58 Chev. Wiebeking on Hydraulic Architecture. It is intituled: Theoretisch practische Wasserbaukunst; that is Hydraulic Architecture, theoretical and practical, by Chevalier von Wiebeking, Director, Privy Counsellor to the King of Bavaria and General of the Department of Bridges and Roads in Bavaria. In 3 vols. 4to. with 146 folio plates. The celebrated author, esteemed the best practical engineer throughout Germany, takes a view of the whole of Hydraulic Architecture under the following divisions:-1. Art of conducting rivers. 2. Art of securing Sea-coasts. 3. Construction and preservation of Sea Dykes. 4. Construction of Harbours, containing a complete description of all the great barbours in Europe. 5. Art of Draining. 6. Machines used in the construction of works of Engineering. 7. Construction of Locks and Weirs. 8. Canals, and art of improving Inland Navigation. 9. Artificial Inundations for the Defence of Fortresses. 10. Construction of Bridges, containing a detailed description of Bridges with Arches of Wood, invented by the Author. 11. Construction of Artificial Roads and Highways. This work, truly unique in its kind, treats on all these subjects in the fullest and clearest manner, and proves the author to be a man of considerable attainments in science, as well as of great practical experience; and his arguments and statements are supported and explained by well-chosen examples, taken from the great works executed by himself, or other eminent engineers on the continent. It contains, likewise, a [Feb. 1, very complete account of the embankments and sea-dykes in Holland, with ingenious proposals for their improvement, as well as descriptions of almost all the great works of engineering in Germany, France Holland and Italy, countries which the author has visited several times, for the purpose of giving to the public the most complete account of the present state of the art of engineering, as practised on the continent. As plans and elevations of every great work are included in the plates, the whole is calculated to be of use and interest even to those who are strangers to the German language. But the most interesting and novel part of this work is the satisfactory and minute description therein given of bridges constructed with arches of timber of a very considerable span, upon a principle invented by the author. Among the plans of many bridges thus constructed, with the most complete success, is that of Bamberg, having an arch of wood of 220 feet span. There is also a plan of a bridge of a still greater span, nearly 300 feet, proposed to be erected over the rapid river Isar, at Munich. Upon this principle the Chevalier has constructed, in Bavaria, many bridges with arches of wood, which are only rivalled by those of cast iron erected in England. A statement of this meritorious and important invention has been published in French, in a separate volume, by which it is rendered more accessible to the English reader. REVIEW AND REGISTER OF THE FINE ARTS. "L'onore conferito da Grandi à bravi Artisti dà vita e vigore alle Belle Arti; come il poco incoragimento, e le critiche severe, e poco discrete, le fanno languire.” Condivi, Vita di Michel Angiolo Buonarotti. MISS O'NEIL in the Character of Belvidera. Painted by ARTHUR WM. DEVIS; engraved by HENRY MEYER; published Jan. 1, 1816, by Messrs. BOYDELL and Co., Cheapside, and dedicated by permission to H. R. H. the Princess Charlotte of Wales. Mr. Davis's picture, from which this excellent mezzotinto has been engraved, formed a prominent feature in the last exhibition of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours at Spring Gardens, and was noticed as such in our magazine for June last, vol. iv. p. 455. This admirable actress is represented in that in teresting passage of Venice Preserved where Belvidera finds herself in the house of Aqualina the Greek courtezan, and exclaims at the sight of the well-known gems "I'm sacrific'd! I'm sold-betray'd to shame! Of the picture we need add nothing to de la Science de construire les Ponts, avec Traité concernant une partie essentielle economique de construire les Ponts à Arches une Description de la nouvelle Methode de Charpente. Par C. F. de Wiebeking, &c. avec 17 planches, Munich, 1810. 4to. les planches, gr. fol. 1816.] Mr. Carlisle's Lectures at the Royal Academy. our former remarks; nor of the engraving say more than that Mr. MEYER has done the painter ample justice, and has produced a print that will rank among the best productions of its class. We are requested to state that Mr. GEORGE MAILE, the mezzotinto engraver, feels it his duty to apologize to the subscribers to his engraving of Miss O'Neil in the Character of Juliet, from the picture by GEORGE DAWE, Esq. R.A. for not being able to complete it by the time promised in his prospectus: but being anxious to finish it to the utmost of his ability, he begs their indulgence till the end of February, when the impressions will positively be ready for delivery. An unfinished proof may be seen at Mr. Dawe's, 22, Newman-street, ROYAL ACADEMY. We hasten to redeem the promise made in our last, of giving a concise epitome of the lectures on anatomy given in the Royal Academy by ANTHONY CARLISLE, esq. professor of anatomy. This course varying, as we have before observed, from all the learned professor's preceding ones, was studiously adapted to the refined pursuits of his auditors, and to the public sentiments of a moral people. He took occasion, in his first, to defend the deserving part of his anatomical brethren from the odium which indecent exhibitions and cruel experiments ought always to create; he even ventured to repróbate in strong terms the horrid tortures which some modern physiologists practise, and a distinguished Society make public, by stating that