-y, all is illumination; there is no shadow to balance such a glare of light, st to oppose it. The judicious artist, therefore, rarely represents his objects ertical sun. And yet no species of landscape bears it so well as the scenes -est. The tuftings of the trees, the recesses among them, and the lighter anging over the darker, may all have an effect under a meridian sun. I efly, however, of the internal scenes of the forest, which bear such total s better than any other, as in them there is generally a natural gloom to The light obstructed by close intervening trees will rarely predominate; e effect is often fine. A strong sunshine striking a wood through some chasm, and reposing on the tuitings of a clump, just removed from the eye, gthened by the deep shadows of trees behind, appears to great advantage; if some noble tree, standing on the foreground in deep shadow, flings he sky its dark branches, here and there illumined with a splendid touch of open country, the most fortunate circumstance that attends a meridian oudy weather, which occasions partial lights. Then it is that the distant ene is spread with lengthened gleams, while the other parts of the landscape adow; the tuftings of trees are particularly adapted to catch this effect with e; there is a richness in them from the strong opposition of light and hich is wonderfully fine. A distant forest thus illumined wants only a nd to make it highly picturesque.

It is a

e sun descends, the effect of its illumination becomes stronger. ether the rising or the setting sun is more picturesque. The great beauty depends on the contrast between splendour and obscurity. But this contrast zed by these different incidents in different ways, The grandest effects of sun are produced by the vapours which envelop it-the setting sun rests on the gloom which often accompanies its parting rays. A depth of shadow over the eastern hemisphere gives the beams of the setting sun such power, that although in fact they are by no means equal to the splendour of a sun, yet through force of contrast they appear superior. A distant forest der this brightened gloom is particularly rich, and glows with double The verdure of the summer leaf, and the varied tints of the autumnal all lighted up with the most resplendent colours.

r.

nternal parts of the forest are not so happily disposed to catch the effects of sun. The meridian ray, we have seen, may dart through the openings at and produce a picture, but the flanks of the forest are generally too well against its horizontal beams. Sometimes a recess fronting the west may beautiful light, spreading in a lengthened glean amidst the gloom of the hich surround it; but this can only be had in the outskirts of the forest. es also we find in its internal parts, though hardly in its deep recesses, splens here and there catching the foliage, which though in nature generally too 1 to produce an effect, yet, if judiciously collected, may be beautiful on ometimes also see in a woony scene coruscations like a bright star, occay a sunbeam darting through an evelet-hole among the leaves. Many paintespecially Rubens, have been fond of introducing this radiant spot in their pes. But in painting, it is one of those trifles which produces no effect, nor radiance be given. In poetry, indeed, it may produce a pleasing image. are hath introduced it beautifully, where speaking of the force of truth enguilty conscience, he compares it to the sun, which

Fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,

And darts his light through every guilty hole.

e of those circumstances which poetry may offer to the imagination, but the annot well produce to the eye.

'Essays on the Picturesque,' by Sir Uvedale Price, were deby their accomplished author to explain and enforce the reaor studying the works of eminent landscape-painters, and the ples of their art, with a view to the improvement of real scen

. vi.-12

ery, and to promote the cultivation of what has been termed land. scape gardening. He examined the leading features of modern gardening, in its more extended sense, on the general principles of painting, and shewed how much the character of the picturesque has been neglected, or sacrificed to a false idea of beauty. The best edition of these Essays, improved by the author, is that of 1810. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder published editions of both Gilpin and Pricethe latter a very handsome volume, 1842-with a great deal of additional matter. Besides his Essays on the Picturesque,' Sir Uvedale has written essays on Artificial Water, on House Decorations, Architecture, and Buildings-all branches of his original subject, and treated with the same taste and elegance. The theory of the author is, that the picturesque in nature has a character separate from the sublime and the beautiful; and in enforcing and maintaining this, he attacked the style of ornamental gardening which Mason the poet had recommended, and Kent and Brown, the great landscape improvers, had reduced to practice. Some of Price's positions have been overturned by Dugald Stewart in his Philosophical Essays;' but the exquisite beauty of his descriptions must ever render his work interesting, independently altogether of its metaphysical or philosophical distinctions. His criticisms of painters and paintings is equally able and discriminating; and by his works we consider Sir Jvedale Price has been highly instrumental in diffusing those just sentiments on matters of taste, and that improved style of landscapegardening, which so eminently distinguish the English artists and aristocracy of the present times.

Picturesque Atmospheric Effects.

