reader of nobody else, will at once recall the Athe- | gracious founder, which the sculptor considered an nian sage, and establish the mental parallel. But establishment given by that monarch to the individwas it the sculptor's head, or the sculptor alto- uals composing it, and to the state, as an accessory gether, that resembled the philosopher's bust? The faces of Socrates and Shakspeare had heretofore seemed to us a little unlike each other; but we live to learn. At p. 33 Mr. Jones, describing his friend's visit to Rome, has this remark: The villas in the neighborhood he thought elegant, and proved that variety in building, if under the guidance of good sense and propriety, tends much to the beauty of a country. But A very abstruse and important deduction. to the government for the improvement of taste in Mr. Jones, waxing more and more warm for his beloved institution, thus finally sums up its merits and claims: Chantrey believed that all which has been done The Royal Academy is grateful for the appromay be exceeded when genius and ability are equal bation and esteem evinced by the public, but it is to the task; for, as Raphael has surpassed the lay-in no way under public or government control, but figure art of most of his predecessors, so no reason exists why Raphael should not be surpassed. Thus we have only to find somebody greater than Raphael, and Raphael may be surpassed without the least trouble. The students of the Royal Academy will do well to lay profitably to heart this maxim recorded by their learned keeper. the government may be said to be indebted to the sovereign for an institution for the promotion of Fine Art, without being the smallest expense to the nation. In all other countries, similar establishments are supported by the state, the monarch, and private subscription, and generally a small annual payment from the students, whilst the Royal Academy of England finds for itself the means for the end, by an annual exhibition of the works of the members, and of the candidates to become such. Upon the subject of the favored institution Mr. Jones enlarges with frequent and natural fervor-From this source, funds arise to support schools, 66 an institution," he exclaims, a An institution, censured by those individuals, who are little inclined to doubt their own judgment, or question their inexperience, and who have selfcomplacency enough to imagine that they can improve arrangements, which have been under the consideration of its members for seventy-nine years. Benighted individuals! To think that what snug and comfortable party of forty other individuals have been devising for their mutual advantage these seventy and nine years, could be in any manner improved by a hint from the vulgar world out of doors, who have no advantage in the matter! At p. 182 Mr. Jones is again speaking of the institution, and of Chantrey's care for it : With such opinions, it may be supposed that he was a great advocate for its permanency, and in his will bound his trustees to preserve his property for the use of the original establishment—an establishment that probably offers, more than any other in Europe, the best advantages for the progress of art; a fact proved by nearly all the great artists of the country having been educated under its roof, and whose members have graced the institution, and adorned the country. We have heard, in the hanging and quartering days, of a man's members gracing the bridges or Temple bar, but how the great artist's members mentioned by Mr. Jones could possibly have graced the institution and adorned the country, passes our comprehension altogether. However, Mr. Jones proceeds: He thought any attempt disloyal to alter the constitution of the Royal Academy, as directed by the under competent instructors, for study from the from draped figures, and for architecture, with a antique, from the life, from pictures by old masters, valuable library, and practical lectures on perspective. It is, perhaps, severe to exact a very close connectedness of meaning in the heat of such composition as this-but if Mr. Jones intends to say, at the opening of these breathless and elegant senindebted to the sovereign without being the smallest tences, that the government may be said to be expense to the nation, we have only, as loudly as we can, to protest against an assertion so painfully unwarrantable. An anecdote of Wilkie and Chantrey is told at P. 110. Wilkie's confidence in Chantrey was such that, when finishing the picture of "The Chelsea Pensioners," the Duke of Wellington was sitting to Chantrey for his bust, which induced Wilkie to ask named for the picture would be a very slender remuneration for the time and labor bestowed. Chantrey undertook this delicate office, and obtained for Wilkie an augmentation of the amount proposed, or expected by either party. his friend if he would tell the duke that the sum The connection between Goodwin Steeple and Tenterden Sands we have often pointed out to have been, contrary to the popular notion, close and reasonable. But how it could ever have followed as a consequence from "Wilkie's confidence in Chantrey," that "the Duke of Wellington was sitting for his bust," we really cannot undertake to explain. And as for what "either party" proposed, or what either party "expected," or, indeed, who "either party" may have been, these | when Chantrey replied, "How many persons do also are quite insoluble mysteries to us. Another anecdote is given thus at p. 116: When he had executed and erected the statue of George the Fourth, on the staircase at Windsor, the king good-naturedly patted the sculptor on the shoulder, and said, "Chantrey, I have reason to be obliged to you, for you have immortalized me;" and this was said with reason, for, in defiance of all difficulties attendant on the representation of royal robes in sculpture, that statue develops an appearance dignified and graceful, without being encumbered by the decoration of royal habiliments. How does the statue develop the appearance?