Greece were sheltered from the vast tribes of the uncivilized north by the heights of Hamus and Rhodope! behold how the Alps describe their magnificent crescent, inclining their opposite extremities to the Adriatic and Tyrrhine Seas, locking up Italy from the Gallic and Teutonic hordes till the power and spirit of Rome had reached their maturity, and she had opened the wide forest of Europe to the light, spread far her laws and language, and planted the seeds of many mighty nations!

Do

the last light I ever saw was on the Sunday before. you recollect, sir ?' She raised her voice, and spoke rapidly. You must recollect. It was seven years last Martinmas. Pausing, as if to test her memory, she leaned her head upon her hands, which grasped the staff, and left me in a most painful silence for some minutes. I had no power to speak. One word, either of consolation or of common-place, I could not utter. The very mystery of her grief froze me into silence. At length, however, without lifting her head, she murmured to herself, Last Martinmas? This Martinmas! Her voice rose suddenly into a scream, and her head was lifted up, and her eyeballs fixed upon mine, with a fearful glare. This very month-this very day, good sir! Seven years

THE BLIND WOMAN.

(FROM THE MANUSCRIPT JOURNAL OF A CITY MISSIONARY.) HAVING been for some time a missionary to one of the suburbs of Glasgow, I was brought into the knowledge of many distressing histories. One of these I purpose to relate at present. There was a dilapidated land of houses in one of the back courts of my district, which I had not, at the date I am about to mention, yet visited. One cold day in the November of 184-, I ascended the stairs for the first time, and knocked at the door of what is there termed a single house, or house of one apartment. A faint voice from within bade me 'open, and come in.'

The door opened into a wretched chamber, without furniture of any sort beyond a few chairs. On one of these sat an old woman, whose hair was passing from black to grey, and whose skin was brown and wrinkled. She was leaning forward on a long staff, which she grasped in the middle, and looking fixedly in the direction of the door at which I was entering. There was something about the stare of her eyes which I did not like at first. I thought their expression rude and insolent. But I soon perceived that it was the expression of disease, and that she was stone-blind.

'Who are you?' she asked, sharply, when I had shut the door.

I told her my name and the object of my visit. She turned her body slowly round upon her seat, and bent forward as if to look for a particular thing. After staring for a second at one corner of the apartment, she pointed to a chair, and said, 'There should be a seat in that corner. Bring it near, and sit down and talk with me, for I am blind.' When I had taken my seat, she instantly began to speak herself. She lifted her sightless eyeballs, and fixed them upon me, until I thought her blindness was feigned, and that she was seeing into my very soul. There was a sad and melancholy disagreeableness in the tones of her voice, which I cannot describe; but the words she uttered, as nearly as I can remember, were as follows:

'Yes, sir; I am blind. It is seven years past at Martinmas since I lost my sight. I felt it growing dimmer and dimmer still, for three weeks, until it would not serve me to see the death of my only boy.' She paused at these words, and seemed to have forgotten my presence; but resumed in a little, as if answering to a question which she supposed me to have put:-'Ay, sir, I had a boy; a brave, well-made, kind-hearted boy. But he died, sir; he died a week after I lost my sight. A week! no, not a week. He died on the Friday; and the

this very day, since my dear boy died. One, two, three! Yes; every year has left its mark upon my heart. I see them, and they are all bleeding my very life away. And now another wound must be made to-day. Ay, sir, it is twelve o'clock! I stood by his dead body at this hour, and kissed his cold lips, and felt them taking even that comfort from my touch. Oh, it is sore, sore, to be reminded of it by this day's return! But it will not lasi for ever, and-.' What she said in concluding these exclamations I could not catch, for her voice again sunk into its low murmuring tone, and then into silence for a time.