It is not only the change of vegetation which gives to autumn its golden hue, but also the atmosphere itself, and the lights and shadows which then prevail. Spring has its light and flitting clouds, with shadows equally flitting and uncertain; refreshing showers, with gay and genial bursts of sunshine, that seems suddenly to call forth and to nourish the young buds and flowers. In autumn all is matured; and the rich hues of the ripened fruits and the changing foliage are rendered still richer by the warm haze, which, on a fine day in that season, spreads the last varnish over every part of the picture. In winter, the trees and woods. from their total loss of foliage, have so lifeless and meagre an appearance, so different from the freshness of spring, the fullness of summer, and the richness of autumn, that many, not insensible to the beauties of scenery at other times, scarcely look at it during that season. But the contracted circle which the sun then describes, however unwished for on every other consideration, is of great advantage with respect to breadth. for then, even the mid-day lights and shadows, from their horizontal direction, are so striking, and the parts so finely illuminated, and yet so connected and filled up by them, that I have many times forgotten the nakedness of the trees, from admiration of the general masses. In summer the exact reverse is the case; the rich clothing of the parts makes a faint expression, from the vague and general glare of light without shadow.

Twilight.

There are some days when the whole sky is so full of jarring lights, that the shadiest groves and avenues hardly preserve their solemnity and there are others, when the atmosphere. like the last glazing of a picture, softens into mellowness whatever is crude throughout the landscape.

Milton, whose eyes seem to have been most sensibly affected by every accident

ation of light (and that possibly in a great degree from the weakness, and ntly the irritability of these organs), speaks always of twilight with peculiar He has even reversed what Socrates did by philosophy; he has called up from earth and placed it in heaven.

From that high mount of God whence light and shade
Spring forth, the face of brightest heaven had changed
To grateful twilight.-[Paradise Lost, v. 643.]

also singular, he has in this passage made shade an essence equally with merely a privation of it; a compliment never, I believe, paid to shadow bewhich might be expected from his aversion to glare, so frequently and so expressed:

Hide me from day's garish eye.

When the sun begins to fling
llis flaring beams.

eculiarity of the effect of twilight is to soften and mellow. At that delighteven artificial water, however naked, edgy, and tame its banks, will often momentary charm; for then all that is scattered and cutting, all that disainter's eye, is blended together in one broad and soothing harmony of light How. I have more than once, at such a moment, happened to arrive at a irely new to me, and have been struck in the highest degree with the appearwood, water and buildings, that seemed to accompany and set off each other appiest manner; and I felt quite impatient to examine all these beauties by

At length the morn, and cold indifference came.

m which held them together, and made them act so powerfully as a whole, shed.

-y, perhaps, be said that the imagination, from a few imperfect hints, often auties which have no existence, and that indifference may naturally arise from antoms not being realised. I am far from denying the power of partial cont and obscurity on the imagination; but in these cases, the set of objects en by twilight is beautiful as a picture, and would appear highly so if exactly ted on the canvas; but in full daylight, the sun, as it were, decompounds d been so happily mixed together, and separates a striking whole into denimpressive parts.

REV. A. ALISON-F. GROSE-R. GOUGH.

REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON (1757-1839) published in 1790 'Esn the Nature and Principles of Taste,' designed to prove that al objects appear beautiful or sublime in consequence of their ation with our moral feelings and affections. The objects preto the eye generate trains of thought and pleasing emotion, ese constitute our sense of beauty. This theory, referring all eas of beauty to the law of association, has been disputed and mned as untenable, but part of Mr. Alison's reasoning is just, is illustrations and language are particularly apposite and beauFor example, he thus traces the pleasures of the antiquary:

Memorials of the Past.

n the peasant, whose knowledge of former times extends but to a few genehas yet in his village some monuments of the deeds or virtues of his foreand cherishes with a fond veneration the memorial of those good old times Ch his imagination returns with delight, and of which he loves to recount the tales that tradition has brought him. And what is it that constitutes the emosublime delight. which every man of common se sibi.ity feels upon his first ct of Rome? It is 1.ot, the scene of destruction which is before him. It is not

the Tiber, diminished in his imagination to a paltry stream, flowing amidst the ruins of that magnificence which it once adorned. It is not the triumph of superstition over the wreck of human greatness, and its monuments erected upon the very spot where the first honours of humanity have been gained. It is the ancient Rome which fills his imagination. It is the country of Cæsar, of Cicero, of Virgil, which is before him. It is the mistress of the world which he sees, and who seems to him to rise again from her tomb to give laws to the universe. All that the labours of his youth, or the studies of his maturer age, have acquired with regard to the history of this great people, open at once upon his imagination, and present him with a field of high and solemn imagery which can never be exhausted. Take from him these associations-conceal from him that it is Rome that he sees, and how different would be his emotion!

The Effect of Sounds as modified by Association.

