int plague or madness: unless our
human sympathy be touched, we turn away in disgust. Yet upon this
picture we look with pleasure. Many whom we have heard say they could
not bear to look at it, we found again and again standing before it:
some we questioned; and at last they acknowledged pleasure. So are we
moved at tragedy: human sympathies are moved--the great natural source
of all our pleasures: pity and tenderness, and a sense of the awfulness
of a great mystery, are upon us; and though pleased be too light a word,
yet we are pleased; and where we are so pleased, we are made better. We
feel the good flowing in upon us; and were not the busy scene of the
multitudes in an exhibition, and the general glare, distracting, and
discordant to the feeling such a picture is calculated to convey, we
could enter calmly and deeply into its enjoyment. We have given, at much
length, a description of the picture, because we think it a work of more
importance than any that has, we would say ever, been exhibited upon the
Academy walls--one of more decided commanding genius. There are faults
in it doubtless, some of drawing, but not of much importance. We look to
the mind in it--to its real greatness of manner, and we believe it to be
a work of which the nation may be proud; and were we to look for a
parallel, we must go to some of the best works of the best painters of
the best ages. We were surprised to find that so small a sum as L 400
was set upon the picture--and more so that it was not sold. We regret
that there is no power in the directors of our National Gallery to buy
occasionally a modern production. Is there, in that gallery, one work of
a British painter in any way equal to it?

There are only two pictures by Mr Maclise--they sustain his reputation.

"The Actress's reception of the Author."--"He advanced into the room
trembling and confused, and let his gloves and cloak fall, which having
taken up, he approached my mistress, and presented to her a paper with
more respect than that of a counsellor when he delivers a petition to a
judge, saying, "Be so good, madam, as to accept of this part, which I
take the liberty to offer." She received it in a cold and disdainful
manner, with out even deigning to answer his compliments.'-_Gil Blas_,
c. xi."

The picture here is the luxuriantly beautiful and insolent prima-donna;
we could wish that much of the picture, many of the "figures to let,"
were away. There is a continuous flowi