the most part of such cruelties were unavailing repetitions of former printed experiments and indecisive results, because of the confusion which pain induces among all the animal functions. His applications of the subject of his lectures to the fine arts were delicately touched, and the proper details were deferred to the private schools of the Academy, where alone the student may hope to learn the rudiments of the human figure from its mechanical analysis, and the geometrical laws which govern all its motions, actions, and expressions. The third lecture commenced with a view of all the general component parts of the human fabric, and which the professor classed under the two leading divisions of animated and inanimate substances. The latter, such as the nails, the hair, the scarf skin, the earth of the teeth and bones, and probably to a great extent many other parts, are devoid of nervous connexions, and of vascular tex 59 ture. These were beautifully illustrated as the beneficent evidences of an all-wise and good Creator, who has mingled sensitive with inorganic parts, to carry on the motions and actions of a living machine, without its consciousness of the means; and has so ordered its construction that the government of sensitive organs is not distinguished by the ordinary workings of the internal parts. He compared the optical organs to the watch-towers of intelligence for the day; the ears to the informants of the nightly evidences; the nose to the test-office for the savours and vapours of wholesome and unwholesome viands; the palate and tongue to the out-guards of the stomach and all the rest of the restorative organs, and by whose tact the raw materials for the growth and replenishment of the body are to be either admitted or rejected. Mr. C. then proceeded to mark out the applications of anatomy by observing, that the anatomical elucidations of the human figure should be confined to the male sex in its corporeal vigour, and, where the historical character demanded, personal prowess, not to the infant state, because at that age the muscles and bones are concealed by a contour of fat; nor to the female, because the beautiful rotundity of her form, and the gentler exertions of her sex, forbid the display of such mechanical emblems. Even the growing forms of both sexes are possessed of very little evidence of bones and muscles; whilst in old age both men and women obtrude the shades of the skeleton, and, losing the plumpness of flesh, the two sexes approximate again, and present the warnings of approaching fate, "the phantasmagoria of death." The fourth lecture was introductory to the muscles, when it became needful to explain more especially the texture, structure, and physical history of those instruments of motion. They were divided into those which obey the dictates of the will, and are hence called voluntary, and others which move without consciousness, and are hence termed involuntary. Their powers or forces were represented to be beyond those of all mechanical contrivances, and to combine a strength of cohesion in their parts far superior to all inanimate textures. The fifth lecture was occupied in displaying the muscles of the plaster-casts and their attachments to the skeleton, together with several new and pointed remarks upon physiognomy. The sixth and last lecture carried on the demon 60 Mr. Turner's Lectures at the Royal Academy: stration of the muscles, and was followed by a general representation of the osseous and muscular evidences on the living figuré. The professor then concluded in nearly the following words :-" Throughout the animal creation the same genera! system of anatomical structure and of physical composition prevails. It is true, that between the extremes of animal na tare there appears to be very little resemblance. Between the creature who builds and equips a ship to float round the endless ocean with mathematical precision, and the poor worm under his feet, there is no apparent analogy-but this is an arrogant assumption. The same necessity for food, the same mode of applying it to the growth and maintenance of the body, the same inexorable dependance on physical causes, the same order of succession, the same uncertain tenure of life, the same certain mortality, link them together as contemporary branches of the great family of nature. Still closer resemblances subject the animal world to the same gross and visible rules which are to guide the artist in pourtraying their outward character; but in prosecution of those needful enquiries into the concealed mysteries of our animal fabric, I hope the young gentlemen of the Academy will never forget the silent decorum which belongs to this humiliating (may I not say sacred?) subject. Let them follow their great classical predecessors, and carefully avoid its useless obtrusion before the vulgar, lest by a disgusting profanation they turn one of the sources of the greatest refinement into a coarse and filthy exposure of our weakness and our infimity. Let anatomy be cultivated as an auxiliary science, and let it be esteemed and employed as the key to the concealed recipes of our corporeal frame, an index to the mind, for directing its efforts to great but obscure truths." On Monday the 8th January Mr.TURNER, the professor of perspective, commenced his course of lectures in the Royal Academy, and has continued them [Feb. 1, on the subsequent Mondays. He began with a suitable introduction on the importance of this elementary branch of the fine arts to every description of artists, and elucidated his subject with a number of excellent diagrams. But excellent as are Mr. TURNER's lectures, in other respects there is an embarrassment in his manner, approaching almost to unintelligibility, and a vulgarity of pronunciation astonishing in an artist of his rank and respectability. Mathematics, he perpetually calls "mithematics," spheroids, " spearides," and "haiving," "towaards," and such like examples of vitiated cacophony are perpetually at war with his excellencies. He told the students that a building not a century old was erected by Inigo Jones; talked of "elliptical circles;" called the semielliptical windows of the lecture-room semi-circular, and so forth.