night that Shakspeare might be laid on his breakfasttable; and no one felt alarmed till he was seized suddenly, and expired on the morning of the 13th of January, 1832.

Liverseege was five feet five inches high, thin and spare, slightly deformed in the left shoulder, and of a pale complexion; his looks were inquiring and suspicious; his eyes had a glance of unceasing anxiety, and his mouth expressed nervous irritability. Much of this arose from long illness; for his natural disposition was open and generous, his sentiments elevated, and his manners courteous and winning. He had a strong consciousness of genius upon him, and often alluded to it; but he never rendered it offensive. He admired the talents of others, and loved to speak of the merits of the chief leaders of the English school: his idols were Reynolds and Lawrence; but he preferred, it seems, the latter, because his minute marking assimilated more to his own style. In his dress and appearance he was neat and gentlemanly, and though he was not a little vain, his vanity was not at all of the kind to give offence.

As an artist, the excellence of Liverseege lies in dramatic representation of human life, and the delineation of character. He had a fine eye, a clear head, and a cunning hand. He loved to paint scenes where visible life and imagination meet; nor can it be determined whether he excelled most in seriousness or humour: his wild caverns, filled with wild banditti, may be compared with his Cobbler reading Cobbett; and his Grave-diggers may be placed by the side of his Hamlet or Don Quixote. Some of his heads are, perhaps, too singular for the subject; and we frequently find ourselves wondering over these breathing oddities, when we should be arrested by the sentiment of the picture. He has been compared to Bonington. I see little resemblance. In dramatic character Liverseege is much superior.

We think of the groups of the latter as individuals with distinct characters; of the individuals of the former as of groups in a landscape. His style seems his own, his manner of handling is masterly, and his colouring deep, rich, and harmonious. His imagination was not apparently of a high order; he had little of that almost divine faculty of shaping his pictures in air, and commanding the splendid visions to abide till he invested them with form and colour. Hence his continual anxiety for models; not of body so much as of look and sentiment: he poured out his gin with the hope of obtaining a tipsy representative for Shakspeare's Sly. A friend sat to him for the "Knight of the Woful Countenance," though any one familiar with the Don of Cervantes, cannot but feel that the character is one essentially poetic, and that the looks must correspond. He found a model, one who required no stuffing, for his Sir John Falstaff. It is not Sir John's corpulence, but his wit, which the poet presses upon us :

"A fair round belly with good capon lined,"

is easily hit off; but who can hope to be a model for the humour which made the prince laugh "till his face was like a wet cloak ill folded up?"

BURNET.

ART has its early victims, as well as poetry. Chatterton and Kirke White gave no greater promise of excellence in verse, than did Bonington and Liverseege in painting. To these names we may add that of James, Burnet, a young landscape painter of no common powers. He was born at Musselburgh in the year 1788, and was the fourth son of

George Burnet, general surveyor of excise in Scotland, a man of probity and talent, and Anne Cruik shank his wife, sister to the eminent anatomist, the friend and associate of John Hunter. Others of his house have attained distinction: his brother John Burnet is as widely known for his talents in original composition with the pencil as for his almost matchless skill with the graver. The family came originally from Aberdeen.

The instruction which Burnet received at school during the day was excellently followed up in the evening by that of his mother, a devout and prudent woman. There are few of his countrymen who derive not as much of their knowledge from their father's fireside as from the public schools. His mind took an early turn towards art: during his leisure hours he loved to walk into the studio of Scott, the landscape engraver, with whom his brother John was a pupil; nor was he long in lifting the pencil; the result of his attempts was, that he was put under the care of Liddel to learn wood carving, at that time a profession both lucrative and popular. This branch of art, indeed, is now nearly extinct; a love of what is plain has come upon the country, and carved chairs, couches, and cabinets, are expelled from parlour and drawing-room; our cornices and architraves are no longer ornamented, and festoons and flowers flourish no more on our walls.

During his apprenticeship, Burnet studied at the Trustees' Academy, under Graham, where he was noticed for the natural truth of his delineations. As his skill of hand increased, he began to perceive the limited nature of the art of carving in wood. He sent some of his compositions to his brother John, who had removed to London; expressed a wish to follow and devote his time to painting; and without waiting for a letter of encouragement, which was on the way, he left Edinburgh, and arrived in London in the year 1810 in the twenty-second year of

his age. He found his brother busied on his fine engraving of Wilkie's inimitable "Blind Fiddler." He stood and looked earnestly and long on the picture; he had seen nothing so full of character, or so finished in all its details, during his studies in the North. A new light, he said, broke upon him, and from that moment he resolved to alter his style of drawing. In this resolution he was confirmed by examining the works of the best Dutch masters in the British gallery. In them he perceived much of what he admired in Wilkie: he lost no time in making attempts in what ought to be called the natural, rather than the Dutch style. "So convinced was he," said one who knew him intimately, "of the little progress he had made in colouring, and the other essentials which are every thing in the department of the art he had chosen, that he may be said to have only then commenced his studies; so little applicable is an academical education to the humbler and picturesque walks of art."

In Wilkie and the Dutch masters he perceived something entirely after his own heart: he loved the vivid human character in the former; and of the latter, Potter and Cuyp became his favourites. He desired to unite their qualities; and while he studied their mode of handling their subjects, and endeavoured to look on nature with their eyes, he was perfectly aware that nothing short of originality of conception would lead him to distinction. He had sought what he wanted in the academy, but found it not; he therefore determined, like Gainsborough, to make nature his academy; and with a sketchbook and pencil he might be seen wandering about the fields around London, noting down scenes which caught his fancy, and peopling them with men pursuing their avocations, and with cattle of all colours, and in all positions. Of these sketches I have seen a vast number: some are rude and ill arranged; others display bits of great beauty and character:

the greater number are such as he probably intended to paint pictures from; for the scenes are generally well depicted, and the sentiment plainly expressed. Of cattle he seems to have been particularly fond, and has represented them in all possible postures, and of all hues-"The ring-streaked, the speckled, and the spotted." He also seems to have been a judge. Some of our cattle-painters, imagining that the more flesh cows have the more milk they will give, have plumped them up into a condition for the butcher, but not for the milk-pail. Burnet knew that a moderately lean cow produced most milk, and in this way he drew them. But in all that he did he desired to tell a story. This he knew would give interest to his works, and produce at the same time action, expression, and variety. Nor did he confine his studies to the fields alone: he made himself familiar with the indoor as well as outdoor economy of a farmer's household during seed-time, summer, harvest, and winter; he left no implement of husbandry unsketched, and scarcely any employment of the husbandman without delineation.

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The first-fruit of all this preparation was his picture of "Cattle going out in the Morning." There is a dewy freshness in the air; and the cattle, released from their stalls, seem to snuff the richness of the distant pastures, and acknowledge the loveliness of the day. His next picture was superior even to this: in his "Cattle returning Home in a Shower," purchased by Sir Thomas Baring," he has introduced," says an excellent judge, every thing that could in any way characterize the scene. The rainbow in the sky, the glittering of the rain upon the leaves; the dripping poultry under the hedge, the reflection of the cattle on the road, and the girl with her gown over her shoulders, all tend with equal force to illustrate his subject." This picture placed him in the first rank as a pastoral painter. Others followed of equal or superior truth and beauty;