WE WELL recollect many years ago hearing a letter read before the Society at the Adelphi, from a tailor in St Martin's Lane, in which he boasted of an invention to make pictures by patches of cloth. The importance he attached to his scheme was amusing, but more so from the manner in which he insinuated the inconvenience of all other processes of picture making, for his invention was "to supersede the necessity of painting in oil." The Royal Academy has still persevered in oil, and to show their contempt of the tailor and " Rag Fair,” have assumed an extraordinary finery; and the purple patch has been adopted without extraneous aid, and so effectually daubed on, as to "supersede the necessity" of being stitched on by the Knight Templar.

Purpureus late qui splendeat unus et alter

Assuitur pannus.".

Since the tailor's failure to "supersede," many have been the inventions to promote arts. A lady has discovered that the old masters did not, after all, paint in oil, but saturated their works with it afterwards, though some of them, before that theory was born, had painted themselves at their easels, and exhibited their cups and brushes, of which, according to her account, there was not the slightest necessity. Still the Royal Academy are obstinate, and artists will perseveringly entitle themselves "painters in oil and water colours." The art has a little coquetted with encaustic painting, and there have been serious proposals of reviving fresco: while all these great revolutions of art in posse" are in contemplation, innumerable are the contrivances in "esse," to render colouring so brilliant, that, if much further progress be made this way, the sun himself will not be able to look at them, and the dilettanti will labour under universal ophthalmia. The "modesty of nature" has been discovered to be a cheat, a coinage of the brain. Varnish predominates painters crack of their pictures, and their pictures will, in a few years, crack of themselves. But let invention go on, and when it shall happily

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drive varnishes out of the field, and with it some absurdities and monstrosities, British artists may acquire a lasting fame. While genius is at one time playing the capriccio with discoveries, and at another time goes to sleep, hoping to awake to new and more perfect ones; invention is still busy, and despairing of the permanency of the works themselves, takes pains to make the transcripts of them as multiplied as possible. Great have been the "improvements" in the art of engraving, and in imitation of engraving. First came Lowry's diamond points-then the sky rulers, shade rulers, and substitution of machinery for the hand. Much more has consequently been done in all that concerns effects and tones; but it must be confessed that this has been attained not without great sacrifice-a sacrifice of that which is, after all, the chief beauty, that free and inexplicable execution, which is, as it were, the sign manual of genius. The handling of the etcher, such as is visible in the works of Wood, Mason, Vivares, men whose merits have been strangely overlooked, is now never seen. our own part, we would forego all the advantages gained, for the recovery of the old "needle work" which showed so well the mind of the painter; it gave a transcript of the spirit, more than of the tones. But these "improvements" have reflected themselves, as it were, back upon painting; for now artists, seeing the power of the graver's tools, have become themselves mechanical, and fleece and smoke, velvet and tin, represent or misrepresent, flesh, drapery, air, land, water, and trees. The citybred and city-inhabiting population, who take their ideas of external nature from our annuals, where white satin buildings, variously shaded, as it were, with cigar smoke, stand for towns, and masses of soot for woods and forests, sent off into proper distance by the most approved jet blacking, must be truly astonished, if they have not already lost their eyes and capability of taste, when they go out to look at nature herself. It is true the steam-boilers by sea and rail-road, may for a while deceive them into a

For

belief that all is right, but they must be unfortunate indeed, if they do not leave the low levels of the " sooty Acheron." The substitution of steel for copper, the power of multiplying plates as before we did impressions, was another wonderful stride; and with it came a fear that the public would die of a plethora of taste, when good engravings might be sold for little more than the cost of paper, and plates be renewed, ad libitum, for ever." Exegi monumentum ære perennius" verified to the letter. We know not how it is, but just as we are going to have something good in this world, up starts a mischief to mar it or to vilify it. There is not a real panacea, but has its rival. Engraving, set upon so firm a basis, one would have thought might have been supreme. No such thingher illegitimate sister, Lithography, sets up her claim, and by means of cheap publications, calls in the masses, who naturally prefer the inferior article; and here commences the democracy of art. Print shops have increased out of number-print auctions are every where; so that, if all the world do not become judges of art, it cannot be for lack of means to make them acquainted with it. It is somewhat, perhaps, to be feared, that art itself will be held cheap, when all its productions are so; and that the bad will outsell the good. Great, certainly, are the powers of lithography, but it affords a fearful facility of setting forth abundant mediocrity, and engendering bad taste, and ultimately disgust. Few better specimens of lithography are to be seen than those of the Dresden Gallery, yet, in comparison with steel and copper plates, how unsatisfactory are they!

