The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-23 00:00:00

WOMAN'S MISSION.

Are there women wh3 seek a higher mission than this
upon earth? It holds none higher. If they will, they
may be the guardian spirits, the ministering angels of man-
kind, standing between the base things of earth and the
shrouded glozies of heaven. Their mission is to keep alive
upon earth that which proclaims it to be God's earth—
Divine charity—human love. It is for them to correct the
teaching of the head by the instincts of the heart ; to per-
petuate the noble, the good, and the beautiful upon earth,
lest these should sink into the dreary swamp of utilitari-
anism, The ideality of human love is the key-stone of human
happiness. There is no natural subjection of the woman to
the man ; there is a perfect adaptation designed by a merci-
ful and all-wise Creator. For so has he, throughout all
His woork, made harmony. " Like perfect music set to noble
words,'' man and woman are seen to best advantage in com •
pany, and best fulfil their duty to their Maker by sharing
it with each other.

Such are the women whoa... graceful figures flit
across these pages. Blest with one of these for his
companion, we leave Ralph, after his very mo-
mentous career from the purlieus of Newgate to the
porch of St. Stephen's. Throughout his history,
thanks to the good education instilled by his faith-
ful early friends, he has steered clear of evil com-
panions and dangerous temptations ; and, maintain-
ing his own self-respect, has earned at last the re-
spect of all around him.

The Fine Arts Quarterly. No. 11. October.
Chapman and Hall.

In spite of the delays which have taken place in
the publication of this very elegant and elaborate
Quarterly Review of the Fine Arts, it may be con-
fidently stated that, as the Fine Arts Quarterly, it
has already established its position securely, con-
spicuously and with remarkable ability amongst
the very foremost of its contemporaries. The second
number—at last issued from the press, to be wel-
comed probably, all the more cordially, by reason
of the very delays above alluded to, among the im-
patient subscribers to this new periodical—fully
sustains the fair promise of the first. The initial
Volume is now, moreover, by the issue of this second
number, completed. We may judge, therefore, of
the work, already, as a substantive publication. We
may look to it, apart from the prospectus. We may
see how far the auguries put forth in that prospectus
are, at this moment, fulfilled, or, at any rate, in
process of fulfilment. A noble volume of 450 pages,
a volume admirably well edited throughout, by Mr.
Woodward, the Qaeen's Librarian, superbly pub-
lished upon delicately tinted paper, by the Messrs.
Chapman and Hall, with touches of the antique
about its typography, such casual touches as
the long s, the flourished ct, and an occasional
ampisand—a volume of 450 imperial octavo pages,
comprising within it contributions from writers
upon art as able and of as much authority as Pro-
fessor Kingsley and Mr. Tom Taylor, as Dr.
Panizzi and Mr. Rosetti—a First Volume like this
already lies upon the table of the subscribers to the
Fine Arts Quarterly as a full and complete justifi-
cation of at any rate the bulk of the prospectus.
Not so very many years ago the explanatory excuse
now put forth in this second number of the Fine
Arts Quarterly, with a view to account reasonably
for some portion at least of the delays that have
occurred in its publication, would have been held
(and then it is true reasonably enough) to be about
the most whimsical that could by possibility have
been advanced to that end, whether by editor
or, by publisher. The excuse being simply.—
" the unfavourable state of the weather ! "
But how unfavourable ? Unfavourable—" for
printing the photographs of Poussin's Drawing !'
A folded drawing, which will be found between
page 272 and page 273, illustrative of Part I. of the
editor's able catalogue raisonnee of" The Drawings
of Nicholas Poussin in the Royal Collection." One
of the most attractive papers in this number for
October is Mr. Stephens' biographical and critical
notice of the late William Mulready, one of the
most illustrious of our Royal Academicians. In
this paper the superiority of Mulready over Wilkie
is unhesitatingly insisted upon. The great Scotch-
man is declared to have been wholly surpassed, as
an artist of the first genius, by the greater Irishman.
Mulready's whole career is here very charmingly
epitomised—from the date of his birth, on the Ist of
County Clare (his father and
April, 1786, in Ennis,
mother being both of them Catholics), down to
the date of his death, more than seventy-
seven years afterwards, on the Ist of July,
1863, at the artist's house in Bayswater. The son
of the obscure Irish leather breeches maker, dying
then illustrious among the illustrious, at the very
top of his profession, first and foremost among
our Royal Academicians. At pp. 387-328 will be
found a wonderfully complete, and, therefore, a pe-
culiarly interesting list of the most important pic
tures by this great artist : with the year men-
tioned in which each was first exhibited, and the
initial of the exhibition of which they formed re-
spectively so important a part, often, beyond any
doubt of it, the most important From a glance
down this catalogue, the art student is reminded
that it was as far back as 1808 that Mulready
exhibited his first figure picture "The Rattle,"
and that it was so exhibited in 1808 at the
British Institution. In 1812 appeared " The
Mall." In 1813, "Punch." In 1816, " Cho Fight
Interrupted." In 1820, "The Wolf and the Lamb."
In 1822, ', The Convalescent." In 1824, "The
Widow." In 1827, " The Cannon." Iu 1829,
" Returning from the Hustings."- In 1835, " The
Last In." In 1839, "Bob-cherry." And—crowning
all—in 1846, the finest of all the wonderful pictures
painted by William Mulready, that marvellous
"Choosing the Wedding Gown," from Oliver Gold-
smith's " Vicar of Wakefield." It is mentioned by
the writer as characteristic of Mulready's industry
and aptitude for all sorts of ingenious art drawings,
however humble of their kind, that not only was
ail the furniture of his house in Bayswater made
after his own designs, but that nearly every
stick of it was manufactured by his own
hands. There is a lovely tribute in this second
number of the Fine Arts Quarterly to that
exquisite picture of ." The Sisters of Charity "
nursing and tending the sick child in the Hotel
Dieu by Madame Henrietta Browne—a picture that
was the admiration of so many thousands as the
" Cynosure of neighbouring eyes," in the picture
galleries at the last Great Exhibition down at
South Kensington. The tribute coming held from
the pen of one no less gifted as a writer upon,
and
an appreciator of, Art than the R.VO survey ev. Charlesof
Kingsley. Mr. Rosetti's compreh_ eIMI
the Art Exhibitions in London during the present
season, would have been all the
hie
hore
intensearee
able reading to us, but
pet school of
Rafaellites leading him hero actually
in
theh
is
reference to the Royal Academy Exhibition
predilection for his own
pre-
particular star" of that
to
single out as the " bright
moderately notable display the one picture that to
undoubtedly greattic
every one but the most uated admirers
of the
oddest freaks of the
,7enius of Mr. Millais,was the especial hobgoblin of
the Exhibition—that "ghostly grin and ancient
raven"
Madeline" (from Keats's Eve of St.
of a
Agnes) the ghost-like demoiselle sans merci (certainly
without mercy or pity upon any of her beholders)
who was shredding off her garments so very awk-
wardly in her moonlit bedchamber. There is, in an
earlier portion of the number, an elaborate criticism
or analysis, by Mr. Tom Taylor, of the Report of
the Commission on the Royal Academy—a paper of
itself sufficient, by its merits, to sustain the charac-
ter of the new publication as an art organ, rather,
we would say at once, as the art organ. For as
such, without doubt, the Fine Arts Quarterly may
'um, without further hesitation, be regarded.