order, but of that not unfamiliar kind which Eve has bequeathed to some of the fairest among her daughters. We have met it about the highways of the world, however rarely; while Mr Marshall's is such a face as might have been washed into its half-deity by the classic Severn wave. If the parting waters might give us, as they did to Milton, a vision of the spirit which they enshrine, we should expect to see rather Mr Marshall's than Mr Cardwell's Sabrina. The fairer face fails to sustain the nymph character so well. The compromise between divinity and the sympathies due to a human origin gained, in our fancy, something of affirmation even from the strange, spiritual, rather than beautiful, look of the nymph who took being under Mr Marshall's chisel. Taken in itself, and apart from all extrinsic reference, Mr Cardwell's work must be pronounced a fine one; but that we could not, in noticing it, escape these allusions to the work of his predecessor, will prove to our readers that we think the present sculptor, when he modelled Sabrina, has borrowed something, and missed something more.

'The First Thorn in Life' is a group in marble, executed for Thomas Baring, Esq., by another of our most distinguished sculptors, P. Mac Dowell, Esq., R.A. It represents two children, one of whom is engaged in the office of extracting a thorn from the foot of the other. Whatever conceit there may be in connection with this work, resides in the title alone:-the work itself is full of nature and simplicity. We do not feel altogether sure that the artist's memory has had nothing to do with the composition; but we are generally unwilling to insist- -as against those who have shown, like Mr Mac Dowell, abundant evidences of the power to think for themselves-on coincidences of treatment. There are good reasons for this. Such coincidences will often be accidental where two artists have a similar end in view; and, it may be, further observed, that even plagiarisms of form or of attitude, may, in fact, become none at all, if they be the fit and suggestive expression of some new and different thought. Mr Mac Dowell is a sculptor who is entitled to the benefit of his own proved originality in reply to any suspicion of borrowing; but we were bound to suggest, that in this case he needs it. If he did not employ his own memory in this labour of composition, we are compelled to say that he

has appealed to ours. The modelling of the work, however, is first-rate. It would be difficult to do more for the rendering of flesh in marble than the consummate hand of the sculptor has here performed. To the Baron Marochetti it will probably seem a paradox, to say that if he should paint these limbs flesh-colour, he would destroy their resemblance to flesh. They who work after the pure canon, like Mr Mac Dowell, understand this well as a law of their art. The action of the piece is, in these figures, well made out, and its sentiment expressively conveyed. One child has the look of earnestness proper to his office,-the other the look of pain due to his wound. If we were to hint any kind of exception to the treatment, it would be by saying, that the style has a breadth scarcely, as it seems to us, suited to the subject; and that, while the flesh is flesh-warm, elastic flesh, cut out of cold, unyielding marble,—there is more of it than fitly belongs to the age which other indications pronounce to be that of the children. All about the group seems to us too large,—and yet we should have a difficulty in saying why. It is a feeling, rather than a criticism; but in matters of art the feelings are not always the worst critics. At any rate, we can state the objection better than we can argue it. Doubtless, the manner in question contributes an air of originality to the work, notwithstanding its reminiscences of the antique. If that were the object which the sculptor had in view, he has wrought to a successful end; and we are really not prepared to say that he has done so by illegitimate means. - The same artist had a 'Model for a Bronze Statue of the late Earl of Belfast:' the statue having been erected to the memory of that lamented young nobleman by the inhabitants of Belfast, and inaugurated by the Earl of Carlisle, as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in 1855. This is in all respects a fine portrait-statue, if it be so in the article of likeness. Of the latter quality we cannot judge, as to the fact; but we can say, that it presents those characters of expression, and animation, and individuality, which suggest likeness. The pose is natural, the action life-like and unconstrained. The dispute about costume-the question whether Englishmen of the nineteenth century shall be turned into ancient Greeks or Romans for the mere sake of the drapery, or whether the modern sculptor shall be re

quired to do what the old Greek sculptor would have done, make the accidents of his subject bend to the power of his artMr Mac Dowell, like other great sculptors of the day, has solved in the direction of reality. Like them, he modifies the difficulties by such art-compromise as the case readily admits, where there is nothing official or professional to make the prescription strict. Lord Belfast will appear to the future inhabitants of the town from which he took his title 'in his armour as he lived;' but its ungraceful forms and outlines are concealed in parts, and corrected in others,-while the composition is diversified and enriched, by the common, but effective device of the cloak. What could the English sculptor whose choice it is to be true to document in the rendering of a personality, do without this cloak,-which is at once an artifice and a truth? In marble, it helps to redeem the artistic, as on the living man it too often conceals the literal, poverty of the body-coat. Mr Mac Dowell has employed it in this work with sound discretion and with excellent effect.

