stage. His very stick, he said, acted. Sir | accommodation insufficient. He longed too Sir George Beaumont was present one night for the society of his brother artists, and he when the wig of the mimic Lear fell from was happy again to set sail for England in his head, but so completely were the audience April 1834. absorbed by the emotions created in them by the matchless performance that an accident passed unnoticed, which under ordinary circumstances would have convulsed the house with laughter. One touch of his genius is apparent in the mere description of his manner of delivering the passage in which Lear curses his daughter, and wishes, if she proves prolific, that her infant may grow up ungrateful, That she may feel The expression that 'she may feel' he repeated twice, and laying the strongest emphasis upon feel he first raised his voice in pronouncing the word to the highest key and the second time he sunk it to the deepest base. 'Let this,' adds Mr, Leslie, 'be tried,' and the effect will be at once perceived.' In taking leave of the portion of the 'Recollections which treat of the theatre, we must not omit the pleasantry of Lady Spencer when it was the fashion for the nobility to marry actresses: If my daughters don't go off this season, I shall bring them out on the stage.' The life of Mr. Leslie, after his return, glided on tranquilly in the exercise of his delightful art, and the first event to arrest our attention is an incident which he witnessed in July 1836, and which is alike remarkable for the self-possession shown by the heroine of the story, and the gallantry displayed by her deliverer. The circumstances were recorded by Mr. Leslie in his journal at the time, and a more simple, vivid, thrilling narrative was hardly ever penned. 'In the evening I took little Harriet and Caroline, with Rebecca and William Clark, to the gardens of the Eyre Arms Hotel, where there was an exhibition of fireworks, &c. A 300 feet in length, and 60 feet from the ground woman was to ascend a rope across the gardens, at its greatest height. She proceeded slowly, in consequence, as I afterwards learned, of the rope not being sufficiently tight; and when she was within a short distance of the end she stopped, being unable either to advance or to go back. The ascent had become so steep from the slackness of the rope, that she could not proceed a step higher, neither could she stoop to take hold of it without throwing away the balance-pole, and had she done that she must have fallen. For some minutes she continued stationary, her husband calling to her from below to go back. I was too far off to hear her reply; but it was evident she could not venture to turn round. Her situation became every instant more peril ing she would lose her presence of mind, and dreading to see her fall, and that my little girls should witness so horrid a sight. I should mention, that, as it was quite dark, she was only made visible by fireworks exploding around and below her. The top of a ladder now rose from the midst of a crowd; but when perpendicular it was not long enough to reach her feet; and there was another dreadful minute or two of suspense, with cries and screams from the crowd. A table was then brought from the inn, and the ladder placed on it, and kept in a perpendicular position by two men at the foot, while another ascended. There were loud cries of "don't let the ladder touch the rope!" as he went up. The top of it rose but a few feet above the rope; and he could use but one arm in saving her, as with In 1833 Mr. Leslie emigrated to America, seduced by the tempting description of an appointment which was offered him as Teacher of Drawing in the Military Aca-ous; and I was about to leave the garden, feardemy at West Point, on the Hudson River.' The reality had scarcely more resemblance to the representation than the tumble-down house and neglected grounds of some longdeserted seat to the picturesque ruin and wild romantic scenery of Mr. Robins' advertisements. There was one characteristic republican regulation which must alone have driven any gentleman from the post. The teacher was bound every Saturday to send in an account of the conduct of the cadets. Those who were censured for misbehaviour appealed against the decision, and every Monday the master had to reply to these charges of injustice. He was suddenly converted from a judge into a criminal, and had to endure the perpetual ignominy of being put upon his trial by all the rebellious pupils of whom he had ventured to tell the truth in his compulsory report. If he was always acquitted the arrangement was useless; if he was found guilty his authority and self-respect were destroyed; and in any case he had to pass his days in perplexity, humiliation, and broils. In addition to this grievance the office proved toilsome, the locality unhealthy, the the other he had to keep hold of the ladder. It seemed, therefore, scarcely possible that he could help her. After a few moments' consultation, he called to the crowd to stand from below; and she threw the balance-pole, and in the same instant stooped towards the ladder, and, falling across the rope, remained suspended, with one leg over it, and her arms holding to the ladder. It was with some difficulty that her preserver managed to remove her to the ladder; but as soon as he did she descended rapidly, amidst the cheering of the crowd; while the gallant fellow who had saved her seemed in some danger him self, for he remained for a short time suspended | plained Toms, 'but I say that your heads are by his hands to the rope, with only one foot on less than the