—it would be curious to know that. And does Mr. Jones mean that Chantrey immortalized his majesty by disencumbering him of his royal habilimentsor what does he mean? The learned note from Horace fails to light up the text. Nevertheless this does not prevent Mr. Jones from trying his friend Horace again. After a lapse of some fifty pages our old acquaintance is once more learnedly produced to illustrate a second anecdote of the monarch: you think were in the room who thought me a fool for not speaking? and how many would have thought me a fool if I had spoken?" The sculptor's jokes with Turner, during the preparation for the exhibition, were continual. He heard that the great artist was using some watercolor; he went up to his picture of " Cologne," and drew, with a wet finger, a great cross on the sail of a vessel, when, to his regret and surprise, he found that he had removed a considerable quan tity of glazing color. However, Turner was not discomposed, and only laughed at the temerity of the sculptor, and repaired the mischief. But occasionally the natural strength and honest unaffectedness of Chantrey compel even Mr. Jones to speak of them in an intelligible way. Thus · Among men of merit, who fell into any peculiarity of manner in their works, he would try to rally them out of practices that seemed likely to injure their reputation or their works. He extended this jocular mode to others if he detected any affected peculiarity in their dress, manner, or habits, and often sought, by a good-natured practical remonstrance, to check this disposition. Among He frequently, with respectful caution, remon- others, whenever he saw a man proud of, or cultistrated with the monarch on some proposed and vating, a superfluous growth of hair, or imitating costly project formed by his majesty, for which the a Raphaelesque appearance, he would with infinite funds were inadequate, and generally succeeded in humor present such a person with a shilling, and convincing the king. The subject was good-beg that he would encourage some hairdresser by humoredly dismissed, by George the Fourth say friend to any eccentric character this practical and his custom. He has been known to send by a ing, "Well, old gentleman, I suppose you must have your way; thus proving that honest and ludicrous remonstrance against singularity. judicious advice will be listened to, when offered to And again: those least subject to opposition or control. It has a solemn effect-but somehow does not help us on. And this-truth to say-is to be remarked of Mr. Jones' intense gravity in general, and of his Latin and Greek in particular. This must account for our leaving untouched several classical profundities which we had marked for extract. One or two anecdotes derived from Mr. Leslie are more intelligibly told—though now and then tasting too much of the painter's palette. Constable, in a letter to a friend describing the varnishing days previous to the exhibition of 1826, writes:Chantrey loves painting, and is always up stairs; he works now and then on my pictures; yesterday he joined our group, and after exhausting his jokes on my landscape, he took up a dirty palette, threw it at me, and was off." Some years after this, he was seen to glaze the foreground of Constable's picture of " Hadleigh Castle" with asphaltum; and the artist, with some anxiety, said, loud enough for Chantrey to hear him, "There goes all my dew." A bystander asked the sculptor if he would allow Constable to use the chisel upon one of his busts; and he replied, "Yes." The cases, however, were not parallel, as the asphaltum could be, as indeed it was, removed by Constable from the picture. At a public dinner where his health had been drunk, Constable told him that he should have made a speech, instead of merely returning thanks; * Principibus placuisse viris, non ultima laus est.— HOR. Epist. lib. i., ep. 17. + Ibid. On one occasion, at a dinner-party, he was placed nearly opposite his wife at table, at the time when very large and full sleeves were worn, of which Lady C. had a very fashionable complement, and the sculptor perceived that a gentleman sitting next to her was constrained to confine his arms, and shrink into the smallest dimensions, lest he should derange the superfluous attire. Chantrey, observing this, addressed him thus: "Pray, sir, do not inconvenience yourself from the fear of spoiling those sleeves, for that lady is my wife; those sleeves are mine, and as I have paid for them, you are at perfect liberty to risk any injury your personal comfort may cause to those prodigies of fashion." Also, noticing a lady with sleeves "curiously cut," he affected to think the slashed openings were from economical motives, and said, "What a pity the dressmaker should have spoiled your sleeves! it was hardly worth while to save such a little bit of stuff." A lady, one of his guests at dinner, wore a cameo brooch of the head of Michael Angelo; he said to her, "Always wear that brooch at my house, for it prevents me from growing conceited;" and he always had a flow of lively and good-natured trifles that made him agreeable to everybody. He united with his apparent roughness and abrupt manner the genuine and valuable acts of politeness, for, although he has been heard to tell a lady to open the door, and other jocular freedoms, he always attended to their comforts, and rarely omitted going up with the ladies after dinner to see that the fire, the lights, and the curtains were all adjusted as they should be in the drawing-room, for no one better understood these minor acts of attention than himself; and when