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Here the forms are more carefully studied, the coloring is warm and harmonious, and the sentiment of the scene is delicately felt and expressed.

The largest landscape yet discovered measures ten feet by eight-which approaches the colossal proportions of some of our own painters. There are also a number of illustrations of Homer, a class which might be called mythological landscape, where the scenery is adapted to the story told by the figures. These are much superior to the architectural pieces.

The field of genre-painting is also richly illustrated, in all its branchesthe comic, the purely fanciful, the homely and realistic-and it includes some of the most interesting specimens of the art. One of the pictures represents a female-painter in her studio, copying a hermes of Bacchus upon a tablet which rests on an easel, while some of her friends or admirers are watching the process. Another is a scene in a theatre, where a comedy is being acted by performers in masks. Another is a fourwheeled wine-cart, stopping at the door of a tavern to fill the empty amphora. There are, also, a school in which a bad boy is being flogged, rope-dancers and harlequins, jolly tavern-scenes, and illustrations of country-life.

A single head, of cabinet size, belonging to this class, is one of the most charming things I ever saw.

It rep

resents a girl, dressed as a Muse, holding her tablets in one hand, while with the other she thoughtfully touches her lips with the point of the stylus. The face is perfectly abstracted, and the soft, gleaming eyes look at you without seeing you. A smile has just left her lips, and it is a pleasant fancy for which she pauses to find the proper words. might be a young Sappho, or a Lesbia writing to Catullus. Drawing, coloring, and expression are alike admirable, and I scarcely know a single head by any later artist which I would sooner pos

sess.

It

The series of dancing-figures on red or black panels is known all over the world. The reproductions, however,

are invariably too sharp in drawing, and too gaudy in coloring, and therefore do not fairly represent the grace and richness of the originals. They were not intended to be seen close at hand: the features and finer folds of the drapery only appear when you step back three or four paces. Moreover, they abound in exquisite half-tints, which the copyists generally overlook or neglect. Whatever faults there may be in the drawing of these figures, scarcely one of which is faultless, all are free, soaring, elastic-all bound or fly, as if by an independent life of their own. No line is stiff or ungraceful, no figure repeats the other, and the spirit and invention displayed in them seem to be really inexhaustible.

Here Thorwaldsen found the hint for his "Sale of the Loves; " the Pompeiian picture is identical in design. Many of the paintings, indeed, from their grace, simplicity, and freedom, and the fact of the figures being represented nearly upon the same plane, might be converted into bas-reliefs. I found that the principal mistake in drawing consisted in making the head and trunk much longer than the legs. Nearly all the second-rate Pompeiian artists seemed to have taken the umbilicus for the central point of the body, instead of the base of the pelvis. This is a proportion which is often approached in Nature, but it is never agreeable to the eye. Among the working classes, especially, the thighs and upper arms are generally too short, and the trunk too long, for beauty. In pictures of the better class this fault does not exist.

I can only describe a few of the mythological subjects, and rather for the purpose of suggesting the manner in which they were treated by the artists, than with any hope of representing in words their commingled grace and repose, and the purity and harmony of their coloring. They are of all proportions, from small cabinet to life size. Some subjects, such as Perseus and Andromeda, the flight of Phryxus and Helle, Mars and Venus, Medea, Achilles, and Theseus, are repeated frequently,

but are always varied in the representation. The figures exhibit a freedom and variety of posture which is remarkable, and which betrays, at least, a thorough knowledge of the human form.

One of the most striking pictures is a single figure of Medea, meditating revenge. She stands in a somewhat listless attitude, with hanging arms and hands clasped around the hilt of the sheathed sword. Her head is turned to one side, and the face powerfully expresses the conflict of her passions. Nothing could be simpler or more effective. Welcker considers this picture a copy of a celebrated original by Timomachos of Byzantium.

There is another picture, representing the sacrifice of Iphigenia, which is believed to be, if not a copy, at least a suggestion, of the famous picture of Timanthes. There are but five figures, yet the story is told with a pathos and force which still touches the beholder. In the centre of the picture Iphigenia is held in the arms of Ulysses and Menelaus on the right stands Calchas, with the knife in his hand; on the left Agamemnon, his veiled head betraying his grief. The background is a bright sea and sky. Iphigenia does not struggle, but lifts her hands imploringly. To her body is given a soft, clear carnationtint, while the limbs of Ulysses and Menclaus are a ruddy brown.

But perhaps the finest specimen of color is the glorious picture of the Centaur Chiron teaching the young Achilles to play upon the lyre. The boy, naked and of perfect form, stands between the fore-legs of the Centaur, who is seated upon his hind-legs, while his strong breast and head tower grandly over his pupil, behind and beyond whom he holds the lyre, his right arm half embracing him as he strikes the wires with the plectrum. Achilles is golden-bright and fair with immortal beauty: Chiron is dusky and in shadow, except his head, shoulder, and right arm, which the light touches with a warm, bronze-like tint. The boy's features express intense pride and aspiration, yet he is for the moment subdued

into attention. The Centaur, at once grave and tender, betrays the struggle of a tragic double existence in his furrowed brow and deep-set, mournful eyes. His equine part-as in every Centaur represented in the collection-is astonishingly small: it is the head and trunk of a large man united to the body of a Shetland pony. The background of the picture is a piece of richly decorated architecture.

