He was not mistaken in his physiognomical conjecture, for the bishop agrees to go on a carouse-and while over the cup, breaks forth with a noble panegyric on the liquor he was quaffing. For this we do find, that take it in kind,

Much virtue there is in a pot of good ale. And I mean not to taste, though thereby much grac❜d,

Nor the merry-go-down without pull or hale,

Perfuming the throat, when the stomach's afloat,

With the fragrant sweet scent of a pot of good ale.

He remarks on its operating as a bellyblast to a cold heart-its quickening powers on a lacquey-its serving as a coat to the naked, and a dinner to the hungry, whose stomach would brook a tenpenny nail. He expatiates on the benefits it confers on the various occupations of life, the shepherd, the sower, the thresher, the mower, the blacksmith,- on the comforts and independence bestowed by it on the beggar and the prisoner-on the wit it gives to the blockhead, and courage to the down-cast lover, of which last fact we are competent witnesses, having made a most important conquest, this day three weeks, at the Salisbury Arms in Durham-court, just after tossing off the third threepenny nip of Burton. The girl was a beautiful and modest maiden-but it is not right to kiss and tell. We shall, therefore, go on with the bishop and his ale.

After many more hearty commendations, he discants on its benefits to the cause of philosophy and composition. And the power of it shows, no whit less in prose,

It will fill one's phrase, and set forth his tale :

Fill him but a bowl, it will make his tongue troul,

For flowing speech flows from a pot of good ale.

And master philosopher, if he drink his part, Will not trifle his time in the husk or the

shale,

But go to the kernel by the depth of his art, To be found in the bottom of a pot of good ale.

In the next verse, its operations on an Oxford student are scientifically considered.

Give a scholar of Oxford a pot of sixteen,

And put him to prove that AN APE HATH NO TAIL;

And sixteen times better his wit will be seen, If you fetch him from Botley a pot of good ale.

By this we may learn, that the scholars of Oxford were just as wisely employed in those days as they are now.

Its services in the cause of religion and morality are new and pithily enumerated. He is a little puzzled when he comes to explain its soberness; he gets through, however, tolerably well after all. But for soberness; needs must I confess,

The matter goes hard; and few do prevail Not to go too deep, but temper to keep,

Such is the attractive of a pot of good ale. But here's an amends, which will make all friends,

And ever doth tend to the best avail : If you take it too deep, it will make you but sleep; .

So comes no great harm of a pot of good ale.

If, reeling, they happen to fall to the ground, The fall is not great, they may hold by the

rail;

If into the water, they cannot be drown'd, For that gift is given to a pot of good ale. If drinking about, they chance to fall out, Fear not that alarm, though flesh be but frail;

It will prove but some blows, or at most a bloody nose,

And friends again straight with a pot of good ale.

In those days hops were not in favour. James I. as we all know, called them a pernicious weed, and the Pope falls in with the ideas of his time.

Their ale-berries, caudles, and possets each

one,

And syllabubs made at the milking-pail, Although they be many, beer comes not in

any,

But all are composed with a pot of good ale,

And, in very deed, the hop's but a weed, Brought o'er against law, and here set to sale;

Would the law were renew'd, and no more beer brew'd,

But all men betake them to a pot of good ale!

We have outlived these prejudicesthough, in truth, our great brewers seem to have taken an antipathy to hops as well as our ancestors, for they favour us with little enough in their porter,

We are soon treated with a piece of history and antiquities.

To the praise of Gambrivius, that good British king,

That devis'd for the nation (by the Welchmen's tale)

Seventeen hundred years before Christ did spring,

The happy invention of a pot of good ale. The north they will praise it, and praise it with passion,

Where every river gives name to a dale; There men are yet living that are of the old fashion,

No nectar they know but a pot of good ale.

The Picts and the Scots for ale were at lots,

So high was the skill, and so kept under seal;

The Picts were undone, slain each mother's son,

For not teaching the Scots to make hetherale.

In all the controversy anent the Picts, we do not remember this remarkable fact being brought forward. As we believe old herring-faced Pinkerton is still alive, we strongly recommend him to duly consider this highly important testimony of the real cause of the abolition of the Pictish nation.

The rage against beer, breaks out again towards the end of this fiue poem

between the bibbers of which and the ale-swillers, there appears to have existed a deadly feud. The men of beer, it appears, had accused ale of slaying its votaries a weighty charge, and deserving of instant refutation, which it triumphantly receives.

