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EUROPEAN MAGAZINE,

MAY, 1823:

PUBLISHED ON THE FIRST OF

JUNE.

WITH A PORTRAIT OF JOHN FLAXMAN, ESQ. R.A. TAKEN FROM THE LIFE EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WORK.

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Intelligence relative to the Fine Arts..... 449 Births, Marriages, and Deaths,

473

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Published for the Proprietors,

BY LUPTON RELFE, 13, CORNHILL,

And Sold by all the Booksellers in the United Kingdom.
[TWO SHILLINGS.]

EDITOR'S NOTICE.

We are continually receiving " Reviews" of books from publishers and authors, who have not the delicacy to send even a copy of the work by which we might judge of the talent and honesty of the reviewer; can any one be so unjust as to suppose, after reading our critiques, that we are to be induced to swerve from our duty by either partiality or party spirit? If authors or publishers are desirous of having their works noticed in our review department, they are requested to send copies of their books for that purpose, and not reviews of them, which we cannot anticipate will do us credit when they are sent gratis: we will always be impartial, and their works, if of sufficient merit, shall receive the earliest attention; if their merit is not considerable the authors will, we are sure, excuse our silence, as the least disagreeable mode of evincing our disapprobation.

Mr. W. H. M—d is requested to observe that our new mode of giving the Index of Bankrupts, &c. is followed in order to introduce as much original matter into the last number of each volume as possible; the mode he alludes to, as followed by our predecessors, is an ingenious branch of "book-making," in which we are not ambitious to excell.

In answer to " Veritas" at Boulogne, we must observe that we have no reason to distrust the accuracy of our correspondent in France. If Veritas will give authenticity to his version of the story he alludes to by favouring us with his real name and address, we shall be extremely happy to pay his letter every proper attention.

The author of the Hermit-ess is requested to send to our Publisher for a letter.

"The State Dunces," "British Antiquities," and " Algernon on Prison Discipline," shall certainly appear in our next number.

ERRATA IN OUR LAST NUMBER.

Page 311, col. 1, line 48, for Puritans, read "Partisans."

Page 313, col. 2, line 55, for Representations, read "Representatives."

UNIV

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hhsbed for the Proprietors of the European Magazine by Lupton Relie 18. Cornbill June

1923

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JOHN FLAXMAN, Esq. R.A.

With a Protrait painted from Life expressly for this work,
and engraved by J. THOMPSON.

THE lives of artists and literati are proverbially destitute of those striking events that captivate the understanding and excite the curiosity of the ignorant multitude; but to the philosopher and politician, who dive beneath the surface for the causes that agitate the sea of political and moral contention, every event of those lives are truly interesting. They are the guides by which man is led from brutality to civilization; in comparison with which the stormy incidents, that crowd the lives of warriors and statesmen, are like the irruptions of volcanos over a fertile country. "The proper study of mankind is man," and where can we trace the inmost workings of the mind so well as in its silent retreats, undisturbed by extrinsic circumstances? Those, who would deduce the present improved state of society from the examples of potentates and legal desolaters of the earth, know nothing of the philosophy of history or of the causes that secretly work out the amelioration of what is termed civilised society. From the diffusion of knowledge among the mass of mankind arises the only real liberty man is susceptible of, because that powerful engine not only teaches him the nature and advantages of rational freedom, but renders him incapable of abusing it. To this

general diffusion of knowledge we owe almost all that is commendable in history, which chiefly instructs us in the contests waged by ignorance and usurpation against nascent intelligence and the acknowledged rights of mankind. How puerile and contemptible do the exploits of the Macedonian bravo appear in the romance of Quintus Curtius, when compared with the philosophic heroism of the Athenian Sage as described in Plato: the one lived to scourge the world, the other died to enlighten it! These reflections naturally occur, when we contemplate the unobtrusive life of the subject of our present memoir, calculate its usefulness and compare it with those of inglorious men, who are now securing to themselves eternal infamy by their aggressions on a peaceful, magnanimous, and unoffending nation. They disgrace their Creator by impiously assuming his name to mask their hypocrisy; he honours the Eternal Being by shewing how much mankind is capable of intellectual improvement. We wish we were able to enter into those details that would develope the means by which the subject of our present memoir has arrived at the highest honour in his profession, and acquired a name that is not only at the present time European, but which will endure to the latest

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