particularly as suitable to the free execution of Salvator), inundated as they are with preternatural, with heavenly light, bearing their radiation from the very seat of Divine intelligence, look in mezzotint as if emitted from a manufactory furnace, and the angels appear as if they came out with the smoky volumes. In the picture, the whole ground, not dark, is evidently high and under a clear atmosphere, and, besides, seems in some degree itself pierced by the heavenly vision. But the print is altogether too dark, and yet the contrast with the high lights does not give brilliancy. We are sorry to say this in the teeth of a most able engraver; and who, after all, if he has failed in giving the full beauty of the original, has yet added to the public stock a good and valuable print. We wish to see that picture and its companion, as they were exhibited at the British Gallery, Pall Mall, well etched and engraved-to see the needle and the graver throw out the bold execution of Salvator Rosa's hand. The character he has thus given to the clouds is very important; they communicate with the angels ascending and descending; they allure them and accompany them in their heavenly and earthly mission. Here ends our digression on this particular specimen of mezzotint. There is no breathing space-all is one great movement. Where are we going? Who can tell? The phantasmagoria of inventions passes rapidly before us-are we to see them no more?—are they to be obliterated? Is the hand of man to be altogether stayed in his work?

the wit active the fingers idle? Wonderful wonder of wonders!! Vanish aqua-tints and mezzotints — as chimneys that consume their own smoke, devour yourselves. Steel engravers, copper engravers, and etchers, drink up your aquafortis and die! There is an end of your black art— "Othello's occupation is no more." The real black art of true magic arises and cries avaunt. All nature shall paint herself fields, rivers, trees, houses, plains, mountains, cities, shall all paint themselves at a bidding, and at a few moments' notice. Towns will

VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXXI.

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mate, shall be henceforth its own painter, engraver, printer, and pub lisher. Here is a revolution in art; and, that we may not be behindhand in revolutions, for which we have so imitative a taste, no sooner does one start up in Paris, but we must have one in London too. And so Mr Daguerre's invention is instantly rivalled by Mr Fox Talbot's. The Dagueroscope and the Photogenic revolutions are to keep you all down, ye painters, engravers, and, alas! the harmless race, the sketchers. All ye, by whom the "Flumen Rhenum, aut pluvius discu. bitur arcus," before whose unsteady hands towers have toppled down upon the paper, and the pagodas of the East have bowed, hide your heads in holes and corners, and wait there till you are called for. The "mountain in labour" will no more produce a mouse; it will reproduce itself, with all that is upon it. Ye artists of all denominations that have so vilified nature as her journeymen, see how she rises up against you, and takes the staff into her own hands. Your mistress now, with a vengeance, she will show you what she really is, and that the cloud is not "very like a whale." You must positively abscond. Now, as to you, locality painters, with your towns and castles on the Rhine, you will not get the "ready rhino" for them now and we have no pity for you. Bridges are far too arch now to put up with your false perspective. They will no longer be abridged of their due proportions by you; they will measure themselves and take their own toll. You will no longer be tolerated. You drawers of churches, Britton, Pugin, Mackenzie, beware lest you yourselves be drawn in. Every church will show itself to the world without your help. It will make its wants visible and known on paper; and, though vestry and churchwarden quash the church rates, every steeple will lift up its head and demand proper repair.

"Mox reficit rates Quassas, indocilis pauperiem pati." Ye animal painters, go no more to the Zoologicals to stare the lions out of countenance-they do not want your countenance any more. The day is come for every beast to be his own portrait painter. "None but himself shall be his parallel." Every garden will publish its own Botanical Magazine. The true "Forget me not"

will banish all others from the earth. Talk no more of "holding the mirror up to nature"she will hold it up to herself, and present you with a copy of her countenance for a penny. What would you say to looking in a mirror and having the image fastened!! As one looks sometimes, it is really quite frightful to think of it; but such a thing is possible-nay, it is probable -no, it is certain. What will become of the poor thieves, when they shall see handed in as evidence against them their own portraits, taken by the room in which they stole, and in the very act of stealing! What wonderful discoveries is this wonderful discovery destined to discover! The telescope is rather an unfair tell-tale; but now every thing and every body may have to encounter his double every where, most inconveniently, and thus every one become his own caricaturist. Any one may walk about with his patent sketch-book-set it to work-and see in a few moments what is doing behind his back! Poor Murphy outdone!the weather must be its own almanac

the waters keep their own tide-tables. What confusion will there be in autograph signs manual! How difficult to prove the representation a forgery, if nobody has a hand in it!!

Mr Babbage in his (miscalled ninth Bridgewater) Treatise announces the astounding fact, as a very sublime truth, that every word uttered from the creation of the world has regis tered itself, and is still speaking, and will speak for ever in vibrations. In fact, there is a great album of Babel. But what too, if the great business of the sun be to act registrar likewise, and to give out impressions of our looks, and pictures of our actions; and so, if with Bishop Berkeley's theory, there be no such thing as anything, quoad matter, for aught we know to the contrary, other worlds of the system may be peopled and conducted with the images of persons and transactions thrown off from this and from each other; the whole universal nature being nothing more than phonetic and photogenic structures. As all readers may not have read the accounts of this singular invention, upon which we have made these comments, we subjoin the letter of Mr Talbot to the editor of the Literary Gazette, in which valuable periodical we first saw the announcement of the discovery in France, to