'I know what you want to ask,' she said; 'you want to ask of what he died. And why should I conceal it from you? My boy was innocent, innocent, sir! She did not see him doing it. She saw the others, but not him. She wouldn't swear to that. She was false, false, sir; but not false enough to say he did the deed. She couldn't. He couldn't do it. My kind-hearted son would not kill a sleeping man. The judge asked her if she saw the knife in his hand? No, she replied.-Did you see him at the bedside? No, she replied again.-Where did you see him, then? In the room, my lord.-It was this that put my son to death. In the room, my lord! For that word of the false woman, poor Billie had to die. You remember? You must remember. It was seven years ago this morning, that my poor Billie died before the jail."

She was by this time too excited to proceed. The unearthly glare forsook her eyeballs, and she began to rock herself mournfully on the chair. In the painful pause, a little girl entered, ragged and filthy, and set herself down at the old woman's feet. For a moment or two she remained unnoticed, and busied herself in scanning my features and dress. I observed that she paid no attention to the old woman's conduct, as if it had been no unusual sight to her. I wished to speak to the girl, but could not; and I sat looking at the two before me.

Like one awaking from a dream, the elder began to feel the child at her feet. You are there!' she said at length; but I have something to say to this gentleman, my dear; and you must play at the stair-foot till he go away. The little girl did not appear to comprehend what was thus addressed to her, until the old woman signed with her hand, and then she rose and went reluctantly away. The sightless face was again turned in the direction of the door, and so kept until the child's footstep was out of hearing.

That, sir, is my grandchild,' said my companion, turning her face again towards me. "That is his bairn. Poor lamb! I like her for her father's sake. They say that she is like him. God help her, if she be! For he was weel kenned; and it is not lucky to be like the dead." Another pause. Ah, sir, if you would teach her to read? Him who would have taught her, they put to death. The merciless crew! That bairn was born on the day of his trial, and its mother died in grief; for she never dreamed that her child's father was to die the death he did. And how could she ? She had seen nothing but love and soberness in Billie. It was an old story, sir

a cruel old story, raked up by the false woman who swore his life away. It was fourteen years gone past and more. Poor Billie was witless in his youth, and that

and was in the room-only in the room, sir-when the murder was committed. They were all dead years ago, except that woman and Bill. She thought, at first, he would have married her, did that false woman; but he loathed her, and fled from her presence, and concealed himself in an English town far away. Poor Billie! He married another, and was happy, and went to church again. His minister came all the way to Glasgow to say word in his behalf, and then wrote up to London, when speaking wouldn't do. Billie came home one night from church, and was sitting by the fire telling his wife what he had heard. A beggar-woman opened their door and asked for bread that she might not die. They took her n, and warmed her, and gave her food, and sent her away filled. She told all this herself to the judges; and yet it was she who gave my Billie up. For it was the alse woman, sir, whom they helped. She found him out. der vile revenge was gratified; and she left his door only 20 return with the hounds of law. Fourteen years had passed. Oh, it was cruel-most cruel! If they hadn't seen kind to the poor, she couldn't have discovered him as she did. I prayed on my bended knees that I might never see the day of my son's death; and my prayer was heard, sir-heard to my anguish. Oh! I would have given a world to have seen him for five minutes on that lark morning. I prayed for that, but I was not heard. prayed to see the men who were taking him away, that might curse them with a mother's curse, but I was not heard in that either. Oh, sir, it was dark that morning ome! Out and in all was darkness, black and deep. I aw the darkness, sir; I am sure that I saw the darkjess, although I saw nothing else.-I fear I am vexing you? You are very good to listen to me. Few will stay o long beside me; everybody seems afraid. Ha, ha! fraid of a blind old woman! They have not felt my fear. was with Billie from two o'clock that morning, and I Fas shaking with terror. The fear of the darkness made ne tremble. I thought that, if I had not been blind, I could have seen some door through which my son could lave escaped; I thought if I had retained my sight, I ould have pled for his life; and many other mad things passed through my mind. I cannot tell you all; for, in ruth, I remember best his heavy sobs, and fearful moanngs about Margaret-poor Margaret-the bairn's mother, sir-who was, by that time, in her grave. At length I eard the tread of their feet who were to take him away. And when the chain was broken, and he was taken to the all, there was a sermon preached, which I forget. Don't e offended, sir; but I thought that sermon was all falseood, when I heard it. I thought it was a mockery of omfort to a man whose life they were about to destroy. dayhap I was wrong. I was allowed to go with Billie the outer door. St Andrew's clock began to strike ight as we passed the threshold. Billie stood for a little. He took my right hand between his palms and pressed as if he would cling to it and live. He did not speak. heard the crowd wondering why he was not coming; ut Billie did not say a word. Only he stood pressing my hand between his cold icy palms, until the last stroke the bell had sounded, and then they took him away I made arrangements to get Billie's child sent to school. less than a week I returned to tell her grandmother I ad done so. To my surprise, they had left. Their house as filled with others, and no one could tell whither bey had gone. I only learned that they left by night. cannot explain the cause of their departure; but I conecture that the old woman wished to bring up the girl ignorance of her father's fate, and therefore removed places where they were both unknown; but that either er necessities or her anxiety to justify her son, made er sometimes garrulous over-much, and her secret lipped out and fell among the children, who returned it taunts upon their poor playmate, the little girl I saw. f this conjecture be correct, perhaps at this moment

