I marked upon their limbs!" And Rusticucci, who
addresses Dante, thus describes their bodies:

"'If woe of this unsound and dreary waste,'
Thus one began, 'added to our sad cheer
_Thus peel'd_ with flame.'"

The persons of such sufferers should be Michael Angelesque--punishment
and suffering should be equally _large_. We venture to suggest this
criticism to Mr Patten, because the subject is grand, and there is so
much good in his manner of treating it, that he will do well to paint
another picture of it.

Mr Etty has no less than seven pictures. His "In the Greenwood Shade" is
by far the best. Cupid and sleeping nymphs--the rich and lucid colours,
softly losing themselves in shade, and here and there playfully
recovered, very much remind us of Correggio. We should more applaud Mr
Etty for his general colouring, than for his flesh tints; nor have his
figures in general the soft and luxuriant roundness which grace and
beauty should have--the faces, too, have often too much purple shadow.
We have before remarked that, painting too closely from the model, he
exhibits Graces that have worn stays. And surely he often mistakenly
enlarges the loveliest portion of the female form--the bosom--whose
beauty is in its undefined commencement, its gentle and innocent and
modest growth. How happily is this hit off by Dryden in his description
of Iphigenia sleeping, to the gaze of the clown Cymon:--

"As yet their places were but signified." While so many pictures of
acknowledged merit are rejected for lack of room, it is scarcely fair,
perhaps, for one artist to exhibit so many. Mr. Eastlake has, however,
been too liberal to others in his forbearing modesty; we could wish he
had not confined himself to one. He might offer the lioness's answer,
were not his picture one most tenderly expressive of all gentleness. It
is an old subject, but treated in no respect after the old manner. The
boy is faint and weary, on the ground. Hagar, with a countenance of
sweet anxiety, is giving the water, with a care, and with a view to the
safety of the draught. There is a dead, dry, burnt palm-tree lying on
the ground, poetically descriptive. The expression of both figures is
perfect, and they are most sweetly, tenderly painted. If we might make
any objection, it would be that the subject is not quite poetically
treated as to colour. It may be, and we have no doubt it is, most true
to nature in one sense. We can believe that such a coun