life.' These heads hung in half the step of the ladder. But he soon righted the houses that the Duke visited, and there himself, and reached the ground. I asked her preserver if he was related to her; he said are none that he must have looked at more "No," and that he was only a servant. He was frequently and earnestly, both from the a fine-looking young man, and I was told had extraordinary beauty of the works and the been a sailor. Having half-a-sovereign in my interest to an Englishman of most of the pocket, I put it into his hand.' persons they represent. With examples daily before his eyes to show that the proportions of nature had not at least been exceeded, it is impossible to conjecture how he had arrived at his sweeping conclusion, and could lay it down to an artist as an indisputable fact. The From this noble act of the preserver of the poor rope-dancer we pass to a very different scene-the coronation of the Queen. In order to witness the ceremony it was necessary to be at the Abbey about four in the morning, and to remain there till four in the afternoon. Imposing as was the spectacle, Mr. Leslie came to the conclusion that it was not worth the fatigue. The day was productive of future results. He was commissioned by the Queen to paint a picture of her in the act of receiving the sacrament. He wrote to the Duke of Wellington to state that he was commanded to introduce his portrait. The Duke called upon the artist, and his first words were, 'You live a great way from my house; five miles I should say.' Mr. Leslie replied that he did not think it was more than three. 'Oh,' rejoined the Duke, you are mistaken, it's five miles!' The artist offered to save him the journey by taking the picture to Apsley House. A morning was fixed for the purpose, and the Duke greeted him with 'Well, don't you find it five miles?' Mr. Leslie again told him that it was only three, and again the Duke repeated, 'You are mistaken, it's five.' artist spoke by the card, the Duke by guess, but the positiveness was characteristic. He made a still more venturous assertion, when Mr. Leslie showed him his figure sketched in: 'You have made my head too large, and this is what all the painters have done to whom I sat. Painters are not aware how very small a part of the human form the head is. Titian was the only painter who understood this, and by making his heads small he did wonders.' It would indeed have been strange if Titian had been the only painter who knew the size of the human head, or if the wonders he did had been due to his not exaggerating it. Reynolds was rather prone to represent it less than it is in nature. He often employed a person by the name of Toms, who was skilful in his way, to put in draperies for him, and he once complained that the dress did not accord with the head. That,' argued Toms, 'is because heads are on a diminished scale.' Sir Joshua, from being deaf, mistook his meaning, and exclaimed with horror, 'What! do you say that I paint in a little manner? did you say mine was a little manner?' 'No,' ex your · Lord Melbourne was another of the personages introduced into the Coronation Picture, and the portrait which Mr. Leslie painted with his brush could not outvie in truth and individuality the portrait which he has delineated with his pen in the 'Recollections.' Not indeed, he was the finest specimen of manly 'His head was a truly noble one. I think, beauty in the meridian of life I ever saw. only were his features eminently handsome, but his expression was in the highest degree intellectual. His laugh was frequent, and the most joyous possible, and his voice so deep and musical, that to hear him utter the most ordinary things was a pleasure. But his frankness, his freedom from affectation, and his peculiar though it seemed perfectly natural, yet quite humour, rendered almost everything he said, original. He asked me how it was that Raphael was employed by the Pope to paint the walls of the Vatican. I said, "Because of his great excellence." "But was not his uncle, Bramante, architect to the Pope?" I replied, "I believe Bramante was his uncle." "Then it was a job, laugh. I met him at Holland House a day or you may be sure," he said, with his hearty two after he ceased to be prime minister. He was as joyous as ever, and only took part in the conversation respecting the changes in the Royal household (which were not then completed) to make everybody laugh. "I hear," said a lady, naming a duke of not the most correct habits, "is quite scurrilous at not getting an appointment." No," ," said Lady Holland, "He can't be scurrilous." Well, then, he is very angry." "It serves him right," said Lord Melbourne, "for being a tory. None of these immoral men ought to be tories. If he had to come to me I would not have refused him." "that 66 'He abused women to Lady Holland, and called them "devils to each other." "But," said Lady Holland, "what nurses they are! What would you do without women in your illnesses?" "I would rather bave men about me when I am ill; I think it requires very strong health to put up with women." "Oh!" said the lady tapping him with her fan, " you have lived among such a rantipole set." With all his abilities, his good sense, and his scholarship, he did not value art, Perhaps what Lady Holland said to him, when and seemed to have a bad opinion of mankind. he expressed his opinion of women, may account for his small belief in human goodness. He had lived among a bad set.' The circumstance that he had been premier had as much, we believe, to do with Lord Melbourne's estimate of mankind as the set in which he lived. He had