The Press.
London, England, 1856-02-23 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

understand, may be made a medium for the grossest
kind of putTeiy. The most space given in the volume
is to the name of Charles Kean, and in this article
the literal blunders are so conspicuous as to suggest
that the editor blindly followed details furnished him
of which he knew nothing. Thus it is said that the
actor was born in ISII, and that he made his first
appearance in October, 1837, when he had not at-
tained the age of seventeen. Facts, which are
matters of the greatest notoriety, are misstated in a
ludicrous manner. In the memoir of Lord
:
Palmers-
ton, for example, we read
_ . _

Between 1841 and 1846 Lord Palmerston was in Oppo.
sition. In December, 1545, some advances were made to
him, but the decided hostility of Lord Grey rendered any
final arrangement impossible. He was no admirer of the
nepotism of Lord Grey, and his lordship knew it; hence
the door of office, of which the stately earl was then the
keeper, was closed against him. On the resignation of
Sir Hobert Peel, the noble earl returned once more to
offile.
By the allusions to the " stately earl," and to his
lordship's " nepotism," the late Earl Grey must be
meant. But he died in July, 1845 ; and it is of course
absurd to speak of the late or present earl as being
keeper of the door of office at a time when the Duke
of Wellington and Sir H. Peel were in power, and
the project of a Wnig Ministry was but in agitation.
It would he time lost to examine the book closely.
It is a catchpenny publication, wholly untrustworthy
and very impertinent.

tint Arts.
THE BRITISH INSTITUTION.

THE BRITISH INSTITUTION opened to the public on
Monday week. By all but universal consent it
seems to have been decided that the present
is the very worst exhibition of this year. For
our own part, we have no fault whatever to find with
the verdict; for, with hardly a single exception,
every work in the three rooms appears to us to be
tame and conventional, never rising above, and but
seldom falling below, a tiresome mediocrity. At the
head of the five hundred and odd pictures which,
most of them, contribute their quota of badness to
the fatigue of the unhappy visitor, stands Sir G.
Hayter's "Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer" (80).
The very genius of commonplace must have inspired
such a conception of such a scene. All is carefully
conventional; decorous respectability and rigid same-
ness prevail throughout; not an actor in the cere-
mony but looks as if be were sitting for his portrait;
many as if they were, on the whole, rather bored than
otherwise by the tedium of the operation. The
martyrs are raising their eyes to heaven like the two
principals in a stage execution ; but with no more
expression than if they were tumblers going to com-
mence a public display, and a little anxious about the
prospect of fine weather overhead. The crowd
respectably indulges in preconcerted sorrow, evi-
dently several days old, as per agteement—a woman
in the front rank having fainted away into the most
thoroughly commonable pose we ever remember to
have seen in our experience of syncope and its imita-
tions; while the gaudily-robed officials, who pre-
side over the murder, have settled themselves
down into that attitude which everybody must
remember prevails so universally in a country church
just before the commencement of the sermon. The
picture, in spite of the technical excellencies of its
execution, is a complete failure in all the higher re-
quisites of historical painting.
Mr. J. C. Morris's " Drive " (149) demands notice
from its size and position. It is merely a dog driving
a flock of sheep, who scatter before him in all the
wildly absurd attitudes which sheep affect under the
influence of alarm. The sheep are evidently meant
for sheep. but they are, in colour and texture of
wool at least, rather " advanced " sheep—sheep a
little before the present ovine age—" the sheep of
the futi.v!," in fact. The attitudes, however, both
of sheep and dog are singularly true to life.
" Revenons a nos moutons," and very good mutton
it is in Mr. Ansdell's "Severe Weather" (16). Two
rams, snowed up and looking must unsentimentally
stupid, are discovered by a shepherd, who, probably
from the combined effects of sbeerish society and
cold weather, looks jast as stupid as his charges.
Mr. Ansdell's wool is as real as Mr. Morris's is false;
but when we have admired the accuracy of the imita-
tion of life in this picture, there is no more to say,
for or against. It is capital mutton, good snow,
and—code tout.

In the Middle Room, Messrs. Joy and Webb have
conspired to produce an illustration of Falconer's
shipwreck in The Raft" (260. We have " supp'd
full " of such " horrors;" we know of old the gaunt,
emaciated wretch stretching forwards and straining
every nerve and muscle to attract the notice of the
distant sail—the passive African—the dying invalid—
and all tle " properties " of the frighttul scene—the
blood-red sunset, and the dark-green expanse of
"pitiless ocean," deaf to the agonies of the livid
and death-like sufferers. It is an old subject, but
there is a certain grim power in the treatment of

SATURDAY,

the well•known materials which at once arrests the
attention of the spectator.

