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without finding you. We had nobody in the evening but Capt. Watson, which I was glad of. He has got the floors covered with new mats, which smell like hay; but they are of no use when those for whom they were intended are gone. The cause which occasioned the desertion of this house gives every thing about it a melancholy appearance. I dislike to enter Kamen's room. I never pass it without thinking of that sad night when I saw him lying in Rosa's lap, with leeches on his head, the tears streaming down his face, crying with fear and pain, and his life uncertain. His image, in that situation, is always present to me whenever I think of this house. I walked out this morning at daylight. I followed Captain Watson's new road, which is now made hard with gravel, as far as the place where it divides; but on reaching this point, instead of turning to the left, as we used to do, I continued along the main branch to the little tank, and there halted a few minutes to admire the view of the distant hills. I then turned towards the garden, where I always found you, and Kamen trotting before you, except when he stayed behind to examine some ant-hole. How delightful it was to see him walking, or running, or stopping, to endeavour to explain something with his hands to help his language. How easy, and artless, and beautiful, are all the motions of a child. Everything that he does is graceful. All his little ways are endearing, and they are the arms which Nature has given him for his protection, because they make everybody feel an attachment for him. I have lost his society just at the time when it was most interesting. It was his tottering walk, his helplessness, and unconsciousness, that I liked. By the time I see him again he will have lost all those qualities; he will know how to behave himself; he will have acquired some knowledge of the world, and will not be half so engaging as he now is. I almost wish that he would never change.'-vol. ii. pp. 179, 180.

Again, how strongly do we perceive the husband and the father in the following letter:

'Guindy, 11th June, 1826.

It

'I have been reading and writing very hard all day, which always, for the last year, makes my hand shake so much, that I can hardly write. This is a sign that I have been long enough in a warm climate. The weather at this season has been cooler than ever I knew it at Madras. has been continually overcast all last week, which induced me to come out here yesterday evening, after the usual Saturday's dinner. I took a walk in the morning of an hour and a half, and ended with the garden, where every thing is growing in great luxuriance. After getting out of the carriage yesterday evening, I looked at the new well, and found it had water enough to hold out till it got a fresh supply from the rains; but I did not find you or Kamen there, or in the drawing-room. I always miss you both here more than at Madras, because we had fewer visiters, and I was more accustomed to see you and him quietly. Your rooms look very desolate; they are empty all day, and in the evening have one solitary lamp. I now go along the passage without seeing a human being, and often think of him running out to pull my coat. I cannot tell you how much I long to see him playing again. I believe that I shall follow your father's example when I go home, in playing with children.

When you

reach Craigie, give me a full account of Tom, and of all the points in which he is like or unlike his brother. I have no letter from you since the 24th of March; and I begin to fear that I shall not hear from you arrival in England.

until your

The troops are returning from Ava. Major Kelso arrived a few days ago in command of the Kimendyne regiment. There is no chance of hostilities, as the Burmese are completely tired of war. I am glad of it, as I can have no pretence for staying longer in the country; and if the weather were not too hot for calling names, I could call them " barbarous, and ferocious, and arrogant," for not letting me go home with you. I am quite at a loss to know what I am to do when I go home. Where are we to live? in town or country? or both? Are we to travel and see the world and sights, or to jaunt about in our own country, or to stay fixed in one place? You must consider of all this, and be ready with a plan when we meet. Love to all at Craigie.'—vol. ii. pp. 182-184.

Thus, again, in a similar feeling, does he write in about a fortnight after:

I was in the garden this morning-every thing is growing in great luxuriance, but particularly the Hinah and Baboal hedges. The new well is half full. I looked, on my way home, at what you call geraniums, but which seem to me to be more like wild potatoes. I stood for a minute admiring them, merely from the habit of doing so with you; for, had I followed my own taste, I should as soon have thought of admiring a brickkiln, as of gazing at a hundred red pots filled with weeds. There is something very melancholy in this house without you and your son. It has the air of some enchanted deserted mansion in romance. I often think of Kamen marching about the hall, equipped for a walk, but resisting the ceremony of putting on his hat. *—vol. ii. pp. 185-186.