he found all arranged for their comfort, he returned to his guests, a chimney must be tall, and it must be slender; in the dining-room. Very pleasant, too, is the subjoined: else." The best traits in the book, however, are those communicated in an appendix by Sir Henry Russell, who sat for his bust to the sculptor in 1822. A characteristeric touch like the following is worth all Mr. Jones' readings in Quintilian and Cicero. and the advice he had given was, that the best models of antiquity having those qualities should be resorted to; but by this time they had reached A friend of Chantrey's being at Lichfield Cathe a spot from which Sir Francis pointed to an obelisk. dral, and looking with others at the monument, heard "There," he said, “that is my chimney; it is 180 a spectator observe, "How admirably the mattress feet high, and of exactly the same proportions as on which the children are lying is represented!" Cleopatra's needle. It is the most beautiful chimbut made no comment on the figures. When Chan-ney in England, and I may say so, as I did not detrey was told of this remark, he observed, "that sign it; but, though I did not design it, at least I he who said so was a sensible, honest man, for he knew where to look for it." He said he had been spoke of that which he understood, and of nothing had been asked whether it would much obstruct consulted about a column of Portland stone, and the view in Trafalgar square? "Why, no," he said, "I do not think it will obstruct the view much, and, at all events, if it is made of Portland stone, is will not obstruct it long." The idea of durability had taken possession of his mind as the first and greatest quality to be sought for in a national monuinent. "As you know," he said," the tanner is always for leather. I have told them that a bronze statue of Nelson is what they ought to raise. Nothing will destroy a bronze statue but violence. Let it be as fine and as large a statue as your money will afford, and you may put it upon a granite pedOn one occasion, speaking of allegory, Chantrey said, "I hate allegory; it is a clumsy way of telling a story. You may put a book on the lap of some female, and call her History; a pair of compasses in the hand of another, and call her Science; and a trumpet to the mouth of a third, and call her Fame, or Victory. But these are imaginary beings that we have nothing in common with, and, dress them out as you will for the eye, they can never touch the heart; all our feelings are with men like ourselves. To produce any real effect, we must copy man, we must represent his actions and display his emotions." In going from the parlor to the studio, our way lay through a passage, on both sides of which there were shelves covered with his models of busts. In one corner stood a head of Milton's Satan, uttering, with a scornful expression, his address to the Sun. Sir Francis said, "That head was the first thing that I did after I came to London. I worked at it in a garret, with a paper cap on my head, and, as I could then afford only one candle, I stuck that one in my cap, that it might move along with me, and give me light whichever way I turned." very Some capital opinions of Chantrey's, in reference to the Nelson Column atrocity, are also judiciously reported. The chimney illustration is admirable-and final. "So," he said, "we are to have a column for the Nelson Monument; they are all wrong, and I have told them so. I do not mean to say that a column is not a fine thing; in itself it is a very fine thing; the taste of ages has proved that it is so, and any man would be a fool who attempted to deny it. But is it a thing suited to your purpose? Now, what is your purpose? To perpetuate the memory of a great man. Then durability is the quality you should look for. Those gimcrack things, you say you have been to see, of stone and metal combined, will never stand; the stone and metal will never hold together. Make a column as solid as you will, make it of blocks of stone piled like Dutch cheeses upon one another, still the stone will crumble, and vegetation will take place in the joints. Besides, columns have got vulgarized in this country. The steam-chimneys in every smoky manufacturing town supply you with columns by the dozen. In a country like Egypt it is quite a different thing. A column or an obelisk is a fine object there; with a flat all round you, as far as your eye can reach, you are glad of anything to break the uniformity of the long straight line that joins the earth to the sky, and you can see them fifty miles off; but huddled in such a town as London, a column will be lost. It will give you a crick in your neck to look up at it. Bythe-by," he said, "did you ever see my obelisk?" My brother told him he had not. "Then put on your hat," said he, "and come along with me.' They walked together to a short distance, and as they went, Sir Francis told him that a neighbor of his had consulted him about a chimney for a steamengine that he was going to build. Now, he said, estal." 66 Mr. The last time that I saw Sir F. Chantrey, a few weeks only before his death, he sent for the mode) of the bust, and said, Let us now see what Time has all this while been doing." It was then upwards of twenty years since it had been made. After attentively comparing the bust with the face for some time, he applied his finger to his own nostrils, and said, "Ah, here it is; what was sharp in all these edges has now become blunt." Moore, the poet, came in just after, and another gentleman with him. Pointing to one among the models, Mr. Moore said, "That is the bust of Mr. Pitt."