The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-03 00:00:00

DOLMAN'S MAGAZINE.

T .is "lever periodical maintain; its career of improve'
nt. The present Number has some papers of peculiar
ability and interest. " Pictorial Art in its Christian
Development," is a Vasari-like piece of biography, but
much disfigured by a species of pictorial puritanistn which
cannot away with the human loveliness of the type of
Raffaelle's second manner, but is moved to ecstatic
risture by the tiny, though certainly el, vated ex-
pression—the deep sentiment, not a little marred
by the bard drawing of Perugino, the early master of
the " divine Urbino," and the penultimate glory of the
Umbrian school. The noble creations of the Florentine
school, the delicious works of those master-hands whose
labours were consecrated to the taste, elegance, and
munificence of Lorenzo de Medicis, are stigmatised as
pertaining to
_a school of " naturalism ;" and Raffaele
himself—the great and good—is mourned over as bay
ing passed over, after painting his great picture of
the " Dispute of the Holy Sacrament," to Paganism (!)
forsooth, in which relapsed state he continued all
the rest of his too short life, beCause—he never
more returned to the hard style of the "Christian" art
of Perugino. 'rhe writer of this paper may be a good
Catholic, but he is a very bigoted critic. It is strange
that even the chastened grace with which Rieffaelle has
developed his exquisite, his unapproachable perception
of female beauty, cannot—in his second manner—pro-
tect him or his admirers from that preposterous charge
of " naturalism," (i. e. materta'ism), which M. Rio and
Rumohr (or his ltalianische Forsehuagen) have brought
into vogue. We have been sometimes at a loss to account
for the sudden irruption of a species or vandalism, or heresy
in art, thus directed against the prince of painters.
The almost contemporaneous origin of this twaldle,
with the " sudden apparition" (as wo somewhere, lately,
saw it termed) of two score of German students at the
Vatican, at the " Santa Marie del Pepolo," and other
old churches Of Rome, who had discovered that the
pictures of what the writer whose paper is now before
us calls the " Peruginesque style" were pervaded by a
feeling of mere orthodox Catholicism than those pro-
duced by Raff.Lelle between 1510 and 1520 ' (in
which latter year he died). Th.:, consequence was
that they returned to Bavaria, to produce those
clever—certainly—but stiff, hard, and mannered
frescoes, which are the pattern types of a school that
an overweening but ill-informed taste—directed by still
more deficient sentiment and knowledge, is now attempt
ing to introduce, under some such meretricious and un-
meaning appellation us that of "decorative art"—into
the at, is and s doom; of our great public edifices. 01
Darky Duff, the Madman," a tale of South Munster,
being rudely broken (eat its "agony point" of interest,
we have no means, as yet, of reporting any formed
opinion, but it steins likely to turn out. a clever sketch.
Anecdotes of the Bastille" are continued in this Num-
ber, and serve to renew the feeling of astonish
ment —amounting almost to indignant conte inpt—
with which we have ever contemplated the mar% el
of a great and gallant nation like the France of
the last two centuries, submitting, tamely, to the bru-
tality and wantonness of an abuse of despotic power.—
far, very far more disgustingly atrocious than any which
was ever habitually tolerated by the abjeet slaves of
tl • Ottoman Sultans, or the but half-civilised serfs of
the great Khans of Tartary. We allude, of course, to
the :ttlres de-cachet, and the horrors perpetrated
under their authority. In the continuation of the
•

" Countess Clemence," by the editor, we recognise
further evidence of those powers which we have
before described as being generally exhibits-d
.his former ciatpters. But :he most interesting sub
,jest for extra,:t w ill probably be the following notice
the " Iron Masque," in the note to which we no
scarcely point to the iron-hearLedties,, of Lb.) twirl?
Bourbons' remarks on traditions that dye the bad meteor
of their wicked house so deeply as these.
On the 18th of September, 1608, arrived at the Bastile, M
de St. Mars, its newly-appointed governor, and With him
concealed in a closed litter, the my-terious prisoner known
by the name of "Le Masque de Fer." In the fortresses of
Nignerel, Exiles, and Les Isles Sainte Marguerite, he had
already languished
in captivity since the year 1671. He was
always treated with the greatezt distinetion, and provided
with everything he required or asked for. Tlie PRVerpor,
and M. Rosarges, the Major of the Castle, alone had access to
the prisoner, in whose presence they rarely presumed to sit
down. He wore at all times a mask of black velvet, so se-
cured upon his face that he was unable to remove it, yet so eon-
sirnet,ed as to adroit of his seeing, eating, and breathing with
facility. He died? as it
.7si reported, suddenly, on the 19th of
November, 174, after an it dispositipp of a few bones, was
roes ppe..
-4 n a winding-sheet of new linen, and i:ietl tieFt
i Sii day
in the cemetery o: Paul, under the name of Alarchiali,
the presence of Al. Rosarges ant: :.h.^ Sergeantlurgeon of the
Bastille. The funeral cost forty livres. He hau a Pr'.
soner at the Bastille five years and sixty-two-days.'