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

LITERATURE

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.
No. CLXX Vll.

A delightful paper on Gardening"—sage, but
gossipping—leads off 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 botany, 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
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
tlutarch
" 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 miasis' nor for cook;' and then to come in with a
charming bunch of Russian violets, fragrant coltsioot,
wall-flowers, polyanthus, &e., &c.,daphee, erica climes,
for the cara 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
mann prom-it; 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 he sets before you, and send him better next
day—you keeping only the MID, the boy, and yoursell;—
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
noso;—to attack a standard rose with a head like a
plied p&onica, 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 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 coin-
Pang 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 fur 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 on the other side
of the garden palings of several of Mac Swill 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 prise for half a hundred dissimilar blooms at the
next horticultural show—if you take the liberty of
sending off a down 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
tour 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 and
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
Mier, from the lecture of the Earl of Carlisle, and
from
, the work of Colonel Conynghame, but of others
,_4lBO 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-
Moira of the Duke of Urbino," by Dennistoun, of
Dennistoun; followed by a very readable paper on
13'3 " Correspondence of Walpole and Mason," pub -
ished as recently as last year, from the original ma-
nuscripts. Scholars will relish the chapter given later
on, Upon " Badham's Euripides," and theologists will
turn with no little anxiety to the two remaining con-
tributions those on " Rubric versus Usage," anti on
16 n_.
'igen 8 Philosophoumena." Brief though the
Paper upon "Badham's Euripides" is, it may be again
4a_uentioned here with propriety, as the most pithy and
suggestive in the whole of the current number of the
uarterlY• To this, therefore, we would direct the at-
lenti°ll of the general reader, and yet more pardon-
arly that of our more intelligent philologists.

FINE ARTS.
WASS'S GALLERY OF PAINTINGS.
Among the numerous exhibitions of the Fine Arts
11" v °Pen to public inspection in the metropolis, we
know of no one more eminently deserving of atten-
tion than the one which we ourselves have recently
visited at No. 168, New Bond-street—a gallery in
Vhich the proprietor, Mr. Wass, has collected to-
gether, at a very considerable outlay on his own
Part, some of the greatest works of the most distin-
guished modern British painters. Scarcely a hundred
Pictures hang upon the walls of the apartment, reek-
clog the paintings altogether, yet almost every indi-
vidual one amongst them is of a character so remark-
able for its excellence, that the lovers of art may find
In them matter for long and delightful contemplation.
Equally fortunate in one or two other instances, Mr.
West has been lucky enough, or we should rather
1311 Y enterprising and discriminating enough, to
tcure to himself perhaps the most valuable collec-
cri of Ett the United Kingdom. It is
' ys mpossible to glance round the apartment without
incsotagnnti:s ainndg this immediately. The exquisite colour-
ing
of our English Titian arrests attention on the
eftorts from the most phlegmatic and the
111°1t fastidious the warmest expressions of admira-
Con. the
It must be confessed that William Etty, to
regret of his fiends and admirers, has, by his demise,
r
acquired that claim upon vulgar praise which
usually denied to the living. Hence it is that evend
and • his productions have very considerably increase.
fld are still gradually and appreciably increasing in
.theiruetrdaedEettivi value, the public beginning, at length, to
Perceive very generally the genius of the great artist
circle, th was, within the limits of a restricted
cause of such profound lamentation.
w • 1011 s
and diversified as are the specimens of his
Powers in Air.
attention NV asses Gallery, the visitor finds his
th ern . confined very soon to one or two of
*no, .1,11 Particular. Conspicuous, of course,
e all the other paintings in the collection,
both
, '°r their energy and their ambition,
a(;; his three great paintings of " Joan of Arc,"
08. 27, 28, 29), exhibited a few seasons back on
the walls of the Royal Academy. The merits of
:ego extraordinary works (which have been recently
however,
sPlendidly engraved by their proprietor) have,
been so frequently asserted that it would be
elli)erfluous to enlarge upon them under present cir-
umstances. Those, nevertheless, who have not as
,3'vet had an opportunity of examining them themselves
eeld do well to pay a visit to the New Bond-street
Gallery, and there see what noble efforts have been
mode by modern art in England. Our recommenda-
tlTl applies with especial significance to the multi-
,.oreinue. of our present visitors to the metropolis, both
multi-
gore: and
provincial. They will there see how
grandly Etty has
depicted Joan of Arc in three
epochs of her marvellous and memorable career—on
her finding of the sword in the Church of St. Cathe-
rine de Fierbois—on her scattering the enemies of
France
es
a sortie from the gates of
Ilea
when she stands upon the pile
in the first agonies of her martyrdom. They Will see, moreover, from the hand of the same master
(No. 31) an exquisite " Andromeda," and what is
Yet finer than all, his famous " Judgment of Paris "
(No. 51), perhaps the work which posterity will de-
ellire to be his masterpiece. Besides these the visitor
will perceive other minor paintings of William Etty, the
least remarkable among which are deserving cf the
closest study and the fullest eulogium. Instance this
his masterly " Study of a Peacock (No. 15) for the
great composition last particularised. Another erui-