om me for ever.'

There you

MEN WHO ARE DILIGENT IN TRIFLES. WE this instant imagined a man retaining all his consciousness transformed into a zoophyte. Let us imagine another similar transformation; fancy that instead of a polypus you were changed into a swallow. have a creature abundantly busy, up in the early morning, for ever on the wing, as graceful and sprightly in his flight, as tasteful in the haunts which he selects. Look at him, zig-zagging over the clover field, skimming the limpid lake, whisking round the steeple, or dancing gaily in the sky. Behold him in high spirits, shrieking out his ecstacy as he has bolted a dragon-fly, or darted through the arrow-slits of the old turret, or performed some other And notice how he pays his feat of hirundine agility. morning visits, alighting elegantly on some house-top, and twittering politely by turns to the swallow on either side of him, and after five minutes' conversation, off and away to call for his friend at the castle. And now he is gone upon his travels-gone to spend the winter at Rome or Naples, to visit Egypt or the Holy Land, or perform some more recherche pilgrimage to Spain or the coast of Barbary, And when he comes home next April, sure enough he has been abroad-charming climate-highly delighted with the cicadas in Italy, and the bees on Hymettus-locusts in Africa rather scarce this season; but upon the whole much pleased with his trip, and this is a very proper life for a swallow, but is it a life for returned in high health and spirits. Now, dear friends, you? To flit about from house to house; to pay futile visits, where, if the talk were written down, it would amount to little more than the chattering of a swallow; to bestow all your thoughts on graceful attitudes and nimble movements and polished attire; to roam from land to land with so little information in your head, or so little taste for the sublime or beautiful in your soul, that could a swallow publish his travels, and did you publish yours, we should probably find the one a counterpart of the other; the winged traveller enlarging on the discomforts of his nest, and the wingless one, on the miseries of his hotel or his chateau: you describing the places of amusement, or enlarging on the vastness of the country, and the abundance of the game; and your rival eloquent on the self-same things. Oh! it is a thought, not ridiculous, but appalling. Though the trifler does not chronicle his own vain words and wasted hours, they chronicle themselves. They are noted in the memory of

God. And when once this life of wondrous opportunities and awful advantages is over-when the twenty or fifty years of probation are fled away-when mortal existence, with its facilities for personal improvement and trifler looks back to the long pilgrimage, with all the serviceableness to others, is gone beyond recall-when the doors of hope and doors of usefulness, past which he skipped in his frisky forgetfulness-what anguish will it move without salvation to himself, without any real benefit to to think that he has gambolled through such a world his brethren, a busy trifler, a vivacious idler, a clever fool!-Life in Earnest, by Rev. J. Hamilton, National Scotch Church, Regent Square, London.