The howl of the wolf is little distinguished from the howl of the dog, either in its tone or in its strength; but there is no comparison between their sublimity. There are few, if any, of these sounds so loud as the most common of all sounds, the lowing of a cow. Yet this is the very reverse of sublimity. Imagine this sound, on the contrary, expressive of fierceness or strength, and there can be no doubt that it would become sublime. The hooting of the owl at midnight, or amid ruins, is strikingly sublime; the same sound at noon, or during the day, is very far from being so. The scream of the eagle is simply disagreeable when the bird is either tame or confined; it is sublime only when it is heard amid rocks aud deserts, and when it is expressive to us of liberty and independence, and savage majesty. The neighing of a war-horse in the field of battle, or of a young untamed horse when at large among mountains, is powerfully sublime. The same sound in a cart-horse or a horse in the stable is simply indifferent if not disagreeable. No sound is more absolutely mean than the grunting of swine. The same sound in the wild boar-an animal remarkable both for fierceness and strength-is sublime. The low and feeble sounds of animals which are generally considered the reverse of sublime, are rendered so by association. The hissing of a goose and the rattle of a child's plaything are both contemptible sounds; but when the hissing comes from the mouth of a dangerous serpent, and the noise of the rattle is that of the rattlesnake, although they do not differ from the others in intensity, they are both of them highly sublime. There is certainly no resemblance, as sounds, between the noise of thunder and the hissing of a serpent-between the growling of a tiger and the explosion of gunpowder-between the scream of the eagle and the shouting of a multitude: yet all of these are sublime. In the same manner, there is as little resemblance between the tinkling of the sheep-fold bell and the murmuring of the breeze-between the hum of the beetle and the song of the lark-between the twitter of the swallow and the sound of the curfew; yet all these are beautiful.

Mr. Alison published also two volumes of Sermons, remarkable for elegance of composition. He was a prebendary of Salisbury, and senior minister of St Paul's Chapel, Edinburgh-a man of amiable character and varied accomplishments.

FRANCIS GROSE (1731-1791) was a superficial antiquary, but voluminous writer. He published the Antiquities of England and Wales,' in eight volumes, the first of which appeared in 1773; and the Antiquities of cotland,' in two volumes, published in 1790. To this work Burns contributed his Tam o'Shanter,' which Grose characterised as a pretty poem!' He wrote also treatises on Ancient Armour and Weapons, Military Antiquities, &c.

RICHARD GOUGH (1735-1809) was a celebrated topographer and antiquary. His 'British Topography, Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain,' his enlarged edition of Camden's Britannia,' and various other works, evince great research and untiring industry. His

collection of books and manuscripts he bequeathed to the Library, Oxford.

LORD ERSKINE.

blished Speeches of THOMAS, LORD ERSKINE (1750-1823), g the finest specimens we have of English forensic oratory. vas the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. He served he navy and army, but threw up his commission in order to v, and was called to the bar in his twenty-eighth year. His first elivered in November 1778, in defence of Captain Baillie, lieuovernor of Greenwich Hospital (who was charged with libel), rilliant and successful as at once to place him above all his of the bar. In 1783 he entered parliament as member for uth. The floor of the House of Commons, it has been said, ed with the wreck of lawyers' reputations, and Erskine's ces there were, comparatively, failures. In 1806 he was rd Chancellor and created Baron Erskine. He enjoyed the al but for a short time, having retired in 1807 on the dissɔf the Whig ministry. After this he withdrew, in great from public life, though mingling in society, where his and wit, his vanity and eccentricities, rendered him a 2. In 1817 he published a political fragment, entitled ,' in which are some good observations on constitutional history. We subjoin extracts from Erskine's speech in of John Stockdale, December 9, 1789. Stockdale had pubdefence of Warren Hastings, written by the Rev. John which, it was said, contained libellous observations upon the f Commons.

On the Law of Libel.

men, the question you have therefore to try upon all this matter is simple. It is neither more or less than this: At a time when the charges r. Hastings were, by the implied consent of the Commous, in every hand every table-when, by their managers, the lightning of eloquence was ly consuming him, and flashing in the eyes of the public-when every man perfect impunity saying, and writing, and publishing just what he pleased pposed plunderer and devastator of nations-would it have been criminal astings himself to remind the public that he was a native of this free land, o the common protection of her justice, and that he had a defence in his ffer to them, the outlines of which he implored them in the meantime , as an antidote to the unlimited and unpunished poison in circulation m? This is, without colour or exaggeration, the true question you are to Because I assert, without the hazard of contradiction. that if Mr. Hastings could have stood justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this volume n defence, the author, if he wrote it bona fide to defend him, must stand xcused and justified; and if the author be justified. the publisher cannot al, unless you had evidence that it was published by him with a different intention from those in which it was written. The question, therefore, is what I just now stated it to be-Could Mr. Hastings have been condemned for writing this book?

emen, I tremble with indignation to be driven to put such a question in -Shall it be endured that a subject of this country may be impeached by mous for the transactions of twenty years--that the accusation shall spread