witnessed hour by hour the fawning, effrontery, greediness, intrigue, duplicity, and hypocrisy which congregate round the possessors of power and the dispensers of patronage, and he fell into the same mistake that a physician would commit if he were to suppose that there were no healthy people in the world, because he was only consulted by the sick. A nature intrinsically kind counteracted the false conclusions he drew from his melancholy experience, and he never in practice became a misanthrope. In politics, as he confessed, he was sometimes forced by the pressure of his party into measures which he did not approve, and he has been heard to lament that the current of events had separated him from the Duke, for whose wisdom in civil affairs he retained to the last the profoundest admiration. He called him the watch-dog of the state, and said that while he lived the house would be safe. In the ordinary business of life, where his own sense had undivided sway, nobody exhibited more sagacity than Lord Melbourne. His reply when he was asked to pension the sons of Tom Moore is a slight but characteristic example of his habitual quickness and clearness of perceptiou; Making a small provision for young men is hardly justifiable; and is of all things the most prejudicial to themselves. They think what they have much larger than it really is, and make no exertion. The young should never any language but this: You have your own way to make, and it depends upon your own exertions whether you starve or not.' hear Mr. Leslie was employed by the Queen in 1841 to paint a picture of the christening of the Princess Royal. The child was three months old at the time, and he had never seen a finer infant. The public, who had not seen her at all, were of a different opinion. 'It was said everywhere that the Princess was born blind, and by many it was even believed that she was born without feet. The sketch was shown at a party at Mr. Moon's the evening after I made it, and the ladies all said "What a pity so fine a child should be entirely blind!" It was in vain I told them that her eyes were beautifully clear and bright, and that she took notice of everything about her. I was told that, though her eyes looked bright and though she might appear to turn them to every object, it was certain she was blind. I remembered that it had been said, two years before, that the Queen herself could scarcely walk, although I knew, from good authority, that she had danced out a pair of shoes at one of her own balls, and when the company thought she had retired for the evening, she reappeared with a new pair. It is by the ready credence given to such tales, that people balance the account between their own lot and the splendour of high station. When the marriage between the Queen and Prince houses that in six months they would be living Albert took place, bets were laid in the clubseparately.' Dr. Johnson was accustomed to say that any eminent man might know the enormous amount of misrepresentation in the world by the quantity of lies which were told of himself. The curious thing is, that, though experience, they are people on most subjects become wiser by never rendered less credulous by the fallaciousness of scandalous reports. Like London fogs, as fast as one invention is dispersed another rises. Of the remaining eminent characters who have found a place in Mr. Leslie's charming gallery of portraits we can now say nothing, nor have we space to enter upon the skilful history of his pictures and artist life which Mr. Tom Taylor has drawn up; but we cannot forbear to give in an abridged form the general summary of his qualities as a painter, which are described by the Editor with his usual force and distinctness. evident from his choice of subjects from first to 'How keenly and genuinely he loved books is last. When we recall his pictures, it is in connexion with Shakspeare, Cervantes, and Le Sage, Molière, Addison, Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett. These were the works his father loved and on such strong and nutritious literary food young Leslie was reared. As an illustrator and pictorial embodier of other men's conceptions, he ranks among the first-if not as the very first-of English painters. So entirely true and subtle is his rendering of character and expression, so fine his appreciation of his author's sentiment, so thorough his relish for the subject in hand, that his pictures seem to me quite to escape the charge so justly brought against pictures taken from books, that they weaken instead of strengthen our conception and enjoyment of the scene represented. In his choice of subjects from his favourite authors I fancy one may trace the same hearty and intimate appreciation. He does not pick out his incidents only or mainly because they admit of picturesque costume, effective grouping, or stirring and varied action, but because they reflect the inner and more subtle sentiment of the play, or novel, or poem which furnishes them. It has always seemed to me that our liking and appreciation of the Duchess in "Don Quixote must be permanently heightened after we have learned to enjoy her high-bred humour and courteous grace from Leslie's picture of her, after we have caught that radiant but restrained half-smile, so exquisitely contrasted with the broad and boisterous merriment of the attendants-the mulatto girl, above all-and the bilious contempt on the starched vinegar face of the Duenna. 