-Mr. TURNER should not, in lectures so circumscribed as perspective, dabble in criticism; he is too great a master in his own art to require eminence in polite literature, but would confer a more essential service on bis pupils and on his country, would he begin with the A B C of perspective; tell them how to find their horizontal line, their points of distance, sight, and incidence; How to place objects of various sorts in correct angular and parallel perspective, leading them gradually on through linear to solid and aerial perspective, and shew them by what means he accomplished those excellent architectural drawings that embellish his youthful name, and how he performs those wonders in art that dignify his present; and leaving criticism and metaphysics to those who understand them better, TEACH HIS PUPILS PERSPEC TIVE. Mr. FUSELI's lectures on painting, which commenced on Thursday the 11th January, shall be noticed in our next, together with several announcements that reached us too late for our present number. DRAMATIC REGISTER. Sumite materiain vestris qui scribitis æquam viribus.-Hor. Aut dormitabo, aut ridebo.- Ibid. DRURY-LANE THEATRE.-Othello has been performed here to introduce in Desdemona, a new actress (Mrs. Barnes) who had previously played Juliet. As it is not pleasant to find fault, especially where there is no prospect of doing good by it, we shall say nothing for the present on the acting of this lady. Mr. Kean has not appeared, since our last, in the parts we intended to have no 1816.] Observations on Mr. Kean's Othello. ticed this month (Bajazet and the Duke Aranza); and as we wish to say something, as occasion offers, on each of his performances, we shall take this opportunity of peaking of his Othello: first, however, endeavouring to remove an error which appears to exist as to the personal qualifications required in a representative of the Moor From the days of Garrick to the present time, the name of Othello has conjured up a being endowed with every thing that is noble in feature, every thing that is graceful in demeanour, every thing that is grand and dignified in person; in short, bating his colour," he looks an angel and he moves a god." What triumph would Shakspeare have achieved for his favourite passion in making his Desdemona love such a being?-Shakspeare had a loftier object in view. He delighted to honour the female character; and was it ever, before or since, so highly honoured as in his own esdemona ?-Did fiction-even the fiction of Shakspeare itself,-ever embody a more perfect being?-the perfection however of nature, not of art. Admitting then the face and person of Mr. Kean to be deficient in dignity, he is not thereby disqualified, in the slight est degree, as a representative of Shakspeare's Othello. The faults in his performance of that character-(we like to get rid of them first that we may afterwards dwell with unmingled delight on its beauties)-the faults are a slight tinc ture of mock-heroic in what is called the level-speaking of the part; (a fault, by the bye, which exists more or less in almost all his tragedy;) and in his reproaches to Desdemona he sometimes assumes a cutting and sarcastic manner, which the words themselves do not warrant, and which is, besides, totally out of keeping with the rest of his conception of the part. In the first and second acts there is nothing particularly striking; for there is no necessity to make Othello" a hero to his valet-de-chambre." Except from this, however, the words "if it were now tadie, 'twere now to be most happy, &c.:" mingled with the most soul-felt happiness, there is a beautiful expression of pathos which seems almost to forbode the misery that awaits him.-Of the third act it will be difficult to speak as we feel without incurring the imputation of extravagance. After having witnessed all the principal efforts of the histrionic art that have delighted the town for the last seven or eight years, not excepting Those of Mrs. Siddons, we do not hesitate 61 to say that for purity, delicacy, and high poetical beauty of conception--for truth, and depth, and variety of expression,nothing has been exhibited which equals the whole of the third act of Mr. Kean's Othello. Never were the workings of the human heart more successfully laid open. During the first scene, in which Iago excites his jealousy, in every tone of the voice, in every movement of the face and body, may be seen the aecumulated agonies of unbounded love, struggling with, and at length yielding to doubt. When the simple exclamation, "And so she did," bursts from him, in reply to Iago's suggestion that Desdemona had "deceived her father, "-in an instant the tumult of thoughts that has been passing across his mind during the long pause that preceded it is manifest. -The next scene where he enters after having been meditating on his supposed wrongs, begins with a burst of mingled agony and rage: the intenseness of expression thrown into the words "I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips," has never been surpassed. Then comes the utter heart-sinking and helplessness which inevitably succeeds to the protracted operation of powerful passion: the beautiful speech beginning-"Oh! now for ever farewell, &c." is given in a tone of the most melting pathos-it is the quiet despair of a man who has for a moment cast his miseries behind him, and