On the opposiit3 side of the room (360) Mr. H.
Dawson has a British man-of-war floating in a sea
of Devonshire cream, and illuminated by an
lamp, as an illustration of that time-honoured idea
"British bulwarks." In an ocean of the speciti,
gravity of that employed by this artist, we fancy that
a first-rate would draw visibly less waver—cream, we
mean—than the principal " bulwark" in the picture.
What a contrast to the fresh sea-breeziness of Mr.
J. T. Wilson's "Squally Weather off Dover" (529),
with its clear, crisp, spray-tipped waves and cloudy,
gusty sky, with a hasty gleam of sunshine dashing
out over the cliffs in the extreme distance. One
feels the moist sea breeze on one's cheek after a
minute's contemplation.
We know too little of the birds and their homes to
be able to pronounce judgment on Mr. Wolfs
" Ptarmigan's Haunt" (339). It has been generally
pronounced " startling in its truthfulness." To us
it seems startling only.
Mr. G. Cruikshank's " Fairy Ring" (458) looks
at first sight exactly like a cutting out of a theatrical
back-scene, the sickle-moon dipping below the bill
materially aiding the association. The colour is
unwholesome, thick, and muddy ; but the processicn
of batlike looking monstrosities over the hillside
gives a certain elfish—conventionally elfish—air to
the scene, which all the crowd of minute oddities
swarming round the central mushroom (on which
Oberon arid Titania are holding their court), fails to
produce effectively!
Mr. Lance furnishes, besides a fruit piece (4'2)
which calls for no especial remark, a bit of animal
life, or rather death, somewhat on the Landseer
model. The " Stricken Mallard " (461) is certainly
striking as well as stricken ; whether or no in the
sense in which the artist intended we *beg leave to
doubt. The action of the dying bird may be truthful,
but, except to the mallard-shooting section of the
public, is likely to seem almost ridiculous from its
oddity and violence, and its remoteness from their
usual experience.

Among the few sacred subjects treated, we may
remark Mr. E. H. Harden's " Christ Walking on the
Sea" (507). The artist has succeeded, if in nothing
else, at least in telling what may be called a " plain
black and white" story ; but there is a feebleness
and even uncertainty of footing about the single
figure of the Redeemer, wh'cli contrasts oddly enough
with the exceedingly solid aspect of the water sh ch
is supposed to support him. The " Sending Away of
Hagar and Ishmael" (515), Mr. A. Rowan, and
"Christ Healing tile Man sick of the Pals," Mr. T.
Roden (IMS), may be just mentioned, en passant, as
good instances of ambitious mediocrity ; while Mr.
Halle's "Fates" (157) might just as well be called
" Three Young Ladies Preparing for a Game of Cat's-
cradle."

Many of the landscapes are of great merit. Those
especially by Mr. T. Danby reach the soul of the
spectator, in spite of the artist's love for rather ex-
ceptional effects.
The sculpture calls for no particular mention.
Except Mr. Munro's " Undine " (545), which is hill
of gracefulness and tenderness, there is nothing
which need induce us to lengthen our notice.

Ulitsir.

SACRED HARMONIC SOCIETY.
COSTA'S " Ell."

Jr is gravely given out by the doctors in music that
the great defect of the new oratorio of Eli is, that the
composer has followed in the beaten track, and that
he has introduced no novel forms and principles.
He has not striven to be a Wagner or a Berlioz, but
lie has been contented to tread in the steps of
Handel and Mendelss.ilin. The Italian has pro-
duced a work which as thoroughly understood and
appreciated on a first hearing, whereas it ought to
have been so obstruse and complicated as to require
the study of a whole life to comprehend, and even
then to be understood only by the favoured few.
The Messiah must be the Alpha, and The Elijah the
Omega of oratorio writing. No musician is to have
the presumption to compose a sacred work, except he
can exhibit a certificate that he was born in cockney-
land. And the Sacred Harmonic Sociecv, that admi-
rable combination of amateur and artistic ability arid
enthusiasm for art-progress, deserves a vote of cen-
sure from the musical public, because it will not lend
itself to jobbing idol-worship. According to one
authority, there ought to be no fugues in an
oratorio. Mendelssohn did not write one in The
Elijah—how is it, then, that Costa has dared to do
so in Eli Besides, the Italian has taken the three
first letters of the German composer's last work—
" Hine illy lachryinte." According to another
musical pundit, an oratorio ought to be nothing else
but fugues—albeit that Haydn, who did know
something about music, was wont to assert, "It is
the air which is the charm of music." But Costa's
fugues—the composer, by the way, marks in his