'In selecting the most salient merits of this | subject to the correction of better-informed painter, I am only echoing the general verdict judges. It seems to me clear that he had not when I pitch first upon his power of rendering by nature the gift of colour, and never quite character, under the guidance of that chasten- made up for this want by self-culture. The ing good taste which can treat even coarse sub- colour of his earlier works is mellower and jects without vulgarity, and make even odious richer than that of his later ones. Failing sight incidents tolerable by redeeming glimpses of may have had something to do with this; but it humanity and good-feeling. In his "Reading may also be partly due to a natural relaxation of of the Will," from "Roderick Random" (1846), effort after alien perfections in one who has I would note, in illustration of the latter cha- succeeded in winning public favour by the racteristic, the real grief of the little girl at the qualities which are natural to him. From window-the one personage in that assemblage about 1819 to 1838, judging from the pictures of sharking fortune-hunters who is thinking of I have had opportunities of examining, Leslie the dead with regret. She is unnoticed by the seems to me to have been at his best as a rest of the characters, and might easily escape colourist. His pictures painted after 1838 observation, so unobtrusively is she introduced. exhibit an increasing tendency to opacity and But, once seen, she leavens the whole scene with chalkiness, though he ever and anon escapes that salt of human kindness which without her from these besetting sins; and, as in his Beatrice would be wanting, even in presence of the bluff (1850), paints a head as perfect in the softness honesty of Lieutenant Bowling and the innocent of its texture and the pearliness of its tone as unconcern of little Roderick. There are few of the most exacting critic could require. the painter's pictures in which he does not contrive to introduce some such touch to make us love him and feel kindly towards our kind. 'Another charm in Leslie's work is the inborn and genuine-if often homely-beauty and grace of his women. Speaking from my own feeling, I should find it difficult to parallel, for this quality, his Perdita in the Sheepshanks' picture, or his Beatrice in the Collection of Mrs. Gibbons. But all his women, even the humblest, have as much beauty as is compatible with their class, character, and occupation. This beauty never degenerates into the meretricious or the tawdry. It is eminently the real and work-day charm of human flesh and blood; whether it be refined and high-bred, as in the Duchess in "Don Quixote," or the ladies of "The Rape of the Lock;" or simple and naïve, as in the Perdita; or rustic and blowsy, as in the Mopsa and Dorcas; or ripe, melting, and provocative, as in the Widow Wadman. Closely akin to this sentiment of genuine womanly loveliness is Leslie's intense feeling for the domesticities. No mother, I should think, can see that little picture of his in which a lovely young woman nestles her face in the chubby neck of the crowing baby on her knee, without a thrill of maternal love at her heart. But whatever he has done in this way is free from all mawkishness; there is no trading in the "deep domestic," as a good saleable article for the market. In this, as in all he did, good taste has chastened and checked Leslie's pencil. 'How genuine all these qualities were in Leslie is best shown by his life and by his character, as indicated in his conversation and his writing. How could he be other than truthful, lovely, charitable, and tasteful in his pictures, who, in his home, as in society, in his teaching as in his conduct, was habitually sincere, affectionate, equable, thoughtful of others, tolerant, loving to dwell rather on the good than on the bad about him? It would be well if there were more lives that should show so exact a parallel of good attributes in the workman and his works. 'I am very imperfectly qualified to pronounce on the technical merits and demerits of Leslie as a painter. I venture what I say on this point, 'But making every allowance for such occasional felicities, I fear it must be admitted that Leslie was not a great colourist; whether one considers the quality of his tints, in themselves, or the choice and arrangement of them in combination. This was not for want of honest effort, for no man ever laboured more strenuously, by observation and practice, to reproduce the true effects of light, or knew better what these ought to be, or more enjoyed them in the works of other masters. 'And if Leslie's pictures lack the peculiar charm of colour, so they are not marked by any special dexterity of manipulation. There is none of what Hazlitt called "the sword-play" of the pencil about them. But against these technical defects we must, I think, set off a rare feeling for all of atmospheric effect that is independent of colour: Leslie's pictures are full of air; we can breathe in them, and walk about among his groups, and retire into his distances. Of composition he seems to me a master, quite as happy in the disposition of his personages, and in their combination with the still life of his scene, as in the rendering of character by face and action. As a draughtsman, too, his merit seems to me of a very high order. Very few painters have made so good a use of the model-getting reality and life from the living sitter, without any sacrifice of the ideal intention of the painter. His pictures are quite free from all suggestion of the masquerade warehouse or the old furniture shop. He is a thorough master of perspective, and has seldom been exceeded in the taste with which he selects his accessories, and the well-considered degree of finish with which he paints them. In this, as in his conceptions of incident and character, guiding good taste is everywhere apparent. 