contemplates them as having happened in years past-it is the death-dirge of departed bliss: mournful music, but yet "music." To this calm succeeds a storm of contending passions-rage, hatred, intervening doubts,-until at length the whole of his already excited energies are yielded up to revenge: the look and action accompanying the words" 0 blood! Iago-blood!" were most appalling. We repeat that the third act of Mr. Kean's Othello is the noblest performance on the English stage. There is a quietness about the last scenes of it which is beautifully consistent with the manner of giving the speech-" Oh now for ever, &c." All is the dead calm of a midnight sea;passion seems to have "raved itself to rest;" even when Othello learns too late that his wife was guiltless, it scarcely moves him: one imagines that he had be fore determined not to live, and that the only change wrought by this certai ty of her innocence is, that hereas beiore he would have sought death as a refuge from utter despair-now " 'tis happiness to die," for amid the surrounding gloom 62 Mr. Kean's performance of Sir Giles Overreach. there is one bright spot to which he can turn-she did love him, and the devotion of his heart was not cast away. Massinger's admirable comedy of 4 New Way to Pay Old Debts has been revived at this theatre. Mr. Kean played Sir Giles Overreach. This character is drawn with great power and originality. It begins in avarice-reckless, remorseless avarice; which at length becomes merged and extinguished in intense personal vanity. He first gluts himself with wealth till his very wishes can compass no more; and then, by dint of gazing at himself as the creator of his boundless stores, his avarice changes into self admiration; and he thenceforth lavishes as eagerly to gratify the new passion, as he had amassed to gratify the old one. To the unmingled wickedness of this character we have a pleasing and a needful contrast, in the simple loves of Allworth and Margaret; and Wellborn is drawn with great freedom and spirit. But to speak of Mr. Kean's inimitable performance of Sir Giles Overreach. If it is not his very best, (for we still think his Othello and his Richard II. exhibit powers of a loftier description,) yet we cannot call it second to any; because these performances, as well as his Richard III., have faults: but this is absolutely perfect. We could scarcely look at it as a stage representation. In the first part of the play nothing can be more true to nature, and at the same time more refined and original, than the mixture of gloom and vulgarity which Mr. Kean casts over the looks, tone, and action, of the fearless and successful villain. The fine scene with his daughter in the third act was most exquisitely performed; particularly the fiend-like expression with which he tells her to "trample on" the Lady Downfallen; and the savage energy with which he gives the speech, "How! forsake thee!" &c. Then comes his feigned humility with "the Lord," as he calls him, [Feb. 1, always in a tone of half contempt, even when speaking to him. Indeed all through the play his half-contemptuous and sarcastic manner of pronouncing "lord," and "honourable, right honourable daughter," is peculiarly striking. The last act is from beginning to end a storm of the most intense and various passion, occasionally hushed for a moment into a calm not less dreadful: as when all his energies seem at once to crack, and hardly leave him strength to articulate "My brain turns ;" and again when he is about to rush among his enemies, but stops short as if struck with death-"Ha! I am feeble," &c. We must not neglect to notice his exquisite manner of calling Marall to him, after he discovers the blank parchment instead of the deed which secured Wellborn's property to him. He first calls him in his usual tone, as if speaking to his slave, “Marall!” but he instantly recollects the stake that depends on Marall's services at the moment, and he again calls him" Marall!" but with an expression of face and voice that we should scarcely have thought it possible to throw into a single word. This is wholly Mr. Kean's own, the name being only given once in Massinger. To describe the awful and terrific appearance of his countenance when borne off the stage is impossible. To be appreciated it must be seen--the effects of it manifested in hysteric sobs were not confined to the audience alone; Mrs. Glover and Mrs. Horn were so much affected that the former actually sunk into a chair on the stage. So deeply indeed were the performers impressed with the transcendent merit which Mr. Kean had displayed in this character, that after the first representation, before they separated, they resolved to raise a subscription for a piece of plate to be presented to him, as a token of their admiration. Lord Byron, with his usual liberality, contributed 25 guineas to the fund destined for this purpose. NEW PUBLICATIONS IN DECEMBER AND JANUARY, AGRICULTURE. Directions for preparing Manure from Peat. 2s. 6d. Essay on the Management of the Dairy, The character of Sir Giles Mompesson, who lived in the time of Massinger, probably suggested to him the hint of his Sir Giles Overreach; though it is certainly not drawn from that person.-For some account of him, see Wilson's Life and Reign of James I, sub, anno 1621. including the Modern Practice of the best Districts in the Manufacture of Butter and Cheese. By R. Twamley, sm. 8vo. 7s. BIOGRAPHY. The Life of Cardinal Ximenes. By the 8vo. pp. 396. Rev. B. Barrett. history as a statesman, and in literature as the founder of the University of Alcala, and the mu The name of Francis Ximenes is celebrated in nificent patron to whom we are indebted for the Complutensian edition of the Sacred Scriptures. The life, therefore, of this eminent prelate must |