They tell whom it kills, but say not a word How many a man liveth both sound and hale,

Though he drink no beer any day in the

year,

By the radical humour of a pot of good ale.

But to speak of killing them am I not willing; For that in a manner were but to rail; But beer hath its name, 'cause it brings to the bier,

Therefore well fare say I, to a pot of good ale.

Too many (I wis) with their deaths prove this,

And therefore (if ancient records do not fail)

He that first brew'd the hop, was rewarded with a rope,

And found his beer far more bitter than ale.

For our parts, we drink both beer and ale-not to mention porter, and, therefore, sympathize with the sufferings of the suspended hop-planter.

In the whole compass of our poetry there is not a more magniloquent and glorious stanza than the next. The wish it expresses is quite sublime.

O ale ab alendo, the liquor of life!

That I had but a mouth as big as a whale! For mine is but little, to touch the least tittle That belongs to the praise of a pot of good ale.

How beautiful! There is not such a verse in all Wordsworth's Excursion..

It concludes prettily and hospitably. Thus (I trow) some virtues I have mark'd you out,

And never a vice in all this long trail, But that after the pot, there cometh a shot, And that's th' only blot of a pot of good

ale."

With that my friend said, " that blot will I bear,

You have done very well, it is time to strike sail;

We'll have six pots more, though I die on the score,

To make all this good of a pot of good ale."

Now, gentle readers, is not that a fine poem? Do you think that there is a bishop now-a-days on the bench, who could compose any thing so splendid and solemn-so epic and episcopal—so tender and so true? The age is evidently degenerating, and the church does not now glory in the mighty men that rendered her illustrious in the days of old. Then, indeed, there were giants in the land-men of ale and ability, as Croly would say; whereas, now-a-days, we are sunk into blundering and Burgundy

represented. In statuary, then, a deceptive imitation is folly.

Take an instance in the Dying Gladiator; one of the fine statues which remain of the ancient sculptures, and beautifully expressive of the approach of death, a circumstance which always draws forth sympathy from those most steeled against feeling.

He leans upon his hand, his manly brow Consents to death but conquers agony.

And his droop'd head sinks gradually low, And through his side the last drops ebbing flow

From the deep gash-fall heavy one by one Like the first of a thunder shower; and now, The arena swings around him-he is gone, Ere ceas'd the inhuman shout which hail'd

the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away; He reck'd not of the life he lost-nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay;

There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,

Butcher'd to make a Roman holy-day→→
All this rush'd with his blood.

Childe Harold.

Yet though the poet feels all this so he-rendingly; and though every one feels this who looks on the statue; nobody, we presume, ever for a moment, was deceived into the fancy of being actually present at the death of the Gladiator, or ever for a moment stooped down in an agony of feeling to support his drooping head, bind up his bleeding side, and comfort him in the hour of death, when no wife, no mother, was near him. It is impossible.

The principle may also be strongly illustrated from the extraordinary group of the Laocoon, perhaps the greatest work ever performed by sculpture; for though we admire the Venus, the Apollo, and the Autinous, for beauty, symmetry, and graceful attitude; there is more in the Laocoon to excite feeling, which is the grand test of excellence; there is more to call up observation and thought, there is more expression, and consequently more excitement. We behold his

Torture dignifying pain,

A father's love and mortal's agony,

With an immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain, And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's

Rivets the living links;-the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. Childe Harold.

But with all our strong feelings on viewing this celebrated performance, we never, for a moment, think of the reality. We never start forward to assist, nor shrink back for fear, lest the serpent should quit Laocoon, and dart his fangs upon ourselves. We have no such feelings, and yet our sympathies are strong, for nobody can here look with indifference.

Let us try our principle as a test for other works of sculpture; Canova's Venus, for example, which has by some been highly admired, though it is liable to the grand objection brought against the English school, that it is a portrait. If this continue to influence our artists, it will infallibly crush all the rising excellencies of which we are beginning to be so proud. The error, however, is perhaps more the error of the times, than of the artist. It is the folly, the rage for portrait, which must always injure, must always produce a blot and a blemish, whenever it is hunted after in historical or fancy subjects. It is one of the greatest blemishes in Rubens, that he is so eager to introduce himself and his family into his grandest pieces. Haydon has carried the folly to its acmé, in his Entrance of the Saviour into Jerusalem; and, as if to satirize the present rage for portrait, he has introduced prominently into the picture, the portraits of Voltaire, Wordsworth, and Sir Isaac Newton; in defiance evidently of all taste, consistency, and common sense. But so far from being aware of the incongruity, or leaving it to accidental discovery, he comes forward himself to point it out as a beauty. Into the same error, Canova unfortunately fell in his statue of Venus, which he meant, perhaps, to rival the hitherto unrivalled Venus de Medicis. If such was his idea, he did not act wisely; for even if he could have excelled it, a circumstance improbable enough, the superiority would not have been readily acknowledged by a prejudiced world, and the comparison of a former masterpiece with a new rival, would almost infallibly turn out unfavourable to the latter, and the artist would at all events get the character of most arrogant presumption.

