we think, to expatiate largely on the amplification of Sir David's ideas in the progress of execution. The less-known picture, which is the property of Mr. Birch, already mentioned, is one of those efforts in which Sir David Wilkie may be said to have failed. The figures are too solitary, the details too circumscribed, for his genius, which revelled in variety, and made up a long inventory of telling effects.

The Times complains that the London exhibition has not a single Stanfield. We have two hereold ones—and somewhat of the smallest; but, one of them at least, bearing the finest characteristics of the master. They are the property of Mr. Charles Hargitt. The squall coming on at the mouth of the Thames (20) is as beautiful a work in its way as Stanfield ever painted; and no picture could better convey the tale. There is no exaggeration. The billows are not tempest-tossed; but, in a small corner of the distance, the briny green gives way to the dark, almost livid trace of the squall. The wrath of ocean is awakening; and even in that small streak the ominous darkness of the scowl that traverses the face of the deep is imaged. The other picture of the giant of Caledonian railway land- And now to dispose satisfactorily of the strangers, scape "Criffel, at the mouth of the Nith,' (21)— we have but to notice a Turner-" The Wreckers" is in a very different style. The mountain is in (339), the property of Mr. Bicknell, of Herne Hill, shade. The sea has receded from the shore. The Surrey. This is a magnificent picture, apparently sands, on which a vessel is laid up, are minutely and an old one, with less of Turner's fantastical illu beautifully detailed, with semi-marine objects; and sions in it than usual. The terrible catastrophe is the distant sunset proclaims the hour through a sort thrust forward with great breadth and power. Spars, of gorge in the mountain, and warms up the dark-cordage, all the débris of wreck and disaster, tumble up through the raging surge, in its recoil from the Robarts's two pictures (12 and 376) represent the iron-bound shore of a dark precipitous coast, castel"Ruins of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec-lated like Culzean, on the sea-board of Ayrshire. Mount Lebanon in the distance-from sketches on

ened masses into effect.

the spot in 1839❞—the other, "Ruins of the Great Temple of Karnac at Thebes, Upper Egypt-the No-Amon of Scripture." Those who have only seen Mr. Robarts's sketches of these scenes will bear in mind that these are finished compositions. Those who have seen neither his sketches nor elaborated pictures will hopelessly conjecture the felicity with

The harmony of colouring throughout this picture is equal to anything from Turner's pencil; and, although the magical vistas of half-imagined architecture are inadmissible in the scene, his attempt to depict "the beauty of sublimity" (for, let philosophers analyse as they will, there is such a thing) has been here as successful as elsewhere his delincation of its evanescent and intangible dreams.

Sir William Allan's companion pictures, an "Incident in the life of the Duke of Wellington" (138), and an “Incident in the life of Napoleon" (149), solicit our attention at once on entering the great room; notwithstanding the gigantesque protrusion of Scott's "Vasco di Gama," and the "Soap Bubbles" of Harvey's "Past and Present." The first of those pictures, by the accomplished President, is not the best; nevertheless, it has an epic majesty in the story which it tells, the very choice of which was an achievement in heroic portraiture. It is neither more nor less than Wellington weeping|| --and on the field of Waterloo! He-the Iron Duke-the hero of a hundred fights-dissolved in tears, and in the hour of victory! It is the triumph of human nature; and Allan merits the glory of painting it, for having had the genius to select the incident. But the reader seeks to know how it could happen, instinctively imbued, we hope, with the trust that the fact may not be a fiction. Well then :

“As the Duke of Wellington slowly returned over the field of hattle towards Waterloo, the noise and confusion, which so lately reigned, were heard no more; and all was hushed and still, save when the means of the wounded, or the agonising shrieks of the dying, barst upon the ear. The moon shed a pale and mournful light on the horrors of the scene. When the Duke contemplated the files of dead which were heaped on every side, and thought, with the lives of how many brave fellows the glory of that day had been bought, and how many hearts even the joyful news of this victory would sadden, the sternness of the soldier was forgotten,|| the feelings of the man resumed their power, and he could not

restrain tears."

