He is at his casel; his pallet is duly displayed, and there is all the usual cant-attitude which no artist in that act falls into; consequently it is an affectation. But we will pass this; and now let us look at this rich lengthy scarf that passes over the left arm, and falls gracefully in folds from the shoulder.

What has an Englishman in his morning-gown and velvet cap to do with a scarf? He might as well have had his clothes-bag slung there. It may be said that it is not so agreeable an object; but it is quite as necessary to the man and the picture. What would be thought of a man's grandmother, if, upon being introduced to her for the first time, she were found in a studied attitude stirring a premeditated pudding (the thing she had most reputation for designing), and, the more to strike with admiration of her taste or of her extravagance, having her shoulders arrayed in a bear-skin, whose inmate had been taught to dance by her father? Why it would be thought that she looked very fierce and foolish; and this scarf-wearing young gentleman painter is equally falsetasted, fantastical, and foppish.

Three or four seasons back there was a large picture exhibited in the Academy, in which affectation was pourtrayed to the life. A middle-aged, ugly-looking, be-spectacled gentleman, was seen seated in what appeared to be the foreground of a forest with a black sky in the distance, and every indication of an approaching coachless shower, playing his bass-viol with a Tommy-and-Harrydon't-careishness of manner, that was very distressing to one who had read the pathetic narration of the shirt-rending consequences connected with such a spirit of sang-froid. The first sensation we felt on seeing this gentleman was one of humanity, the second of politeness; and we were very unconsciously about to offer him the loan of our best water-proof hat, till an elbowing gentleman jogged us out of the illusion, by asking us who Mr. Tomkins was, the multiplied portrait of whom appeared in all corners of the great room, with a most Protean variety of visage, and perplexity of person.

But you ask, what is bad taste in portraiture? Any expression, irrelevant object, exaggeration in dress, or harsh and violent action which is not affectation and yet is not natural, that is displeasing to the eye, or that disagrees with sensible notions of propriety, or that mars the harmony and grand tone of the design, is bad taste. There is a Scylla and Charybdis (affectation and bad taste) which our artists have to steer between; and though there is sea-room enough in the middle current for even the great Leviathans of the art to work their way safely through, yet they are usually to be found floundering on the one or the other.

To say truly, this is the age of affectation. A man will not write an apology to his tailor, unless you allow him to sit in the attitude of the latest portrait of Lord Byron; or sing a manly

English song without mincing it Tuscanly; or wear his shirt-collar, unless it hangs by his cheeks like a white greyhound's ears; or comb his hair, unless it be with the Milton division running up the middle; or bow to a bailiff on Sunday, or the parish-beadle out of church, unless it be in imitation of a high personage; or eat a bunch of currants without contrasting them for an hour with the whiteness of his fingers, and the redness of his ruby ring; or blow his flute or his fire, but with an air; or be disappointed of his clean linen, without venting his spleen in satire. In good truth, the wholesome manliness of England is gone or going; its hair of strength (like Sampson's) is shorn; it has lolled so long in the lap of pleasure (its mistress Dalilah) that the Philistines have at last bound it hand and foot; not that such restrictions are necessary, for it has no strength left but what shews itself in burly words and no-meaning bluster. The age is in its dotage. Imbecility of body, effeminacy of manners, affectation, and great-girlishness, are perceivable in all its limbs and motions. It is a starched-collared, man-stayed, French-dancing, Italian-squalling, sightseeing, splendour-loving, over-excited, and sated age. And it is with nations, as with individuals, who are intense in their love of pleasure; they at last grow over-exquisite, effeminate, and careless of every thing that is not momentary and pleasurable. But to

return.