A GOOD WORD.

How cheap a kindness, says Tillotson, to speak well, at least not to speak ill of others. A good word is an easy obligation, but not to speak ill requires only our silence. Some instances of charity are charitable; but were a man never so covetous, he might afford another his good word, at least he might refrain from speaking ill of him, especially if it be considered how dear many have paid for a slanderous and reproachful word.

A MEAN HABIT

There are few habits more prevalent, though there are few meaner, than that of speaking slightingly of ourselves with the design of making those we address talk in our praise. Weak and vain persons are often guilty in this respect. They fall that you may lift them up. They fish for food to their pride with the bait of humility.

NAPOLEON AND THE BRITISH SAILOR.

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL.

I love contemplating, apart
From all his homicidal glory,
The traits that soften to our hearts
Napoleon's story.

"Twas when his banners at Boulogne
Arm'd in our island every freeman,
His navy chanced to capture one

Poor British seaman.

They suffer'd him, I know not how,
Unprison'd on the shore to roam,
And aye was bent his youthful brow
On England's home.

His eye, methought, perceived the flight
Of birds, to Britain half-way over,
With envy-they could reach the white
Dear cliffs of Dover.

A stormy midnight-watch, he thought,
Than his sojourn would have been dearer,
If but the storm his vessel brought

To England nearer.

1st, If you are distressed in mind-live; serenity and joy may yet dawn upon your soul. 2d, If you have been happy and cheerful-live; and diffuse that happiness to others. 3d, If misfortunes assail you by the faults of others-live; you have nothing wherewith to blame yourself. 4th, If misfortunes have arisen from your own misconduct-live; and be wiser in future. 5th, If you are indigent and helpless-live; the face of things, like the renewing seasons, may yet happily change. 6th, If you are rich and prosperous-live; and enjoy what you possess. 7th, If another have injured you-live; the crime will bring its own punishment. 8th, If you have injured another-live; and recompense good for evil. 9th, If your character be unjustly attacked-live, that you may see the aspersion disproved. 10th, If the reproaches be well founded-live, and deserve them not for the future. 11th, If you are eminent and applaudedlive, and deserve the honours you have acquired. 12th, If your success be not equal to your merit-live in the happy consciousness of having deserved it. 13th, If your success be beyond your merit-live in thoughtfulness and humility. 14th, If you have been negligent and useless in society-live, and make amends. 15th, If you have been active and industrious-live, and communicate your improvement to others. 16th, If you have spiteful enemies-live, and disappoint their malevolence. 17th, If you have kind and faithful friends-live, to protect them. 18th and 19th, If you have been wise and virtuous-live for the benefit of mankind. 20th, If you hope for immortality-live, and prepare to enjoy it.

OUR LIVES LIKE RIVERS.

The life of every individual may be compared to a river -rising in obscurity, increasing by the accession of tributary streams, and after flowing through a longer or shorter distance, losing itself in some common receptacle. The lives of individuals also, like the course of rivers, may be more or less extensive, but will all vanish and disappear in the gulf of eternity. Whilst a stream is confined within its banks, it fertilizes, enriches, and improves the country through which it passes; but if it deserts its channel, it becomes injurious and destructive -a sort of public nuisance-and by stagnating in lakes and marshes, its exhalations diffuse pestilence and disease around. Some glide away in obscurity and insignificance; whilst others become celebrated, traverse continents, give names to countries, and assign the boundaries of empires. Some are tranquil and gentle in their course; whilst others, rushing in torrents, dashing over precipices, and tumbling in waterfalls, become objects of terror and dismay. But however diversified their character or their direction, all agree in having their course short, limited, and determined: soon they fall into one capacious receptacle-their waters eventually mix in the waves of the ocean. Thus human characters, however various, have one common destiny; their course of action may be greatly diversified, but they all lose themselves in the ocean of eternity.-Robert Hall.