-" No," answered Sir Francis, "I see what has misled you; but if you look again, you will find that there is nothing here of the sauciness of Mr. Pitt." Sir Francis was always judicious in mitigating the peculiarities of the faces he had to deal with; adhering to them as long as they served the purpose of characteristics; but taking care to leave them before they fell into caricature. The reader will hardly require to be told our opinion of this volume after the extracts we have exhibited for his delectation. It is somewhat redeemed by its sincere and hearty affection for Chantrey-and that is all we can say. Mr. Jones is an amiable and common-place man, with the weakness of desiring to be thought a profound and learned one. The failing is common enough; but is displayed by Mr. Jones with a portentous gravity, and a solemn unconsciousness of its own THE SPECTATOR AT THE POTOMAC. his 391 being as intelligent, as well indoctrinated in the absurd exhibition, which is not quite so common as not to justify a good-humored protest against it. We should be sorry if this volume withheld a more competent person from undertaking Chantrey's biography. The great sculptor-great in the world of the actual-well deserved a worthy record of his genius. He was an honest English artist, to whom many of the wide and great demesnes of art were closed, but who cultivated that which he had chosen with a brave steadiness, a manly energy, and many true and noble results, which should endear his memory wherever the arts are cherished, but particularly among countrymen. Mr. Jones as little knows how to praise his genius properly, as when to refrain from praising it. But even Mr. Jones' style cannot obscure or conceal the hearty independence of Chantrey's moral character, the unaffected honesty and sincerity of his life, the devoted and loving attachment of his friends. And we hope that a writer will yet be found, with a competent knowledge of the subject, and a reasonable command of English, to commemorate such talents and virtues. Meanwhile, Mr. Jones must comfort himself with the reflection that it is better to have been a good friend than to be even the best of biographers. Of the honorable distinction of having been Chan-ants of persons who came over early in the eighteenth trey's chosen associate and adviser through life, nothing-not even his own mode of recording itcan deprive him. From the Christian Register. THE SPECTATOR AT THE POTOMAC. GERMANS IN THE UNITED STATES. NEW tokens are constantly appearing that we are a mixed people. How various are not only the natural elements of which we are composed, but the influences under which we are growing! What a singularly diversified nurture is that under which the American character is being ripened, the American nationality consolidated, the American Future evolved! Here is another sign that continental as well as insular Europe is exporting itself to the Western world, and that the improvidence, mendacity, and general unsteadiness of the Irish Catholics among us are to have some favorable offset, even within the limits of emigration itself, in the thrift, patience, and obstinate perseverance of the Germans. We do not mean to cast an unqualified reproach at We have not the present generation of Ireland. the least sympathy with that narrow and bigoted prejudice that would exclude them from the circle of our charities when they come, fainting fugitives from the Old World's misgovernment, debilitated by its hereditary diseases, and starving with its unresisted famine, to our shores. Could the Irish emigrant point to such a father-land, with such institutions as the German, he would be a different creature certainly from what he is. We only congratulate the country that it receives some of the better products of European civilization along with the superstition and immorality which are the fruit of its barbarism. But our German population is very far from century that now use the unadulterated language of their ancestors. Hence the evident importance of circulating among them publications in the same tongue, but thoroughly American, as well as thoroughly Christian, in their doctrine and spirit. There is already a democratic German paper issued from Washington. It is well known that a very large proportion of our German voters, whether from a deliberate preference, or from associations with the name democracy that they bring with them from the old countries, where it stands in simple and marked opposition to monopoly and aristocracy, and denotes the popular tendency-vote the democratic ticket. Der Tuschaner am Potomac will contribute effectually to raise the character of the class for which it is designed, and every reader of German who can afford it will do well to subscribe for it, on account of its intellectual and moral aims and capabilities. The first number contains full reports of the doings and debates in Congress, a list of the members of both houses, intelligence from the several states, editorial articles, foreign and local news, a summary of last year's events, a pictorial plan of the house of representatives and senate chamber, and other matter suitable to a national paper, all well printed. We have taken this favorable notice of "The Spectator" the more readily, because we have had an agreeable acquaintance with the editor, Rev. Friedrich Schmidt, as a German Lutheran preacher in the south part of this city, and know him to be a man of superior powers, as well as an accomplished scholar, GUN COTTON IN WARFARE.-It is stated that gun cotton was used, for the first time, in actual warfare, at the storming of Mooltan, in the Punjâb. The brilliance and breadth of the flash from the guns are described as of great intensity. From the Spectator. EIGHT YEARS IN BRITISH GUIANA.