To do our modern portrait-painters justice, they have not the fine originals to paint from which their more fortunate precursors had; and this they are either conscious of, and make up by affec tation what is deficient in nature; or the originals themselves make up for them, by assuming what is not their's, and running out into all sorts of extravagances of body and feature, making a youth of age, and passing flattery for the sterling truth. When we look at the fine unadulterated Saxon faces of Gower, Lydgate, Occleve, Chaucer, and their contemporaries; at the more mixed, or half Saxon, half native, heads of the Elizabethan age; or at the decidedly English ones of the Cromwell period, (the Sydneys, Miltons, Hampdens, Fairfaxes, and Vanes,) our modern heads are left far in the shade. The untawdry splendour or plain elegance of their costume, the unstudied expressiveness of their highminded faces, and their native ease, grace, and manly unaffectedness of attitude and appearance, look our living faces clean out of countenance. The first shew like men of intellect and greatness caught unconsciously and by chance glancing out of their open windows; and the latter, like beaur, literary and finical, barefacedly gloating on themselves in their looking-glasses.

To say, however, that there are no modern fine heads, would be like denying that the heavens have no superior stars sprinkled about them; but how few there are of them! These we should be thought invidious by enumerating; but we still think that the pre

sent age does not abound in fine subjects for portraiture. If we look back to Shakspeare's time, or the nearer day of Milton, we shall find that there is a decided superiority in the appearance of the portraits of that time. They were such as we shall not find in the ride on Sundays; nor at the levee at St. James's; nor on one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's canvasses. Female beauty we have in as great perfection as ever; but manly, intellectual, and expressive faces, in the male sex, are rare. There is a great absurdity in introducing any thing which is defective, or that gives pain, in a portrait. There is an amusing anecdote of Dr. Johnson on this subject. Reynolds, in his celebrated portrait, had painted him closely applying his eyes to a book, as was his manner in reading; but the surly Doctor remonstrated against having his personal defects exposed in so evident a manner: to soothe him, it was told that Sir Joshua, in a portrait of himself, had introduced the eartrumpet, which he was from another infirmity in the habit of using; but this would not satisfy the fretted Colossus of learning: "He might, if he liked it, be called Deaf Reynolds, but no one should call him Blinking Sam." The Doctor was in the right.

We have thus laid down some principles of taste, and have shewn what is affected in portraiture: these may be of a flimsy structure, but they are our own; for we confess, without racking, that we have never read Mr. Alison on Taste, nor do we intend it till we have done with taste: we have preferred to fabricate a new code (we should prefer to say coat) of our own, though of coarse and rude materials, to using that gentleman's at second-hand. And now we cannot take leave better than by remarking, in the manner of Lord Chesterfield,-that it is much easier to pick a hole in a man's coat than to sew a button on it.

C. B.

SONG. FROM THE ITALIAN.

IN yonder grove of myrtle straying,
I saw a damsel and a child,

Joy on his frolic brow was playing,

Her cheeks were pale, her looks were wild;
Oft as he cull'd the dewy flowers,

His playful gambols she forbid,

And if he roved to distant bowers,

His steps controll'd, his wand'rings chid.
Time pass'd away on airy pinion,
When lo! I met the nymph alone,
The child had fled her harsh dominion,
And hopeless she was left to moan:
To learn the damsel's name I strove,
And his who shunn'd her prying eye,
The truant child I found was Love,
The weeping mourner JEALOUSY.

CHRISTMAS-KEEPING.

"Now Hospitality, to cheer the gloom

Of winter, invitation sends abroad:

The rural housewife lays the annual block

Of Christmas on the hearth; and bids a blaze

Of tenfold brightness glad its sable spot;

Then sprucely decks the windows with fresh sprigs

Of ever-greens, triumphant o'er the storms

Of fading time, while ever social mirth

And rival kindness load the smoking board;

And boisterous sport and heavy dance resound”—The Year.