POWER OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Such was the power of our language in the time of Queen Elizabeth, that a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of life. If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker, and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation, from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakspeare-few ideas would be lost to mankind for want of English words in which they might be expressed.—Dr Johnson.

Printed and published by JAMES HCGG, 122 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh; to whom all communications are to be addressed. Sold also by J. JOHNSTONE, Edinburgh; J. M'LEOD, Glasgow; W. M'COMB, Belfast; R. GROOMBRIDGE & SONS, London; and all Booksellers.

No. 6.

ITS PLEASURES AND RELATION TO RELIGION.

HAVING in a former number made a few remarks on the origin and history of painting, we now proceed to treat of its pleasures, its intellectual advantages, and the relation it sustains to religion.

We must confess our own unacquaintance with the mechanical and professional part of the art, but, nevertheless, we dearly love our own ideal of the painter as a graceful alias of the poet. We see him gazing with ecstacy on the lovely scene-sitting entranced beneath the bow of Godlooking up with reverence and awe to the black and jagged thunder-cloud-bending over the old ruined bridge, and in his reverie dropping his brush into the still wateror seated, from morning till night, like Gainsborough, upon the rustic bridge. We think of him like Barry, cooking his steak, in his poor lodging, with his own hands; or, like Opie, lying all night awake for joy, after a successful debut as a lecturer on art; or, like Wilson, musing in sorrow before a landscape he had drawn, when a friend enters and says- Why, Wilson, that picture looks like a landscape after a shower!' 'The very effect,' cries the painter, starting up, 'I wished to produce, but I thought I had failed.' We look upon him mingling unnoticed in some triumphal show, which, after living its little hour upon the troubled street-page, shall live on the calm canvass of the painter for evermore; or gazing, like a spirit, upon the eye of genius, or the brow and blush of beauty; or sitting in his still studio, chewing the cud of those sweet and bitter fancies which he is afterwards to embody in form; or reading the poets with a painter's eye and a pencil in his hand; or gazing, through hopeless yet happy tears, on the works of greater masters than himself; or spreading before him, with glowing fingers, the large canvass on which he is to inscribe some princely and immortal work, or perish in the undertaking; or at last dying, with no wish for any other epitaph upon his tomb than this-'I also was a painter. In all these aspects of his art and history we deeply sympathize with and warmly love the painter. We admit, indeed, that painting has its pains and penalties as well as its privileges and pleasures. The painter has often, like other people, to struggle with narrow circumstances. He has to go through a long and laborious training to his art. Then he often fails in executing his own ideal of excellence, and like poor Hazlitt (who, unable to come up to his own standard as a painter, forsook the occupation entirely, and be

PRICE 1d.

came, in lieu of it, the best critic in art who ever appeared), must often blot the half-finished design with bitter tears. Yes, tears, as well as colours, are often a part of the painter's stock. Then he has to contend, like all men of genius, with the imperfect sympathies of the public, with the envy of the malicious, with the insolence of lordly patrons, and with the abuse of prejudiced mobs. Is he a portrait-painter? Some old and ugly countess complains bitterly that he has not made her a Venus, or at least not flattered her a little more-elevated somewhat her forehead, and made her squint a little less oblique and sinister. Is he a landscape-painter? His beautiful sketch is thrust down to the very floor of an exhibition, where it would require microscopic eyes to recognise its presence, far less perceive its beauty. Is he a caricaturist? Some sunny morning, in comes a military man, with frightful black moustaches, and a horsewhip in his hand, to chastise the unlucky artist for having taken him off. Is he a historical painter? His proud and monumental work, after being exhibited to little purpose, returns unsold, and must, like the picture of Vasco di Gama, lean in the artist's studio, as if in silent indignation at the perverted taste of the age. Yes, often must the neglected artist cry out, in the language of Beattie's Minstrel,

Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb

The steep, where fame's proud temple shines afar!" Painters, sometimes, indeed, as well as poets, have been to blame themselves for their misfortunes. They have sometimes not been true to their own high calling. They have sometimes, like poets, 'profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line. They have sometimes become men of low and vulgar habits, like Moreland, who drew pigs and asses so often and faithfully, that he became a bit of an animal himself, and was at length fairly domesticated among his swinish subjects. Or they have become fierce, squabbling, intolerant, and intolerable persons, like Barry, that Ishmaelite of art, whose hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him. Or they have become extravagant, careless, and vapouring beings, like Haydon, the celebrated painter of Christ's entering into Jerusalem. We have heard an anecdote of him which, we believe, though never published, is quite true. He wrote once, apparently in great distress, to Sergeant Talfourd, requesting the loan of ten pounds. Talfourd, in the generosity of his heart, sent him it immediately, for he thought the poor man was starving. He had occasion, that very afternoon, to go down to the country on the top of a stage-coach. All the way, during the first stage, his ears were saluted with loud bursts of laughter from a party inside, who were evidently very merry. When they stopped to change horses he had the

But these are exceptions. Painters have in general been hard-working, pains-taking, persevering, and virtuous men. As a proof of this, it is found that they live in general to a great age. While physicians and poets are the shortest-lived of men, painters and nobles are said to be the longest. And then what a pleasant occupation that of a true son of art is. Nature is his beloved, and wherever her face shines his heart is glad. He follows her into the most retired nooks and corners. He sees her in all her phases and forms. He looks at her not with a cold and careless, nor yet with a wide and vague, but with a minute and watchful eye. He is deep, not only in her general aspects, but in her secret cipher; in her most retired and evanescent glories. Aspects of the sky and of the earth, tints in flowers, motions of shadows and of sunbeams, effects of morning and of evening air upon landscapes, the evanishing splendours into which light kindles up the sides of mountains and the tops of trees, passing looks of loveliness shed down by wandering clouds upon river, or lake, or meadow-such fair appearances, lost upon the eyes of others, are seen, admired, and recorded by the painter. He is a friendly spy upon nature, go where she will and do what she please. This if he be a painter of landscapes. And if he paint portraits, he becomes, necessarily, a wary and minute observer of the human face divine.' He notices a thousand little traits which are unremarked by the common gaze. He studies foreheads, and fingers, and eyes, and cheeks, and even noses, as subjects of pictorial effect. He becomes thus rather a dangerous acquaintance. Burns says of Captain Grose, A chield's amang yon taking notes, and haith he'll prent them.' But with still more truth might it be said of the painter, A chield's amang you taking jots, and sure he'll paint them.' He is quite up to all the outward marks and indications of all the passions of the mind-anger and love-disappointment and chagrin fear and joy. He has many pleasures quite peculiar to himself an admiration of fine forms and countenances to which others are strangers-an eye for ever awake and in search of the graceful, the interesting, the new, and the beautiful; the joyful glow of the first conception of a fine group or noble design; the pleasure of realizing in some measure his ideal; the pleasure of sitting like a general among his colours, touching and retouching, adding the other and the other tint; the pleasure of seeing the fair work completed, and of writing under it, with lawful pride, his own name, and feeling that it is a genuine child of his own brain and hand, a child that wont disgrace him, and that cannot go too widely astray; the pleasure of having his masterpieces admired, hung in elegant dining-rooms, shown in exhibitions, illuminating the front windows of shops, copied in engravings, puffed in newspapers, admired by the beautiful, and purchased by the wealthy. He has, besides these, pleasures which he surely prizes far above them-the pleasure of preserving and copying the faces of his dear friends; so that, even when dead they continue to speak to him from the walls, meekly as it were to mark his advancing labours, and sweetly to smile upon them when they are successfully closed. Yes, see the artist in his quiet studio! He has given the last touch to a noble work, and his heart is brimful with the fond, nor yet false, anticipation, that he has secured at once his fortune and his fame; he looks up, and there beholds the face of the kind father who had prognosticated his fame, and which it was almost the first effort of his pencil to draw, and to his excited imagination it seems as if the portrait smiled, and as if sympathy and joy were about to animate the dear dead features into life. Add to those sources of pleasure the fact, that the life of an artist being so varied, combining in it the advantages without the disadvantages of that of the student, at once peaceful and active, is eminently conducive both to his

