The Express. — 1866-10-13 (London, England)

SOLDIER.—On Thursday afternoon Mr. T. T. Delasaux held an inquest on the body of a soldier, who had shot himself in the camp at Shornclitfe. This is the third suicide in the camp within a month ; and in consequence a good deal of interest was felt in the proceedings. The following evidence was taken : —James Pompey, a private in the 2nd Battalion of the 20th Regiment of Infantry, stationed at Shorneliffe, said :—I knew the deceased, and bad done so for about two years. He was in the same regiment and occupied the same room as myself. I saw him alive on Wedues(by morning at about 10 minutes past 9, and he was very low hearted. He complained of his feet being very sore. He refused to let me sponge out his ride, and said he should not have it sponged out any more. I almost immediately heard the report of a gun, and on looking round saw the deceased lying on his bed with a wound in his neck, produced by a bullet discharged from his rife, and he died in about three minutes. The deceased has recently lost his wife and from that time became low and melancholy. I have no doubt he shot himself intentionally. He was 21 years of age. Francis Pointon, corporal of the same regiment as the deceased, deposed—The deceased lived in the same room as myself, and I have observed a lowness of spirits for the last 10 days, that is from the titue he returned from burying his wife. The jury returned a verdict of "Temporary insanity," and the inquiry then closed—Darer Express. LIKENESSFA AND Pourrtmrs. matter-of-fact portrait is almost an affront. When Humboldt. the diplomatist, who refused to sit to Isabey, afterwards saw his portrait in the picture of the Congress of Vienna, he exclaimed, " I determined to pay nothing for my portrait, and the rogue of a painter has taken his revenge by making it like." This notion of painting a man at his best and representing the inner life and character, and not merely a map of bin face, is really more specious than strictly true ; or, at least, such truth as it contains is often used to give currency to much that is fallacious. The inner life and character may be suggested : the " mind, the music breathing o'er the face, may be embodied in a painting. But when this is attempted by altering in the slightest degree the features, a false and conventional—however pleasing—portrait must be the result. Many painters have certain tricks of their own whereby they conceive they add to the beauty of the countenance. Sir Thomas Lawrence, for instance, gives a special curve of the eyebrow to all his sitters ; and society admires these prettinesaes. But it is easy to bring the matter to a stern test : is is not tolerably certain that we should prefer to see a good photograph of Shakespeare or Milton, of Luther, or John Knox, or Oliver Cromwell, than all the paintings in which the artist gave us his notion of the best self of his sitter ? Of Cromwell we have, probably, one of the beat of existing historian portraits : his stern injunction, " Paint me as I am, warts and wrinkles as well," checked, doubtless, the softening touches of the artist ; and Samuel Cooper's head of Cromwell is a portrait to study.—British Quarterly Review, new number.