by infusing the remembrances of his pictures, and style of execution, hinders all power of individual thought. Corregio is a soft and effeminate, consequently, a most cruel demon, whose whole delight is to cause endless labour to whoever suffers him to enter his mind.”—vol. ii. pp. 166 —167.

It appears, however, that Blake was an excellent tinter, and that he was the companion of Flaxman and Fuseli. After residing for seventeen years in South Molton-Street, he removed to Fountain Court, in the Strand, where he died, in the 71st year of his age, in 1828.

The calm temper of Opie's life has left but little of interest for the biographer to communicate. He was of humble parentage, and made his way to fame and competence by the exercise of a very fine genius, which he had improved by extended cultivation. His chief power lay in the very highest walk of art-history; and he shewed, in his figures and groups, a freedom and energy to which the public had been, up to his time, utter strangers. One of his inimitable achievements as a painter was, as West remarks, the truth with which he represented the effect of colour, as seen through a greater or less degree of atmospheric medium. The distance, therefore, of objects from each other was better fixed in the paintings of Opie, than in those of any other artist.

The most painful part of our task now remains-to allude to the life of Morland. Hassell has very accurately characterized this ill-starred son of genius, in one short sentence

"This ill-fated artist," says Hassell," seemed to have possessed two minds-one, the animated soul of genius, by which he rose in his profession-and the other, that debased and grovelling propensity, which condemned him to the very abyss of dissipation." -vol. ii. p. 235.

The wonderful power of Morland in giving a nameless charm to the most familiar scenes, has made him one of the most extensively popular artists in the country. Had he followed the career which his great original talents invited him to pursue, there would have been no bounds to his success; but the spirit of low debauch corrupted his mind, and left him to history, to meet with that punishment, which the scandalous debasement of his fine faculties deserved.

Passing over the life of Bird, (an artist of great merit,) as it contains nothing particularly interesting, we arrive at the last of the series-that of Fuseli. He was a Swiss, of good family, and received a very enlarged education. When arrived in London, where he came with literary views altogether, he was encouraged by Sir Joshua Reynolds to devote himself to painting. He adopted the advice, and rose to wealth and faine. His works, from the very beginning, are characterised by an erratic faney, chastened by a native taste, and a deep and laborious study of the best models. The Nightmare" may be said to have given the first impulse to his name. Fuseli continued, for many years, to give productions

to the world, which certainly no ordinary genius could furnish. Most of these are well known to the public. One of the most striking circumstances in his personal history, is the amour 'with Miss Wolstoncraft, which is detailed by the husband of that lady, with a tranquillity that puts into the shade all that we have ever heard of the boasted good temper of the Stoics. Fuseli was conceited of his classical erudition, and he was very fairly quizzed by his companions, &c. for the weakness.

Fuseli died in 1825, in his 84th year. His peculiar style did not meet with adequate encouragement in this country; his subjects are much too ideal and refined to be understood or appreciated by the general public. His colouring, as we all remember, was singularly original. Whoever entered the apartment in which any of his works were exhibited, was instantly attracted by the strange hues, whether of hell or heaven, which glared from Fuseli's canvass. Fuseli's literary compositions are of a very high order, and will, perhaps, contribute a great deal more to diffuse a just taste for art, than his paintings.

We have now gone over the contents of these two volumes, to which another will, we are told, shortly be added; and we have not, we think, left the reader much in the dark as to our opinion of the manner in which they are executed. We are more and more struck, at every succeding page, with the absolute impropriety of such a task as this biography being undertaken by any but one who is an artist himself, or who possesses, as Burke possessed, a wonderful capacity for being any thing. What we want is, not merely the story of a painter's life, but sound and originál criticism on his works; an examination of his faults and excellencies; what influence he had in raising or depressing art in his time; and the reasons why he had not received encouragement, if he deserved it, or why he had received it, if he did not. In a collection of biography, where men of one profession alone are included, we expect that some general result, connected with the subject of that profession, will be aimed at, and reached by, the biographer, otherwise his classification is gratuitous. These are some of the deficiences of the present work, and the knowledge of them will, we trust, be an inducement, with some competent person, to supply, what he must admit to be yet a desideratum-a Biography of the eminent Painters of Great Britain.

ART. XI. A Letter on the Present Distress of the Country, addressed to his Constituents. By Charles Callis Western, Esq., M.P. for the County of Essex. Chelmsford. 1829.

AT every meeting of Parliament, there has usually been some single leading question, which has been more particularly the distinguishing characteristic of the session. Last year, the Bill for

Catholic Emancipation was the topic that seemed to monopolise attention; at a former period, the Corn Trade, and then, again, the Banking System, each had their day, and formed the prominent feature of Mr. Ridgway's pamphlets, and the running bass of the maiden speeches. At the present moment, the distress of the country is the carcass round which are gathered our political eagles, and the subject obtains extraordinary notice, being, from its peculiar nature, assailable by the generally closed beaks of our political owls, and giving some plausibility to the croaking of our political

ravens.

In our last number, we gave a brief reply to those who are inclined to look with despondency on the foreign relations of our country; and the recent proceedings in Parliament have confirmed the arguments, and justified the speculations which we then advanced. We wish that it were possible to satisfy, in the same space, the doubts of those who look with apprehension on our internal affairs. What has been already brought forward on this topic, would fill volumes; and the brief limits of our number preclude our doing more than noticing a few facts, and hazarding a few suggestions.