The month of September finds him in the same vein :—

The brightness of the sun here is very remarkable. You have, I think, noticed the brightness of both the sun and the moon at Madras, but you can have no idea how much greater it is here. In the morning, when the sun rises without a cloud, the sky is sparkling with light; the hills appear much nearer than they are; the smallest objects upon them are visible, and there is a dazzling lustre poured upon every thing, as if two suns were shining instead of one. I have not seen Mrs. Sullivan, because she is too near her confinement; but I have seen his two children. They are both pretty, particularly the boy, and have as fine complexions as any children in England. I was made very happy last night, by the arrival of your letter of the 25th of May, sent to Penang by the Camden. I had previously got your long letter of the same date, but still it was satisfactory to get another. It is rather singular that a letter, written by you at St. Helena, should find me at Whotakamund. I received, at the same time, a letter, of the 5th of June, from General Walker, telling me of you and Campbell, and expressing regret at your leaving Plantation House so soon. I must now stop, for I have other letters to write before dinner. I have written you so much lately, that this may probably be my last letter for some time. I hope you are, by this time, safe with your two sons.'vol. ii. pp. 192, 193.

We extract from a letter dated in April, 1827, a paragraph, which gives an interesting panoramic view of a spectacle, which must, indeed, to use a vulgar expression, have "astonished the natives :"

I went to Madras on Monday the 9th. You will wonder what took me there on that day :-it was to see the Enterprize steam-vessel manœuvre for the gratification of the public. She got up her anchor, and sailed past the Government-house a little after four, while we were at dinner. At five I went up to the top of the Council-house on the Fort, and, after staying a few minutes, we determined to join the crowd on the beach. The evening was as favourable as it could possibly be; a clear sky, a smooth sea, and a light breeze directly from the sea. The immense crowd of people reminded me of what you see at a race in England, but only that there was no drinking and quarrelling. I never saw half so great a number on any occasion. The beach was crowded from the saluting battery to the custom-house, with thousands of natives, in all their various fanciful costumes. The multitude of carriages was far beyond what I thought the whole Carnatic could have furnished. Every thing that could be mounted on wheels from a hen-coop or a dog-house to a barouche, was in requisition. In some of the hen-coops, which would not have held two European ladies, seven or eight native women and children were crammed, all grinning with delight. Among the multitude there were, I believe, people from almost every province in India. I saw a great number of respectablelooking Indian women in carriages, who, I imagine, never appeared among Europeans before, and many of whom, I am sure, you would have thought beautiful, and certainly graceful, beyond any thing in Europe. I scarcely looked at the steam-vessel: all that it can do may be seen in five minutes; but I wish that I could have made a panorama of the living scene to send to you. We have still no southernly wind, but the weather is getting very warm.' *-vol. ii. pp. 197, 198.

*

*

The delay which took place in the appointment of a successor, detained Sir Thomas Munro at Madras until the summer of 1827, when Mr. Lushington took charge of the Government. The commencement of the monsoons prevented him from returning to England at that season, and the excessive heat then prevailing at Madras, seems to have, unhappily, determined him to pay a farewell visit to his old native friends in the ceded districts. It was known that the cholera morbus was then making tremendous havoc in those places; but this did not deter Sir Thomas from his purpose, as, from having been so long in India, he had no apprehension of being attacked by that fatal disorder. In the course of his journey, however, he fell a victim to its power: he was seized about nine o'clock in the morning, on the 5th of July, at Putheecondah, and at half-past nine, on the night of the same day, he ceased to be of the number of the living.

The tributes of regret which were showered upon his grave from all quarters, from the public authorities, and assemblies of natives, as well as Europeans, testified how deeply his loss was felt in India.

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Mr. Gleig has added to his Memoir an Appendix, which contains a great number of papers, written by Sir Thomas Munro at various periods. Some are connected with statistics, others with the official functions which he discharged, and with political economy. Several of these papers are well drawn up, and may perused with great advantage by persons who are engaged in the discussion of the East India question, now before a Committee of the House of Commons.

ART. X.-Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. By Allan Cunningham, Esq. 2 vols. 12mo. London: J. Murray. 1830.