A 'Statue of a Nymph surprised,' executed in marble for the late Joseph Neeld, Esq., by E. G. Papworth, jun., is the work of a young sculptor who has graduated in a great school, and to whose keeping are, by the circumstances of his education, committed the best traditions of our English art. As the grandson and pupil of Mr Baily, the lessons of Flaxman, the greatest of all our native sculptors-so nobly interpreted by Mr Baily himself-descend to him as a portion of his inheritance. The work before us speaks of the art inspirations under which his mind has been formed. It reveals its defects in the light of its own beauties:-and these latter constitute the sure light by which the young sculptor will be guided to the correction of the former. The figure is both tastefully conceived and cleverly handled. It has the great merit of presenting, by the manner of its action, that variety of outline which artistically communicates to a single figure one of the advantages natural to a group. Yet the work has its faults; and of two objections which we must take to it, one affects the spiritual, the other the technical of the art. Óne is a failure in the thought, the other, in the execution. Our first objection is one which Mr Papworth may be said to have unnecessarily raised up against himself by his choice of a title;

and it refers us back to the remarks which we have already offered, and need not now repeat, on the subject of incomplete art expression. There is not enough of life and movement in this figure to express the surprise which the catalogue announces. We should scarcely have gathered from its own unaided sculpturelanguage, that the Nymph has been startled. The poetry of the work is fine, but its drama feeble. This objection, however, belongs to the transcentalisms of art:-the technical fault is less defensible on the ground of immaturity. The full, massive lower limbs, well posed and poised, and the small, youthful features, are anachronisms with reference of the one to the other. The face is the face of a child, the legs are the legs of a woman if a nymph may be called so for the purposes of our position. Nevertheless, the work has points, both of beauty and of cleverness, which placed it, in some respects, among the best in the Exhibition.

For the purpose of pointing out how an oversight in matters of detail like this defeats the redemption of promise of a very high order, we will refer here to a work in the same Exhibition, by another sculptor who has yet years on which to reckon for the maturing of his powers. This sculptor is Mr J. Sherman Westmacott, the able executor of one of the national commissions for St Stephen's Hall in the new Houses of Parliament, and who has reached the finer poetry of his art more than once. The work now in question is a professed embodiment of the grieving Spirit indicated in Moore's lines

One morn, a Peri at the gate Of Eden stood disconsolate.' It is a work which has many merits, and these marred by some faults. The figure is well fancied and well composed:-something too tall, to our thinking, but that may be an affair of idiosyncrasy. The face of the angel excluded from heaven is sulky, rather than sad; and that, we take it, under no conceivable circumstances should the face of an angel be. But, the point to which we desire to call attention is this. In one instance, a technical merit is so contrived as to be an intellectual fault, a good sculpture phrase is illogically employed. The Peri carries more drapery than she could possibly have managed in such a flight as she is supposed to have just taken. There as she

sits, this drapery is so arranged around her limbs as to do good service in giving the needful balance to the composition; yet it is certain that she must disentangle them before she can venture to resume her flight. In fact, we know that the Peri has a long aerial journey before her, -and she is not in flying 'trim.'

In 'Egeria,' by Mr J. H. Foley, an Associate of the Academy, we have one of those attempts at the material embodiment of what is most ideal, which succeed at all only in hands that have the mastery of sculpture. To say that Mr Foley has here to a great extent succeeded would, therefore, be to assign to him the rank of a master now, if he had not achieved it by more than one work of beauty before. The complete and sufficient presentment in forms and lineaments of that Spirit of Contemplation to whom Numa retired for the lessons of philosophy which he applied in life, would task the finest instincts and deepest intuitions of the sculpture mind. In its highest meanings and innermost spiritualities, the theme is, of course, unapproachable by the chisel; and perhaps, as we have already hinted, it were a point of best wisdom with the sculptor to invoke no spirit whose revelations he cannot make complete. Still, we are well content with what Mr Foley has here achieved. In the less transcendental version of the ancient tale, his Egeria is such an one as imagination, in its classic mood, may see still sitting by the old fountain, and waiting for her monarch lover. The tall figure, 'beautiful exceedingly,' gets artistic support from the drapery which clothes all the lower limbs; and the hand plays, as if unconsciously, in her fit of high and sweet abstraction, with the long hair that falls with an almost spiritual grace over neck and shoulders. The voice of

'The prophet rill That resteth never while it whispers rest,' seems still to 'fling its oracles along the grot,' as we gaze on Mr Foley's version of "The Lady of the Stream.' This fine creation may stand well, to the poetical heart, for the embodied wisdom and beauty at whose side the Roman king and sage sat "By the cool fountain-many a livelong even, That speaks, unheeded, to the desert now. * Solemn thought upon his brows For all his diadem, her spirit eyes His only homage, and the flitting boughs And birds alone between him and the skies.

*

Each outward sense expanded to a soul, And all the bosom's shattered strings made And every feeling tuned into a truth, whole,

And all its worn-out powers re-touched with youth,

Beneath her spell, that chastened while it charmed,

Her words that touched the spirit while they taught,

Her look, that uttered wisdom while it warmed,

And moulded fancy in the stamp of thought,

Light to the soul, and to the senses love.' And breathed an atmosphere below, above,

-The fine statue of which the model was presented at this Exhibition has been executed in marble for the Corporation of the city of London, and is now erected in the Egyptian Hall, in the Mansion House.