Within the last year or two a picture of Theseus in the Labyrinth has been exhumed and added to the Museum. The hero is of life-size, nude, and admirably drawn. At his feet lies the Minotaur, somewhat foreshortened, while a crowd of grateful and graceful youths press around the deliverer, clasping his knees, kissing his hands, and in other lively ways expressing their joy. Here is nothing of the stiffness of Byzantine and early Italian art. The figures move or rest without constraint, and there are some of the youths who even suggest the splendid impetuosity of Tintoretto. The more one studies this and the other equal Pompeiian pictures, the more one feels that the Painting of the ancients was worthy to be set beside their Sculpture.

The parting of Achilles and Briseis is another of the more important pictures. although preserved in a very damaged state. The weeping Briseïs is led forth by Patroclus, while Achilles, seated in front of his tent, gives the order to deliver her into the hands of the heralds. There is a wonderful contention of the emotions of love, anger, and regret in his countenance, and it is diffi cult to say which is predominant. Among the other more striking compositions I may mention Hercules finding his son Telephus, who is sitting on the ground, suckled by a doe, together with another where the son stands at his father's knee, and reaches a green bough to his gentle foster mother. A noticeable characteristic of all these pictures is the ease, simplicity, and naturalness with which the story is told. All is unforced and effortless: the figures seem to have grown in some

joyous, sportive mood of the artist, and therefore their failings suggest rather wilful indolence on his part than want of power. In this respect they differ remarkably from those works which mark the revival of painting, in Italy and Germany. In the latter, we have serious, passionate effort, finding its way slowly, and sometimes by agonizing energy, towards form and color, and the speech which grows from them: in the former, we feel only the easy play of a dexterous hand and an incxhaustible fancy.

How sunny, and cheerful, and alive with the spirit of imperishable beauty, are those halls in the basement-story of the Museum, contrasted with the haggard, suffering saints and tormented martyrs of later Neapolitan art, in the halls above them! Even in the houses of Pompeii, where the glaring sun looks down into the roofless chambers and illuminates every incomplete feature meant to be unobserved in the twilight of the day, or the lamp-light of the banquets, and every crack and scale of time and ruin, the pictures exercise an undiminished charm. They suggest wealth and luxury, it is true, yet at the same time they speak of an artistic culture, so general and of so high a stamp, that one knows not whither to turn, to match it at this day. Yet the golden era of Grecian painting was already long past, and these pictures were to the then still-existing masterpieces, as the figures of—(let the reader here insert the name of an inferior artist!) to those of Titian or Tintoretto. The Pompeiian pictures have, it is true, limited perspective (partly because depth is purposely omitted from the backgrounds), little foreshortening, little chiar oscuro; yet they show enough of each to justify us in supposing that the great masters achieved as much, in this respect, as the nature of the vehicle in which they painted would allow. The Pompeiian artists seem to have been fully conscious of what was lacking to them, in the astonishing skill with which they generally avoid the necessity of foreshortening and perspective.

One fact, evident to any one who sees the collection, is worthy of notice. In hundreds of pictures, a single example of disagreeable, inharmonious color can scarcely be found. The instinct of the ancients, never equalled since their time in regard to form, appears to have been fully as true and delicate in regard to color. The common workman dealt in ruder effects, and was generally ignorant of the management of half-tints, which is so charming in the best pictures; but if he never triumphed, at least he never offended.

Our modern life is very barren of grace and beauty, when contrasted with that of Pompeii, where the vulgarest wine-shop, and the poorest abode of the mechanic, had its ornamental frescoes. Here, too, is another remarkable evidence of the skill of the cheapest workman. Where the paintings are simple patterns or arabesque borders, they were never executed by means of cut-out models laid upon the plaster and painted through, but with the "free hand.” The workman had a ruler and compass, but no more; and the slight differences in the repetition of the same forms in a border attest his dexterity even more than his want of it..

Painting and sculpture were necessities of all domestic or public life in Pompeii. Diomed, Marcus Lucretius, and Cornelius Rufus, had their mosaic pavements, their marble and bronze statues, their grottoes of shells, and their illustrations of Homer; but the fuller and soap-boiler had also their terra-cotta heroes and deities, and the pictures of their profession, on their walls. In the wine-shop and the eatinghouse, the guests sat under panels of still-life which no doubt made their mouths water. It is as difficult to find an undecorated wall in Pompeii, as to find one tastefully decorated in New York. The town must have been a grand panorama of Art, and every street, or arch, or atrium, or peristyle an harmonious picture. What, then, must have been Baix, and Capua, and the one supreme Rome!