* * fered with the labor of the planters, and to that extent this country is bound to grant compensation, but no further. Parliament is not bound to THIS book professes to be the journal of a protect men against the exhaustion or inferiority planter in Guiana, kept during eight years suc-of soil, or against the consequences of improvident ceeding emancipation; the object of the work speculations. Mr. Premium says that there are being to show the inevitable ruin to which the col- not twenty plantations in British Guiana whose ony was doomed by the acts of the British gov- soils are not inferior or exhausted. He describes ernment and Parliament. Mr. Barton Premium the mode of planting in the olden times as one paints himself as an English gentleman, without certain to end in difficulties, if not ruin, on the prejudices, possessing foresight, and with available first check. A man with 5,0007. undertook a task means over and above his West Indian property; that required 20,000l.; embarking in business but, finding his income falling off, he determines with three fourths of his capital borrowed, besides to quit England, reside on his own plantation the business entanglements that followed his with his family, and attend to its management. debts. As long as rivalry was forbidden, the soil A little colonial observation and experience unexhausted, and labor at command, such a proconvinces him of the up-hill if not hopeless ceeding might so far answer that the interest could task that is before him, and he resolves to keep a journal for the information of his descendants, and as a kind of justification of himself for the loss of their patrimony which he sees impending. This journal was not designed for print, but it accidentally fell into the hands of a friend, and he urges the publication. This rather operose framework is not a bad indication of the character of the book. The matter and spirit bear no proportion to the form and words. The mind of the writer is not sufficiently comprehensive for fiction; and his facts fail of producing their full effect, because their form is general whilst their true nature is singular. They are also encumbered with other things, which are quite proper to the picture of a planter's life, but do not prove the argument of the book. The great drawback, however, as regards attraction, is that the writer is in a measure dealing with matters that are past, or he proposes a plan which stands no chance of being carried-the purchase of slaves in Africa for manumission in the West Indies. Had Mr. Premium possessed a Defoelike power, this fault would not have affected the interest of his book; for life, character, and manners would have been dominant, and the reader have swallowed the political economy in the guise of fiction. As it is, we have the purpose of a pamphlet thrown into the form of a novel; the economical questions that are the real object of the author being continually lost sight of, in those topics which are appropriate to a picture of daily life in Guiana. It may also be said that Mr. Premium, like the protectionists at home, is somewhat addicted to making out too strong a case; ascribing to particular events an influence that singly they could not have, and exhibiting the sugar interest in such a plight that if all he says incidentally were true, nothing could have saved it. For purposes of sentimental gratification, this country has inter* Eight Years in British Guiana; being the Journal of a Residence in that Province from 1840 to 1848, inclusive. With Anecdotes and Incidents illustrating the Social Condition of its Inhabitants; and the Opinions of the Writer on the State and Prospects of our Sugar Colonies generally. By Barton Premium, a Planter of the Province. Edited by his friend. Published by Longman & Co. be paid; but the first misfortune must throw the borrower on his back. Such a course of action could only succeed with a very parsimonious borrower, who annually paid off a portion of his debt out of his high profits; but theory requires those high profits to continue, and practice shows that so extensive a trading on borrowed capital rarely succeeds even with the most thrifty. We do not allege these things as any excuse for the breach of faith towards the West Indians on the part of ministers, Parliament, and people; but as an example of the angry and illogical mind of Mr. Premium. The true case of the West Indians is quite strong enough without resorting to topics that prove nothing. But this disposition to exaggerate seems a type of the protectionist mind all the world over. The plan of the book, had it been put before the reader with more breadth and animation, is well enough designed. Descriptions of the estate and its management, the domestic life of the planters, the characters of the negroes, and some incidents of a class appropriate to fiction, vary the political economy. The author also has a practical knowledge of Guiana and its cultivation; but the incongruities we have spoken of-the mixture of pamphlet and novel without the powers of a novelist-militate against the purpose of the author, and somewhat flatten the effect of his book. One point, which Mr. Premium works rather successfully, is an answer to the charge that the planters have made no experiments and not en deavored to introduce substitutes for manual labor. This is his account of the plough; but it should be borne in mind that the cultivation of Guiana is peculiar, owing to the manner in which the low lands are intersected by streams and the dikes necessary for drainage. The greatest efforts have been making since the year 1833 to find substitutes for manual labor. The plough, above all other means, has been tried perseveringly, I may say on nearly every plantation; but in no one instance has it been found to suit so well as to supersede the shovel and hoe. Our soil being a stiff clay, causes the operation to be exceedingly severe on cattle; and the small drains, which are at a distance of only thirty-seven feet from cach other, and two feet deep by two |