But the painter is not only a receiver but a multiplier of human enjoyment. It is he who draws those pictures which make children almost beside themselves with glee. It is he, in a very humble walk indeed of his profession, who constructs those little valentines which enliven many a family circle, and make many a fair face to blush for joy. It is he who gathers in that happy circle of faces we sometimes see surrounding a print-shop window, some laughing, some almost crying for pleasant emotion, some wrapped in silent admiration, all eager, all testifying to the power of the various artists and engravers, and to the taste of the person who has collected them there. We love to see such little companies assembled; we love to see the white-jacketed artisan; the hurrying merchant; the serving-maid, out on an errand; the gaping countryman; the barber on his way to an expectant shaveling; the very minister, going to a funeral; the very doctor, hurrying to bleed and blister; the very sweep, with his teeth grinning white through their black setting; the lamp-lighter himself, proverbial for speed, all stopped, as if by magic, all arrested, and all rivetted to the one shop window. But the painter can minister to deeper emotions in the human breast, and touch far nobler chords than these. He can renew the pleasure with which the bridegroom beheld his bride, in all the bloom of her virgin loveliness, on the morning of his marriage day, years after she has mouldered in the dust. He can restore a minister to the memory of his beloved flock, so vividly, that they will imagine that he is about to address them, and that the words, my dear hearers,' are trembling on his lips-lips long since sealed in death. The widow, whose husband has gone down into the deep dead sea, but not till his likeness had been perpetuated in life-like colours, is thankful to the painter. The mother, whose son has gone a far journey to a foreign land, blesses the painter, to whose genius it is owing, that still her beautiful sailor or soldier boy stands ever before her proud yet tearful eye. And what child, whose parent is no more, cannot sympathize with the well-known and most exquisite verses of Cowper, on the receipt of his mother's picture, verses which seem written, or wrung out rather, in a son's and poet's tears.

We may now specify some of the moral and religious uses of painting. This art is moral in its tendency, since it furnishes a pure and refined pleasure. We know that painting, like every other art and every other science, has been prostituted to the basest and vilest of purposes; that it has encouraged licentiousness and pandered to lust; that even men of real genius in their art have profaned it, for the purpose of firing to fury the worst passions of clay; but we need only, and dare only, allude to this subject. Society, decency, gentlemanly feeling, as well as morality and faith, have set their stamp of abhorrence on such monstrous desecration. Only the Pariahs of painting will ever stoop to gratify such low tastes, to degrade so high an art, or betray so noble a trust. The true painter, in supplying sources of pure pleasure, not only to the wealthy collector, not only to the learned amateur, but to the wide public, to whole streets and squares of his fellow-men, to every house which is rich enough to possess a few plain prints hung over its chimneys or adorning its walls, is a moral benefactor to his species. For if it be said that the man who makes two blades of grass to grow where one grow before, is a public good, on the same principle, the man who gives to his brother a happy thought, who creates in his mind a pleasing image, who spreads before him, as he eats his meals, or sits around his family, a beautiful landscape; who soothes one pang of memory's hoarded sorrow, or creates one thrill of joy in the poorest and most forlorn bosom, is much more a benefactor to his kind, and the art he practises is at once benevolent and moral. For our theory of morality does not teach us that the fewer blessings a man has the better he is, but that he cannot have too many pleasures provided they be pure, provided they can