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

LITERATURE.
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.
No. CLXXVII.

A delightful paper on " Gardening"—sage, but
gossipping—l'ads oil the present number of the
Quarterly. In it the reviewer has collected toge-
ther, in agreeable confusion, a singular variety of
knowledge relating to the science of bo,any, flavouring
it with a tone of mingled pleasantry and enthusiasm.
Several of the materials introduced into this charming
olla podrida of scraps are recognised as old familiar
favourites—such, 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
cal king 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
Inntarch
Perhaps, indeed, none derive so great an amount of
enjoyment from a garden as those of the every-gentle-
man-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
early spring that there is nothing in the garden, neither
for missis' nor for
cook;' and then to come in with a
charming bunch of Russian violets, fragrant coltsfoot,
daphno, 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
manu 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 yourself;—
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
now;—to attack a standard rose with a head like a
plica polonica, and leave it as orderly as a little school-
boy's on Saturday afternoon;—to sow an infinity of
seeds, and amidst the wilderness of seedlings to discover
one 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 gentlefolk:; 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 four 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 Chiet
that though the grapes have been tolerable, the peaches
have been poor, very different 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 out of papers, whom her aunt had
your leave to ask down from London for her health. To
have to say to Mrs. Uppercrust that Mr. Mac Forcer
shall, 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
wanted 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. Blanco's
gardener, who spared no expense. To obtain, at a reck-
less cost, the newest thing from Shanghae or the Hima-
layas, 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 cn the other side
of the garden palings of several of MacSss ill the
helper's most intimate friends. To walk in well dressed
pleasure-grounds, 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
roses, with having destroyed Mac Forcer's every chance
of the prize for half a hundred dissimilar blooms at the
next horticultural show—if you take the liberty of
sending off a dozen pot-plants to a lady-friend, nods and
winks, and whispered wonder how Missis will like it?'
If you invade the kitchen garden, and ravage it of a few
hampers full of good edibles, to be told that it is not
pour perquisite, and to receive warning. To grudge
spending a sixpence on a garden almanack, or an hour
in 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 spade, the rake, and the hoe. " Scotland
before the Reformation" presents very large end
numerous attractions to our compatriots beyond the
Tweed, and will repay their curiosity with a store of
strange facts collected together by the historical an-
tiquary. Another reviewer, in the course of certain
commentaries made upon the revelations given to the
world by " Recent Travellers in North America,"
avails himself not merely of extracts from
the volumes of Mr. Johnston, from those of M. Mar-
/tier, from the lecture of the Earl of Carlisle, and
from the work of Colonel Conynghame, but of others
also culled from the latest columns of the press of the
United States. The article will be found on exami-
nation to be one universally interesting. Subse-
quently we have an excellent criticism on the " Me-
luoirs of the Duke of Urbino," by Dennistoun, of
Dennistoun ; folio wed by a very readable paper en
the " Correspondence of Walpole and Mason," pub -
lished as recently as last year, from the original ma-
, tuscripts. Scholars will relish the chapter given later
°n, upon " Badham's Euripides," and theologists will
turn with no little anxiety to the two remaining con-
t,ributions, those on " Rubric versus Usage," and on
Origen's Philosophoumena." Brief though the
Paper upon " Badham's Euripides" is, it may be again
teentioned here with propriety, as the most pithy and
Nggestiye in the whole of the current number of the
Quarterly. To this, therefore, we would direct the at-
tention of the general reader, and yet more particu-
larly that of our more intelligent philologists.

WASS'SGALLERY
Among the Arts
nuFlßlerNouEsAho.l:FitTioP:A.
OIfNthTeINF
iGneS.
;lONv open to public inspection.exnti in the metropolis, we
1 deserving of atten-
know of no one more eminently
ton than the one whichs we ourselvesy have recently
°lsited at No. 16 , New__r Bond-street—aN\ras gallery in
%ich the proprietor, M has collected to-
tether, at a very considerable outlay on his own
Part, some of the greatest works of the most distin-
hished modern British painters. Scarcely a hundred
Pictures hang upon the walls of the apartment, reek-
n.
ual one amongst
ing the paintings altogether, yet almost every indi-
`'llthem is of character so remark-
able for its excellence, that the lovers of art may find
T them matter for long and delightful contemplation.
t4c i
lually fortunate n one or two other instances, Mr.
21251 has been lucky
enough, or we should rather
1:
ty enterprising and discriminating enough, to
ti"re se-
to himself perhaps
the most valuable collec-
on
- of Ettys in the United Kingdom. It is
iePossible to glance round the apartment without
1
. poising this immediately. The exquisite colour-
ing-- of our English Titian arrests attention on the
ittlntent, and extorts from the most phlegmaticaadndrthe
tc'lt fastidious the warmest expressions.lam Etty, to the
of mia.
ra~e-tl. It must be confessed that William
Rret of his friends and admirers, has,bayhi
his demise,
ti
squired that claim upon vulgar pritise is that even
which is
aoati,baltly denied to the living. Hence
and "is productions have very considerably increased,
th': are still gradually and appreciably increasing in
glr trade value the üblic beginning, at length, to
lehtel'ie very the genius of the great artist
ci.c.),3: death"' generallywas, within the limits of a restricted
Numerous
the cause of such profound lamentation.
pow4l l'ous and diversified as are the specimens of his
' att tei,r.s in Mr. Wass's Gallery, the visitor finds his
!em-sle'n confined very soon to one or two of
then; in particular. Conspicuous, of course,
111),,.-L'e all the other paintings in the collection,
4 for their energy and their ambition,,
are 1,•
(II 'ls three great paintings of " Joan of Arc, '
the°3' 27, 28, 29), exhibited a few seasons back on
th-‘4 walls of the Royal Academy. The merits of
,;',,3e extraordinary works (which have been recently
1. sillendidly engraved by their proprietor) have,
°:,°°,,ver: been so frequently asserted that it would be
tetia`„,(3,'", lions to enlarge upon them under present cir
, -stances Those, nevertheless, who have not as
~,,Jet had an opportunity of examining them themselves
4°14 do well to pay a visit to the New Bond-street
made and there see what noble efforts have been
ta'a b' and
modern art in England. Our recommenda.-
t -a- aPPlies with especial significance to the multi-
gfeufaeenigodliflyoatunrcittyppresent visitors to the metropolis, both
rboaysincial. They will there see how
herepochs of h
. finding-eorf depicted Joan of Arc in three
marvellous and memorable career—on
the sword in the Church of St. Cathe-
line de Fierbois
last:,
k'ranoe when
Orleans—and, her scattering the enemies of
leadia
agoniesgwhaensortie from the gates of
In the first
will
.se3e6maonreeoxveiru,isfrirshe stands upon the pile
oF
the hhearn d
martyrdom.e
of
the
same T
masterhey
Yet finer than
(No r his famous Andromeda," and what is
" Judgment of Paris "
, . el), perhaps the work which posterity will de-
welilairepetroebeie his all'
masterpiece. Besides these the visitor
Ve Other minor paintings of William Etty, the
Zlleast remarkable among which are deserving of the
isoser:talt and the fullest eulogium. Instance this
" Study of a Peacock " (No. 15) for the
great composition last particularised. Another egoi"