on which it is invariably the fate of Wellington to be mounted, whether by Marochetti, in bronze, or by Allan, in oil and colours-the neck, especially, is stiff, turgid, inflexible. It may seem unreasonable to say it, but it outrages the whole sentiment, so strongly depicted in the countenance of the hero. What could you expect from a horse? urges the apologist of the painter. Everything. Horses are the best actors we know. In every pageant in which they play a part, they do it well-wedding or funeral, drive or parade, the horse comports himself accordingly; and we would have a little dash of sentiment and sensibility, therefore, thrown into any horse honoured by introduction into a principal place in a scene which, in our estimation, rises to the sublime of pathos. The scene stands altogether unparalleled in the conceptions of the historic muse. Alexander wept; but not like Wellington. Selfish, wolfish, and rapacious were the crocodile tears of the Macedonian -but the shower of human sympathy that rained from the modern victor's eyes welled from the fountains of a mighty heart. And yet he would be either more or less than man that could wade to victory through seas of gore, and experience no emotion.

The Napoleontic incident delineated by Sir William Allan is quite dramatic, like every incident personal to "the Emperor." The subject is less extensive, the interest more concentrated, and the painting itself, where there is no "moonshine," and but little chiaroscuro at all, more careful in drawing, grouping, and finish, than the companion piece. Napoleon is at Boulogne, distributing the cross of the Legion of Honour (we really cannot quote the catalogue-it is the panorama again) when two English sailors are brought before him, charged with attempting their escape from Verdun, in a little boat or raft composed of small pieces of wood, and covered with sail-cloth. Napoleon is splendidly mounted, his brilliant staff are grouped around him, and he is in the act of generously extending liberty and a couple of gold pieces to the gallant tars, who are dauntlessly telling him their story. The cos

We are

Please give the catalogue full credit for this quotation. We know nothing of "Bryce" or his "History," whence it is stated to be taken: and can no further vouch for the incident. The language in which it is told assuredly smacks more of Marshall's 's panorama, and the flowing diction of the describer, than we altogether like. But Bryce, for aught we know, may have been as honest a man as Macaulay, although he would have made more of the matter. B., we admit, has somewhat minced it. And Sir William Allan, we regret to add, al-tumes here form one of Sir William's most successthough he has produced the Duke himself effec-ful studies, and the vigour of tone and colouring he tively, and in the melting mood, has literally failed has imparted to the picture are conspicuous. in the principal figure of the piece-and that is, We may now turn to George Harvey's felicitous the Duke's horse. “Around a slaughtered army' composition (41), unquestionably the most pleasing, lies-"rider and horse," &c.-all the red ruin and in domestic interest, contained in the room, "Blowmelancholy detail of the "romance of war." And ing Bubbles-the Past and the Present." oh! the ghastly play of one particular moonbeam told in the catalogue, that Mrs. W. F. Tayler, of on the steel cuirass and pallid countenance of a London, the lady whose property the piece now is, prostrate corpse in the foreground! There is some- was the holder of the £300 prize in the Art Union thing unearthly in the pale, cold light reflected from of London, in 1848, and selected this picture from the face of the dead. The fallen brave lie near; the Royal Academy exhibition. Her choice does the reviving wounded rouse themselves to gaze at honour to her taste and judgment. The bubblethe passing staff. Far o'er the carnage-strewn blowers are a group of children, disporting within plain, in heaps, accumulate the wrecks of battle. the grass-grown ruin of an old manorial hall. Victors, worn out with the contest, crouch It makes us young again to see them. The leader a thousand watch fires, recounting the of the sports is elevated, but not alone, upon a exploits of the day; and the unquenched smoke fragment of mouldering wall, covering, like a slab, and flame of Hugomont still tell of the recent the dismantled fire-place, once surmounted by a battle. Sir William Allan has, in fact, repro- very different set of chimney ornaments. This duced another great sketch of that terrible vic- rough but intelligent looking urchin blows his tory, in which nothing is forgotten, to the crushed bubbles from this altitude, intently watched by the gauntlet, the broken cuirass, and neglected drum."tyke" that half gravely stands before him on the But, in the midst, appears the identical wooden horse || same pedestal; immediately under which a lovely

round