The National Register. — 1812-03-15 (London, England)

BIM—We are not the only ones who have questioned whether Addison was serious when he passed so high an encomium upon the old ballad of lc chevy-chase ;" and indeed we cannot thee that he was in earnest when lie compared sonic of the finest passages in the Eneid to the plain, home-spun strophes of that old poem. We know and confess that, on the one hand, age entitles it to respect, and that on the other, its simplicity and naivete will give it a passport to the farthest posterity ; but the great mind of Addison seems to have been first jocosely brooding upon it, and to have eventually hatched it into a glory of life which it did not appear to he entitled to. However, the passage which Mr. Bird has embodied upon the canvas, is particularly praised by the author of the Spectator, who says : " What can be more natural or more moving than the circumstances in which the author describes the behaviour of those women who had lost their husbands on that fatal day ?" and we are bold enough to assert that the painter has even done more honour to the poet than the eulogium of the writer ever could do. The principal figure is a woman distracted at the sight of her slain husband, whose head and shoulders recline on her 1 ap. She stares, she raves, she holds her troubled and aching head in her hand, and her madeoing grief is most happily contracted by the consoling countenance of an old man in the best style of Caledonian features and dress. Some ether groups in the half.shade have great effect, and the friar holding the cross of salvation to the dying warrior is extremely well delineated, and the action impressively pathetic. The so dead march," that winds away down the hill; the sad countenances of the surviving heroes, the lowering skies, which arc exactly as ineigination fancies them to be on the morning following the day of con filet and slaughter, all contribute to assign to this painting a high rank in the estimation of the spectators. Althongli highly finished, all the parts unite in general h.tritiony, and csestitete both a iilea,ing object to 'the patriotic eye, and a ns.Ht intereiting scene to the inettraive mind. No. 82. Ariderus and E c•idiec. By .k. l'eaLee L.—Wise we to find the strength of the elephant In the elegantly shaped roebuck, the fierceness of the eagle in the d'ive, and the lo:Ig life of the osk in the variegated tulip, surely we should stand enwrapped with admiration, and exclaim— " Nature has ontd•)r.e lu,rself In the subject under our consideration, a woman exhibits to the a;tonished mind of the behol:ler, a specimen of courage, intrepidity, a:ld esi7,na,kn, at which we should wonder, even it it were produced by the stronger sex Euridice, lamenting ever the body of her murdered lois:mod Arida:us, a natural son of Phil r, and crowned king of M:tet don al.tcr tar death of Alexander the Great, reteives, with the utmo.t placidity of countenance, the instrument of her destruction, sent to her by the haughty and revengeful Olympias. This fact, which is handed down to us by Diodorus and Justin, is treated here with an uncommon kior.vledge of what constitutes historical painting. The foreshortening of the dead body, which meets the eyes of the srectator in an inverted situation, is managed kith great art; the figure Of I; uridice is elegant, and full of the required expression of silent grief, and finitude, and t' e whole pleasingly and classically colon. eel. N. -6. 774 S,reir ?made &le ric Garrison of Gan-attar, in Novensber, it I). Tuossituta...—lt would be difficult to do justice to this