That distress exists, there can, unhappily, be no doubt: the fact is acknowledged by all men, nor can any one regret more sincerely than ourselves the existence of the evil, or more earnestly desire its termination. But we cannot coincide with those who would represent our distress as of terrifying magnitude; nor do we believe that the subject would have elicited proportionate attention, had other subjects of deep interest been before the public, to furnish remarks for our journalists, and topics for Parliamentary Debate. Let us listen with attention to the complaints of the sufferers, and let every practicable remedy be applied to their relief: but let us not go too far; let us not needlessly despond, nor, by an ill-judged result of a laudable compassion, contribute to augment the evils whose existence we deplore.

Great distress has, many times before this, afflicted the country, and then, as now, we were assured that national ruin was inevitable. Yet, from these misfortunes, the elastic nature of our resources has never failed to rescue us. It rests, then, with those who assert the contrary, to prove that there is something in our present malady that shall produce a result different from that of former depressions. No such argument has yet been advanced, nor can any proof be adduced, that the present is more than a passing cloud which, for awhile, obscures the sunshine of our prosperity.

Let us see what the complainants themselves assert, respecting the nature of their suffering. Numerous petitions have been laid on the tables of both Houses of Parliament, complaining of the present distress :-but of these petitions we would remark, that they do not at all convey to our minds the idea of deep misery which some members would seem to infer. They present, on examination,

some curious particulars. A great number of them are petitions from the inhabitants of &c. &c., complaining of the present distress, and praying for the repeal of the duties affecting malt and beer. Now, whatever may be the suffering in other parts of the country, these petitioners let slip the fact, that the repeal of the malt tax was the end that procured their signatures, and that the cry of distress was used as a means to forward their purpose. Others, again, are petitions, apparently pretty snugly got up, which complain, in general terms, of the state of the nation, the pressure of taxation, the burdens of the army and navy, and so forth, being the usual form of such compositions, but which have no distinguishing peculiarity, and which very little, if at all, exceed in number those presented in the average of sessions, though, for the above-mentioned reasons, they attract unusual attention. When the Catholic question was before the public, the whole nation. seemed to unite in subscribing to petitions; the same was the case with the free-trade system, and with various other questions of importance. But on the question of the distress of the country we have no such mass of evidence or opinion. On comparing the petitions and signatures of the present day with those of previous times, we cannot but see that the latter are much superior to the former both in weight and character. Yet, surely, if the distress were such as has been by some represented, we should be overwhelmed with the accumulation of addresses to Parliament. Is it probable that those who have taken so much trouble on questions of abstract legislation, and of decrees by which they were not themselves to be benefitted, should remain in passive silence, when their own personal interests were at stake and their own fortunes affected? "Men do sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony," says Machiavel, and we confess that the petitions which have been laid before Parliament, instead of proving the state of things which some members would indicate, are to ourselves a confirmation of the opinion, that the present distress is partial in its extent, and will be temporary in its duration. Then as to the remedies which have been proposed for our relief. Each political quack prescribes his favourite nostrum, and assures us of its infallible success. Some would resort to the dubious trial of an alteration in our currency, which is the aim of the pamphlet at the head of this article; others, more bold, hint at the expediency of extracting a benevolence from the national creditor; while another (we speak in the singular number, for there is only one such), proposes pouncing at once on army, navy, ambassadors, ministers of state, and "all that sort of thing," giving a sly remark as he passes on the expense of having a king, and, for anything we know, sighing for the blessings of a cheap anarchy. To these various gentlemen we would repeat the Hindoo fable, of an elephant that came into a village where all the inhabitants were blind, and baffled their attempts at discovering his true

nature: the man who had felt his trunk thought that he must be like a plantain-tree, another who had felt his leg thought that he must be like a column, while a third, who had felt his ear, thought that he must be like a winnowing fan. So, each of these gentlemen may be very well acquainted with the isolated views of their propositions, but be much mistaken as to their united effect and practical importance.

The two assertions in the King's Speech, relative to the distress of the country, which have given rise to debate, are, that the distress is partial, and that it is beyond the operation of legislativę enactment. The validity of the former opinion, we think that the attempts of various members have been unable to shake; and the truth of the latter is, in our judgment, established by the fact that all the leading members have each separate plans for our restoration to prosperity, and each condemns the system of the other as baneful and inefficient. For ourselves, we believe that the present distress arises from a variety of unconnected causes, which in a singular manner began to take effect at about the same time, and then the dulness of many branches of trade acting reciprocally, a result has arisen which, to a superficial examiner, appears truly alarming, but which a minuter discrimination can discover to contain grounds for present regret, but not for future despondency. The minds of many men have presented the affair with a kind of kaleidoscope illusion, by giving to a number of disjointed facts the appearance of belonging to a regular systèm: let not us participate in the deception.

Upon observation and enquiry, we find that the basis of the present complaints is, that although the transfer of goods are nearly the same now as in former times, yet upon these transfers there is not the same degree of profit to be obtained. Now every tyro in Adam Smith must be aware that a diminution of profit is the natural effect of increased national capital; and all who are conversant with the passing events of their own times, cannot fail to know that although the incomes of men are now reduced, according to a numerical standard, yet that, by the improvement of machinery and competition of capitals, a much greater range of comforts and luxuries can be enjoyed by the majority of the nation at present than at any former period. Let a comparison be instituted between the manner of living of an individual possessing a thousand a year now, and fifteen hundred a year twenty years ago, and we believe that the balance will be in favour of the former, as far as regards his command of the comforts and elegancies of life.

When we say that a thing is "bad," we mean that it is "worse" than something else with which we mentally compare it. Thus, in speaking of "bad trade," we mean that trade is worse than it has been at some former period. But at what former period? Has trade been less profitable in 1829 than in 1828, or