The Sun.
London, England, 1851-07-31 00:00:00

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LIT ERATURE.
TBE QUARTERLY REVIEW.
No. CLXX VII.
A delightful paper on " Gardening"—sage, but
gossipping—leads off the present number of the
Quarterly. aster/y. In it the reviewer has collected toge-
ther,in areeable confusion, a singular variety of
knowledge relating to the science of botany, flavouring
it with a tone of mingled pleasantry and enthusiasm.
Several of the materials introduced into this charming
°//apodrida of scraps are recognised as old familiar
favourites—sucb, for example, as the poetic receipt
for a salad by the late Sidney Smith. The paper
indeed sets out with a quotation famous throughout
all lettered England, namely, Cowley's aspiration,
addressed to Evelyn, that he might have " a small
house and large garden, a green nook, where the
carking cares of society might be forgotten in the
verdure and sweetness of nature. Among those who
are blessed with this most inestimable treasure, there
are some who have their employees, and others
Who, with a few subordinates, are their own
gardeners. To each of these classes we
Would very earnestly commend the truthful and hu-
morous comparison drawn by the Quarterly in the
Paper under consideration, between their respective
joys and sorrows. Here it is, after the manner of
Plutarch
"Perhaps, indeed, none derive so great an amount of
Qn.loYment from a garden as those of the every-gentle-
nlaa-his-own-gardener sort. They are spared an im-
mense number of known nuisances, and revel in a mul-
titude of unknown delights. To be told by the men in
pearly spring that there is nothing in the garden, neither
'or Missis' nor for cook;' and then to come in with a
charming bunch of Russian violets, fragrant coltsloot,
daphnia erica carnea, wall-flowers, polyanthus, &c., &c.,
for the cars sposa, and a punnet of the sweetest,
greenest sprouts, and the plumpest, whitest seakale, for
the emissary of him who did not send meat;—to insert
nianu proprid a bark-bound bud on a brittle branch, and
after
many months, or years, to gather therefrom a
great handful of flowers or a heaping dish of fruit;—to
be able to say, ' With the sun shining in this manner, I
cannot go on reading and writing, unless you lash me
to my chair—give me the baskets—l will go and cut the
vegetables for dinner ;'—to dine with a puffy specimen of
humanity, who has his pits and his pineries, and his
gangs of people at nobody knows what wages, and to
taste what ho sets before you, and send him better next
day—you keeping only the man, the boy, and yoursel/;
to see the look of thankfulness in a neighbour's eyes,
When, driving to inquire after his convalescent wife or
his sinking child, you produce some horticultural dainty,
Which will be enjoyed and relished because it comes
unexpected—and they have nothing of the kind just
71010;—to attack a standard rose with a head like a
lt,ica polonica, and leave it as orderly as a little school-
oy's on Saturday afternoon;—to sow an infinity of
seeds, and amidst the wilderness of seedlings to discover
°lle which, if it is not, ought to be the best possible
Variety, the unapproachable exceeder of perfection
there is no finishing the list of luxuries.
" Those delicate gentlefolks who scorn in any way to
act as their own head gardener, have to compose their
catalogue of delightful tasks' in quite a different type.
E• G.—To fret for tour or five days together, with com-
pany under your roof, over a shabby dessert;—at last,
to ease your mind about it by telling your Scottish Chief
pat though the grapes have een tolerable, the peaches
have been poor, very different b
fruit from what the house
promised when you were last in it; figs ditto; and to be
answered by a remark touching the housekeeper's niece,
and her tastes—the invisible girl with gooseberry eyes
and her hair never oat of papers, whom her aunt had
lour leave to ask down from London for her health. To
shall, to say to Mrs. Uppercrust that Mr. Mac Forcer
for the present, arrange his dessert immediately
before its introduction to the dining-room;—and to be
told by her, in rejoinder, a story of Mr. Blanco, who
ianted extra-fine fruit for some superb affair, and
bought in Covent-garden Market a supply which he
was told was the best that could be had, as they had
just received their usual package from Mr. Blauco's
Fardener, who spared no expense. To obtain, at a reck-
less cost, the newest thing from Shanghae or the Ilima-
aYas, which is propagated with such difficulty that you
cannot communicate it to your own sister or brother,
and then next year, to see it in plenty on the other side
°! the garden palings of several of Mac Swill the
helper's.. most intimate friends. To walk in well dressed
Pleasure-ground for whose dressing you pay something
handsome per annum, and to feel that you cannot do as
You like there; reproached, if you cut a bouquet of
r°sea, with having destroyed Mac Forcer's every chance
of the prize for half a hundred dissimilar blooms at the
neat horticultural show—if you take the liberty of
sanding off a down pot-plants to a lady-friend, nods and
Winks and whispered wonder how Missis will like it?'
a You invade the kitchen garden, and ravage it of a few
hampers full of good edibles, to bo told that it is not
Your perquisite, and to receive warning. To grudge
!Tending a sixpence on a garden almanack, or an hour
lo reading it, and then to perceive that the men are
grinning while you proceed to utter some long-hatched
Criticism on their operations."