'His choice of materials and his modes of work, I learn from high professional authority, were of the honestest. There is no fear of Leslie's pictures falling into ruin from the resort to ill-considered or reckless means of immediate effect. His method of painting was eminently solid, simple, and straightforward. 'I sincerely believe that, when the pictorial art of our time comes to be classed with that which preceded and that which will follow it, Leslie's name will stand honoured, for the pre- | are a vain waste of words. Like many of vailing presence in his works of good taste, our self-criticisms, this is more than half truth, character, humour, grace, and kindliness, delusion. This generation is very fond of and for the entire absence of that vulgarity, telling itself, with a sort of cynical complabravado, self-seeking, trick, and excess, which are by no means inseparable from great attain- cency, that its feelings are all dead, and that ments in painting, and which the conditions of a material stoicism, not free from selfishness, modern art are but too apt to engender and to but wholly devoid of nobler emotions, is the foster.' mainspring of its acts. If one were to judge from the current language, one would imagine In every word of this discriminating cha- that the nineteenth century was the absolute racter we heartily concur. The painter and essence of prose-that its atmosphere was a the man were truly of a piece, insomuch that sort of moral azote, in which neither romance, those who were attracted to him by their nor poetry, nor enthusiasm can live. And admiration of his art were sure to contract an yet it is an age in which, for the sake of the equal admiration of himself. He did not win shadowy sentiment of nationality, Europe favour by seeking it, for he never appeared to forgets the solid blessings of peace-in which speak a word or perform an action for a sel- band after band of heroes is found to brave fish or personal end. He prevailed by the the perils of Arctic exploration, merely that genuine force of his upright and benignant they may give expression to a chivalrous nature, of his refined and unaffected manners, sympathy-in which the greatest financier of his polished and intelligent conversation. He the day spends his rare and scanty leisure in had a keen appreciation of excellence of every maintaining against all comers the spotless kind. His delightful Handbook for Paint-purity of Homer's Helen. It is not a bit ers' shows how catholic were his tastes in his own calling, and how far removed he was from the presumptuous narrowness of critics like Mr. Ruskin, who can only see a few of the beauties of art, and who deny the merits which their own deficiencies of mind and eye do not permit them to understand. To any thing like envy Mr. Leslie was a total stranger. His high enjoyment of the pictures of his contemporaries rather led him to over-praise than underrate them. It was the same with respect to persons. He valued them for what was good in them instead of disliking them for what was bad-was very kind to their virtues, and more than a little blind to their defects. It is as a painter that he will live, but it will add to the enjoyment with which generations to come will gaze at his charming works to know that they are a true reflection of the man, and that the amiability, tenderness, grace, simplicity, and mind which look out from his canvas were the habitual characteristics of Charles Robert Leslie. ART. VIII.-Practical Results of the Reform Ir is a favourite observation that the halcyon days of parliamentary eloquence are gone by, and that speeches have lost their power of influencing a division. The popular belief is, that the most splendid oratory falls in vain upon minds not only prejudiced but pledged against persuasion, and that, therefore, debates more true that oratory has lost its spell even over the indurated heart of a Member of Parliament. If speakers of very considerable note often fail of any appreciable effect upon their audience, an abundant explanation of the fact may be found in the quality of the speeches which will now-a-days justify the newspapers in conferring the title of 'eminent debator.' The success of the present Budget supplies an ample proof that when a real orator appears there is no reason to complain that his genius is thrown away. There is more reason for complaining that unassisted common sense has very little chance against it. Well might Sir Francis Baring be amazed and terrified at the acquiescence with which so daring a project was received. He well knew that if he had ever ventured upon half Mr. Gladstone's temerity he would have been hooted down by his own junior Lords of the Treasury. Undoubtedly such an opportunity for display has seldom fallen to an orator's lot, and has still more seldom been so skilfully improved. The stage effects were so admirably arranged, the circumstances that led up to the great speech were so happidly combined, that there were not wanting malicious tongues to suggest that that convenient impressive bronchitis was nothing but an ingenious ruse. Certainly never was cold timed so opportunely. If it had lasted longer, Sir G. C. Lewis must have brought the Budget forward; and then the House of Commons. would have been unquestionably able to give to it a most dispassionate consideration. If it had not come at all, the orator would not have found his audience predisposed in his favour by the high-wrought tension of their |