In the case of Canova's Venus, the error lies in its being a portrait, and known and acknowledged to have been

designed from an Italian princess, who submitted to the indelicacy of exposure in her thirst for being immortalized in stone. This, to our minds, is a circumstance which would rob the statue of all the excellence to be desired in a work of art, and upon the very principle we have just endeavoured to put on a sure foundation; the principle of exciting the spectator to imagine, and to feel:-to call up in his mind a fine play of fancy, and of association. Let us contrast Canova's statue with its ancient rival.

The feeling which we have in viewing the Venus of Cleomenes—the admirable Athenian Venus,-arises from the thought expressed in the whole statue, of the young and beautiful goddess, just starting into birth from the foam of the

sea

-just opening her eyes, for the first time, on the world's wonders, and even wondering at herself, and where she is, timidly and modestly afraid to trust herself abroad in the unknown creation around her, yet still a goddess. It recalls the fine description which Milton has given of the first feelings of our great progenitor:

As new awaked from soundest sleep,
Straight toward heaven my wandering eyes
I turn'd,

And gaz'd awhile the ample sky.—
Myself I then perus'd, and limb by limb
Survey'd, and sometimes went, and some-
times ran

With supple joints, as lively vigour led;
But who I was, or where, or from what cause,
Knew not.
Par. Lost.

The Venus is a being which could not readily be unveiled to human eyes, except by the art of the Athenian statuary-the divine chisel of Cleomenes, who would have scorned to degrade his statue by taking the portrait of any princess, or any woman who ever lived, or who was ever worshipped by the idolatry of a fond lover. The whole is beautifully ideal, a celestial creation of a superior mind, and, as such, it awakens in every beholder feelings similar, though, perhaps, not so ecstatic as it did in the moment when the first conception flashed upon the soul of Cleomenes, and left the deep imprint of the statuc's form on bis mind.

Turn now to Canova's Venus, and examine the feelings which it awakens. If no explanation had been given, the first feeling would be, that it represent

ed a woman, not a goddess, about to dress herself, after leaving the bath; or who was undressing herself for the purpose of entering it; an idea which, however well it may accord with the manners of the licentious Italians, is certainly contrary to good taste, or at all events is incomparably low, when contrasted with the expression of the Venus of Cleomenes. But how much is even this idea degraded, when it is avowed, that it is the actual portrait of a princess? How are all our indefinite notions of divinity and heavenliness dispelled at once, when we are told, it is the portrait of a mortal woman? The beauty of the statue, though ever so transcendant, would sink at once from heaven to earth; it would die in our minds, like any other attempted deception. We speak not of the flippancy and forwardness expressed in the countenance of Canova's statue; nor of the assumed and plainly affected modesty of the attitude. It is altogether expressive of a meretricious air. hair is fantastic, and wears the look of meretriciousness; and, as such, however finely it may be executed, however beautiful in feature or in proportion and, however like it may be to the process for whom it was designed, we hesitate not to give it an unconditional condemnation as a statue of Venus. As a portrait, then, it is to be tried, and not as a Venus; for, as such, no called-up and forced imagination can ever consider it, as the notion of the undressed princess exposing herself to the artist will always obtrude and dissolve the begun enchantment of feeling.

The very

In sculpture, we think, there has, in many instances, been a complete overlooking of expression and action; and, as such, even the finest proportioned figures fail to please us; must fail to charm us into admiration, and, in place of this, excite us to examine the nicety of execution, and other inferior considerations which we cannot possibly think of when before a great master-piece. The Antinous, for example, or the young Apollo, may be admired for their beauty, their symmetry, and their execution; but what is this, when compared with the expression in the Laocoon, or even in the Venus. There is a want of action, like the old style of portraits, which considered nothing, but a dead and lifeless mass of unthinking features, and like