How little is known of the perils that environ the fame of that author who adventures-ill-starred proprietor of the quill-upon a worthy commemoration of the Most Eminent Painters, &c., of our country. It is an enterprise that breathes of mortality to the healthiest reputation. A man that undertakes it should let blood, should be familiar with the materia medica, should get him a mail of asbestos, or other impenetrable vestiture, for the ordeal which awaits him. Whence is this danger, and wherefore should it be peculiar to the task of which we speak? We proceed to explain. A vast deal, not seldom more than is prudent to be told on one side, or agreeable to be learned on the other, is always known of artists in general, as well during their lives as after-we may saytheir apotheosis. A player, for instance, is a great and boasted delight to a speculative biographer. The treader in the buskin will have the hairs of his head numbered for future generations; the size of a tumour on his great toe will be handed down to posterity; and how he whispered in Scrub, or snarled in Sir Peter Teazle, will be pictured to distant ages in all the elaborate minuteness of the green-room. Circumscribed, alas! is our knowledge of the personal history of Shakspeare; then, with respect to Milton, he is nearly in the same state of unenviable perdition, as to his private life, as that glorious paradise of which he has sung. Again, how little have we ascertained about Otway or Butler, or many others of those intellectual heroes, in whose triumphs we still participate! But as for a Knight of the Brush, let him but appear upon the prominent scene of life, and be his deserts what they may, a diary of interminable details will be forthcoming, shewing the critical minute of his uprising and of his downsetting on each day, and how the good fellow fostered his corporal man, until he doubled the cape of sixty, and perished, unfortunate octogenarian, in the midst of several scores of years! Over and over again have we had almost every artist of them all brought to table, in most obliging varieties. Culinary ingenuity, that can serve up the same animal in one hundred different ways, each a

complete stranger to the other, is a faint type of the innumerable shapes which a biography, in judicious hands, has been made to

assume.

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Under such circumstances, the Lives of Eminent Painters' becomes a serious trust for any ordinary gentleman to undertake. He will have, by possibility, little or nothing at all to add to his fund of materials; nay, it will be the superfluity of those materials that will constitute the distress of his position; he will be harrassed by an access of the malady, entitled by the French, the embarras de richesse; he will have to select, to modify, and to give to a stale and familiar aspect entirely new and original lineaments. Thus are the usual and natural sources of attraction withdrawn from our biographer, and he is left to himself to contrive the means of giving that interest to his work, which is essential to its success. And then, what a group for a biographer's pen !-Hogarth, and Reynolds, and Wilson, the turbulent Barry, the meek West, Morland, varying his professional pursuits with the delights of gin, and Fuseli, devoting his leisure to the classics. What rare talents are required to do justice to such a miniature world of manifold passion, such an union of whim and judgment; of divine intelligence and brutal folly; such a monstrous junction of power and imbecility!

Whether or not Mr. Cunningham recognised and overcame the difficulties which pressed on his path will be developed in the sequel. There are, however, in the Introduction which commences the work, tokens of general carelessness, which are calculated to awaken apprehensions for the future performance. After an attentive perusal of this Introduction, we find ourselves at a loss to know to what cause exactly we are to attribute the long privation which this country experienced, not only of native talent for the arts, but even of any very striking or diffused taste for them. We are ourselves perfectly well satisfied, that were it not for the great national change which was worked by the Reformation in the dispositions, as well as the religion, of the people, we might have been as early and as successful cultivators of painting as most other countries. But the Reformation was a war against the principle of imitative art; the Commonwealth carried that war still further, and it was not until the beginning of the last century almost that any general encouragement began to be bestowed on the arts. Mr. Cunningham undoubtedly refers to this cause as having had a considerable influence, but then he blend's with it other reasons, to which he ascribes a share in the blame of debarring these kingdoms from the benefits which they would have derived from the cultivation of painting and sculpture.

'The English at this period were rich and proud, and sensible of the fame which successful art brings to a nation. But there was a strong feeling entertained against them by foreign princes and foreign artists. They were denounced by the ancient church as incurable hereticks; they were dreaded by sea and land; and it was reckoned dangerous to the soul, and

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