We are loth to believe that any talent

.or faculty once possessed by Man, can have perished. We cannot even admit, without a sense of mortification, that any people were more generally developed in any particular direction, than ourselves. Yet, when we learn how universal was the instinct of proportion among the ancients-how taste and the love of symmetry came as natural to them as hunger or gambling, and then

consider how slowly and painfully we moderns must be educated, in order to appreciate correctly their commonest works,-what monstrosities we bow down before, and worship-how inert is the love of harmonious form and color among the masses of the people: when all this is clear, we realize that mankind has lost that much of its grace and the Earth that much of her glory.

MY BERKSHIRE HOME.

WHERE, having passed the cliffs of Monument,
The Housatonic winds through meadows decked
With elms, and sces Taconic's woody range,
With rounded tops, run southward by its side-
'Tis here I dwell, with wife and child beloved,
And till my farm. The flock and spotted herd
Both daily lick my hand with brutish joy.
Indoors, birds sing or mock throughout the year.
Beyond the lawn the orchard lies, wherein
Red apples hang, and pears, that ripening late,
In winter's festive glass or silver glow.
Orchard, and lawn, and farm, are all surveyed
From this fair, pine-clad height whereon I dwell;
While far beyond, toward the south, I look
Upon the Housatonic vale, where, wider grown,
It gladly joins Green river's crystal flow
Unto its own; and makes, between the hills,
A lap for Sheffield's happy rural homes

To nestle in. Six miles away it lies

Far off, when mists and clouds obstruct the view;
But nearer seeming when the sky is clear.
Behind the house, the hill lifts higher up
Its pines-a bulwark 'gainst the northern blasts,
Which tierce in winter blow-and makes a place
Of refuge, where, in March, the coming birds
Bask in the sun, and fill the woods with song.
So sheltered are the southern eaves from winds,
That when the sun, in winter, risen o'er

The rosy eastern mount, floods them with light,

And lingers there at play until the eve,

They strangely seem transformed, though white with snow,
Into the gates of sunny Italy.

The pines that stand around the house-a host
Of sentinels, to guard from winter's cold
And summer's heat-are tall, with branching tops,
Green as in youth, but having seen more years
Than they who dwell beneath their grateful shade.
Steadfast and strong, they never lose their bloom,
Nor yield the freshness of their virtue up
Unto the tyrant, frost. The summer breeze,
Which, from the far-off sea, arrives to woo
Their tops to answer it with song, dallies
The livelong day among the fragrant boughs,

And dies, at eve, exhausted with excess
Of ecstasy. Their murmur, soft and low,
Is constant music; whether in the cool
Of day, I take my meditative walk,
Attended by their friendly troop of stems,
Or, dreaming, lie, at noon, upon the turf

Around their feet. Yet when the storm-winds rise
Upon Taconic's tops, the forest shakes

Its boughs with rage, and answers to their roar.
Then howl the branches, like the angry gale,
Amid the cordage of a frigate, tall,

'Stranded on rocks; or like the ocean's moan,
When, lashed by unrelenting powers, it cries
In vain for mercy.

Better is the mood

Of these domestic pines when nature is
In sympathy with man. In April-days
They give protection to the early flowers.
Then hastes the liverwort-not waiting for
Its leaves to cast its tender purple buds
Into the melting footprints of the snow,
That now retires for shelter to the woods.
The wild anemone, and mayflower soon
Succeed; and violets, that spread their tents
Of yellow or of blue in sheltered spots;
And columbines, that hang their scarlet bells
Above the rocks, to call the fairies home,
When, at its full, the moon transforms the groves
To realms of tiny tournament, and dance,
And revelry. Throughout the year, the flowers,
In quick succession coming, fill the air

With changing colors, and with varied scents,
Until the yellow needles of the pines,
Falling in autumn, make the grassy earth
As tawny as the Afric lion's hide.

But sweeter is the perfume of the trees

Than of the flowers that bloom beneath.

When summer suns shine on them after showers

Their breath is resinous. The invalid

Snuffs from afar its balm, as in the woods

Of distant Caroline or Florida,

Where stricken exiles go, each year, to die,
And carry, as a boon to heaven, the scent
Of southern pines.

Fair are these hillside paths,
Whether one goes to cast the fly for trout

In the near stream that through the meadow glides; Or hunt for whirring partridge in the wood;

Or climb the easy way where, in old time,

Lord Amherst led ten thousand men to fight

The French in Canada; or, down the vale,

Stroll where the Indian warriors built their mounds, And laid brave Umpacheni's bones,

And Konkepot's.

More distant scenes invite

To urge the steeds through meads with clover blown,
Or corn-fields purple-tipt, to leafy woods,
Where calls the waterfall to come; or heights,
Whereon the eye enchanted looks o'er vales,
And lakes, and streams, and intermingling hills.
In spots like these, on Dome, or Monument,

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