The contrast is sufficiently striking to induce many
choleric; members of the latter section of garden-
owners to discharge the tyrants hitherto hired by them
for the management of their grounds, and henceforth
themselves to assume the magic wands with which we
summon up those fairies of the ground, the flowers
---the sae, the rake, n the hoe. " Scotland
before the d Reformation" a
presents very large and
lornsrous attractions to our compatriots beyond the
Tweed, and will repay their curiosity with a store of
stranget facts collected together by the historical an-
'gas ry. Another reviewer, in the course of certain
commentaries made upon the revelations given to the
World by "Recent Travellers in North America,"
wails himself not merely of extracts from
the Volumes of Mr. Johnston, from those of M. Mar-
rer, from the lecture of the Earl of Carlisle, and
.r,OOl the work of Colonel Conynghame, but of others
culled from the latest columns of the press of the
United States. The article will be found on exami-
natio n to be one universally interesting. Subse-
`Nen tly we have an excellent criticism on the " Me-
Ipoir s of the Duke of Urbino," by Denuistoun, of
j",enuistoun ; followed by a very readable paper on
the cc
, Correspondence of 'Walpole and Mason," pub -
,'snec 1 as recently as last year, from the original ma-
nure, ripts. Scholars will relish the chapter given later
(11, pon " Badham's Euripides," and theologists will
turn with no little anxiety to the two remaining con-
tfibu tions, those on " Rubric versus Usage," and on
_Cr igen's Philosophoumena." Brief though the
Pape! c upon " Badham's Euripides" is, it may be again
InenfLioned here with propriety, as the most pithy and
saga estive in the whole of the current number of the
Qua rterly. To this, therefore, we would direct the at-
tention of the general reader, and yet more particu-
larly' that of our more intelligent philologists.

FINE ARTS.
WASS'S GALLERY OF PAINTINGS.
A mong the numerous exhibitions of the Fine Arts
now open to public inspection in the metropolis, we
t-streeond
noNv of no one more eminently deserving of atten-
oa than the one Which we ourselves have recently
visitiKl at No. 168, New B t—a gallery in
N'thic:h the proprietor, Mr. Wess, has collected to-
tetla er, at a very considerable outlay on his 'own
Part, some of the greatest works of the most distin-
Rttis bed modern British painters. Scarcely a hundred
Dietiares hang upon the walls of the apartment, reek-
c'll,n g the paintings altogether, yet almost every indi-
Nidtral one amongst them is of a character so remark-
able for its excellence, that the lovers of art may find
ati,l them matter for long and delightful contemplation.
it ally fortunate in one or two other instances, Mr.
gs t
valuablee n ough ,
tcoollesce:
dal is has been lucky enough, or. we should rather
'43? enterprising and
Nro to himself perhaps
ti discrttmhienamtino
Kingdom. It is
°o of Ettys in the United
lel • d the apartment without
phossibie to glance round
re .
The exquisite colour-
eugnising this immediatel
413 of
arrests attention on the
• g our English Titian
phlegmatic and the l'ast ant, and extorts from the most
of,_ira.
3tlel& t fastidious the warmest expressions
_tt win
to the
°D . It must be confessed that William E 9,
Ydemise,
reFr ret of his friends and admirers, has, byhis , . , is
'Leg aired that claim upon vulgar praise which
even
ril ally denied to the living. Hence it is that
40$0 r his productions have very considerably increased,
the
is
_td. are still gradually and appreciably increasing 1
tie it trade value, the public beginning, at length, to.
Per ceive very generally the genius of the great artist_
W.ll ese death was, within the limits of a restricted
I\lt ' el; the cause of such profound lamentation.
tmerous
, and diversified as are the specimens of his
Powers 'n Mr• Wass's Gallery, the visitor finds his
th ention
, Confined very soon to one or two of
4b! in in particular. Conspicuous, of course,
both We all the other paintings in the collection,
a for their energy and their ambition,
PrEl his three great paintings of "Joan of Arc,"
ro. 27, 28, 29), exhibited a few seasons back on
these
walls of the Royal Academy. The merits of
and
extraordinary works (which have been recently
i`stta Splendidly engraved by their proprietor) have,
"_4O wever, been so frequently asserted that it would be
! perfiuous to enlarge upon them under present cir-
ri Instances. Those, nevertheless, who have not as
3: t had en opportunity of examining them themselves
(,°uld do well to pay a visit to the New Bond-street
)1111erY, and there see what noble efforts have been
4rlade by modern art in England. Our recommenda-
tl"n aPPlies with especial significance to the multi-
mle of our present visitors to the metropolis, both
foreign and provincial. They will there see how
grandly Etty has depicted Joao of Arc in three
epoch.; of her marvellous and memorable career—on
her finding of the
sword in the Church of St. Cathe-
rine, de Fierbo
, iS—on her scattering the enemies of
France wnen • leading a sortie from the gates of
Orleans--and, lastly, when she stands upon the pile
In the first agonies of her martyrdom. They
Rill see, moreover, from the hand of the same master
(No. 31) an exquisite " Andromeda," and what is
3'et finer than all, his famous " Judgment of Paris "
(No. al), perhaps the work which posterity will de-
clare to be his masterpiece. Besides these the visitor
?rill perceive other minor paintings of William E tty, the
least remarkable among which are deserving of the
closest study and the fullest eulogium. Instance this
his masterly " Study of a Peacock " (No. 15) for the
great composition last particularised. Another emi-