The examples which we have given are sufficient for the purpose which in this article we have had in view,-to testify at once to the excellence of the British school, and to point out where lie some of its remaining defects. Into a concluding paragraph we will sweep a few other works; for the sake of a word or two of comment on each, corroborative in one way or another of the views which we have announced.-First, then, let us say, that Mr J. Thomas exhibits an extremely pretty Jewish maiden-without the Jewish type. The lady is no more a Hebrew lady than his 'Cleopatra' was Cleopatra. The catalogue introduces her as 'Rachel, the daughter of Laban:'-in answer to which we shall only remark, that she is worth all the fourteen years of service that Jacob paid, but that she certainly is not the daughter of Laban who was promised as its price. Let us observe, too, that she is buried in drapery to an extent altogether beyond the power of the chisel to deal with to any satisfactory result. Then, again, we have the 'Moabitish Maiden,' by Mr E. G. Papworth, the elder:-so called, as far as the work itself is evidence, from the fact of the lady having no connection whatever with Moab. The work embraces only a head and bust; but it is a marble of more than common beauty, and has attracted the taste of H. R. H. Prince The face Albert, who is its purchaser. is wonderfully sweet, the head admirably put on the neck, and the sentiment charming. Fair, the 'Maiden' unquestionably is-but why 'Moabitish?' As far as we can see, it is an extremely arbitrary use of the catalogue that calls her so.—And while we are speaking of Mr Papworth,

VAUGHAN HESKETH made a second pilgrimage to Beacon's Cottage the next morning. A restless night had caused his ideas, only confusedly rebellious before, to arrange themselves in the most compact ranks of mutiny. Made courageous by a belief in his own immunity, he had now given the reins to those frantic steeds-his thoughts-his wishes; and they dragged him where they would. He was desperately resolved, with the indomitable resolution of a selfish man to win that which he covets, let what will stand between. His own interests, he said to himself, did not stand between. He was secure. The will was signed, and safely in the keeping of the family lawyer. Redwood, he argued, was virtually his-he had no more now either to gain or to lose from Mr Hesketh. If the young man did not consciously calculate, among the other advantages of his position, the fact that his uncle could not, as the doctors said, linger many days, most assuredly it did unconsciously, and as a matter of instinct, weigh with him very forcibly.

So, nothing stood between.' Nothing but the pale face-paler than ever that morning-with the eyes looking unnaturally large, and the sometime rosy lips drawn closely together, in a strange sort of painful calm. The only thing that seemed to have power to affect that curious calm was, when Caroline looked at Vaughan's clouded brow and deeply-meditative aspect, or heard his voice, hasty and querulous, beyond all the transient impatience she had ever noted in it before. Then her look would soften, and her eyes would fill with sudden tears; then the cry of her heart would almost rise to her lips-'Oh, Vaughan, Vaughan! If I could only comfort him-if I could only help him a little!' But she dared not try. She dared not, for she felt the solemn sense of the duties that were before her duties for which all her quietest composure, her steadiest thought and courage, would be needed. No passionate indulgence of emotion must risk breaking down the floodgates of that heart of hers, where even now heaved and swelled the tumultuous tides of overwrought feeling. Caroline was learning a new lesson of control;

till now she had hardly required it. In the free joyousness of her youth, she had experienced few feelings that she might not avow. All shades and degrees of concealment had ever been unnatural and obnoxious to her careless, innocent spirit. Where she loved, she had been loving, of look, gesture, tone; where displeased, voice and manner had told it too. Sorrowful, she appeared sad; mirthful, she was merry. The conventional hypocrisies of the world, and those, sublimer and more heroic (as it is supposed), of modern novel and romance literature, each were alike unknown to Caroline. But now she guarded herself jealously. The few words she exchanged with Vaughan were quietly uttered. He would have been surprised at her composure, had he not been too much occupied with his own meditations to notice it at all. When she was about to withdraw, to resume her watch in the sick-room, he looked up for a minute. She lingered.

'You won't want me, I suppose? Because I think of going for a long walk— to be out all the morning.'

It will do you good,' said Caroline. 'Go, Vaughan.'

'I don't know where I shall go.' He took pains to tell her the unnecessary falsehood. 'But you won't be likely to want me?'

'No. Pray go, dear Vaughan.' And she went from the room hastily; and when the door was closed behind her, she clasped her hands against her eyes, forcing back the tears that had been brought to them by this new evidence of Vaughan's restless misery.

For Vaughan,-truly he was restless, if not altogether miserable. A few minutes more he passed in walking up and down the room, busy with his reflections; then he started off.

It was indeed a long walk that he took; for twice he turned at the top of the dark pine-wood, and paced with long strides the narrow footpath. But at length consulting his watch, and finding that 'lesson time' had surely commenced, he issued from the dusky shadow of the tall trees, and wound his way to the gate of Beacon's Cottage.

But a carriage stood before the usually