AMIDST the wintry desolation of the present month, the remembrance of a season once anticipated in joyous hope by all ranks of people, recurs to the lovers of "Auld lang syne"-to those who' remember with what pleasure they once welcomed its chill atmosphere and snow storms with the vivid rapture of youth. Even in this huge city, the memory of its festivities is not yet wholly extinguished. But in the remote parts of the island it is still hailed as the period of enjoyment-it is still marked by genial appearances; and round the social hearth on Christmas-eve, the less artificial inhabitants of the country will be found as Burns describes them:

Christmas is supposed by some to be founded on the Saturnalia* of the Romans, and was distinguished a century or two ago by its "festival of fools." The mummeries practised at that season were performed in disguises made with the skins of animals; and the lower orders, who could not afford masques and dresses, daubed their faces with soot, the sexes changing clothes. The Saturnalia were celebrated in a similar manner. Such a resemblance, and the obvious policy of transmuting the heathen festivities into rejoicings of some kind, after the introduction of Christianity, that the people might not be deprived of their customary pleasures, gives a plausible ground for supposing that the early Christians availed themselves of the opportunity to establish a fête in honour of the birth of their founder. But this can only be conjecture, like a thousand other opinions we read of the same nature, and must for ever remain so. The decision of the question, indeed, might gratify curiosity, but could be of no utility to the interests of mankind. It is a more pleasing occupation to dwell on the celebration of Christmas at later periods among ourselves, to go over ground that is interesting from its proximity to our own, and to realize the agreeable feeling always excited in the human bosom at

*

See New Mon. Mag. vol. i. p. 105, on the origin of the celebration of Christmas.

the contemplation of every thing, however insignificant, which is tinged with the grey melancholy of age.

In London, as in all great cities, particularly in those which are commercial, where strangers continually arrive, and new customs are daily introduced, observances of a nature similar to those formerly kept at Christmas must soon be lost. That season is accordingly marked here by few of the pleasantries and simple enjoyments with which it is even now characterized in the country. The merchant and shopkeeper are absorbed in traffic and the closing up of their accounts; and but a short space is devoted to that drunkenness and gluttony among the lower orders, which are the besetting sins of the time. The genuine cockney, however, though on the verge of bankruptcy, considers it a moral duty to spend his creditors' guinea for a fat turkey on Christmas-day; which, with a plenary potation of some kind of liquor, a minute fraction within the quantity necessary to produce ebriety, among the more sober citizens, and a fraction beyond it, among those less concerned as to outward deportment, completes the annual memorial of the time. The canaille may be seen, as usual when rejoicing, in all the sty-grovelling stupidity of the most inexcusable sensuality, reeling from lamp-post to lamp-post. The gin-shops overflow with ragged visitants and the bloated porterdrinkers, saturating themselves with doses of coculus indicus, and divers adulterating narcotics which muddle the brain and clog the circulation, fill every pot-house. Intoxicated draymen, dustmen, and butchers' attendants, hie to the suburbs to fight their dogs; and, finally, to fight among themselves. St. Giles's vomits forth its mass of vice and contamination, mingled with the filth and vociferations of drunken Irish barrow-women and wretches squalid and hectic from dram-drinking.

Such is a London Christmas-keeping.-Among viands once common there at this season plum-puddings and mince-pies are still found, and most probably will long remain, on the score of their intrinsic value to gastronomists. Pantomimic representations are proffered at that time in theatrical entertainments, to attract such little children and their parents as can afford to laugh at them but once a-year. In London, no yule-log now blazes in the contracted chimneys as in days of yore on its once ample hearths, no yule-songs are sung, and the wassail-bowl, as in most parts of the country, is quite forgotten. The hearty, but natural and simple merriment of the rustic, has no parallel in such over-grown congregations of men; and the festive activity of the Christmas hall-dance, where

Jest and youthful jollity,

Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles,

once abounded, has taken its flight, and left nothing half so heartcheering behind. Thus mortal customs perish like those who were observers of them, but only with a little less rapidity.

But the celebration of Christmas in London was formerly marked

with

pomp and feast, and revelry,

With masque and antique pageantry.