36 The Carllon-Houst Picture*. [JULY, 



Undoubtedly, the Adoration of the Magi, by Rembrandt, is the finest 

 work in this gallery. It is in fact a stupendous production rich in all 

 the highest qualities of this extraordinary artist's pencil, and with nothing 

 in either the subject or the execution to counteract the prodigious effect of 

 those qualities. Let those who doubt that Rembrandt was the most poeti- 

 cal of painters, look at this work, and deny (if they dare) that it includes 

 all the higher qualities of poetry truth, simplicity, grandeur, dignity, 

 mystery and all these displayed in connexion with, or rather through 

 the medium of, another quality scarcely less poetical, namely, that asto- 

 nishing and intuitive power of execution, which is as much the natural 

 gift of the poet or painter as his imagination and sensibility are, and which 

 is, generally speaking, quite as often the exciting cause of our admiration 

 at his efforts. The scene of this picture is the Interior of a Stable or 

 Barn, of the rudest and most rustic kind. It has even a character of 

 modern rusticity about it, which is far from producing an anomalous or 

 mischievous effect ; but which, on the contrary, brings the subject more 

 home to our feelings than any other arrangement could possibly do ; just 

 as the merely clownish and rustic appearance of the Shepherd Hoy does, 

 in the same artist's incomparable production, Jacob's Dream. The scene 

 is lighted from one point alone, so as to gain that concentrated effect of which 

 Rembrandt was so fond ; and the composition is divided into three com- 

 partments a centre, or principal group a secondary, or side group and 

 the figures composing the back-ground. The first group comprises the 

 Virgin and Child, surrounded by several figures in the act of adoration, 

 &c. The principal of these figures presents a fine and striking example of 

 that effect of light which Rembrandt occasionally produces in a way in 

 which no other artist ever attempted to produce it, and by a means which 

 has been scarcely at all remarked upon by his critics. The principal 

 points of the jewelled coronet of the figure in question are made so literally 

 prominent they are thrown so much into actual relief above the canvas, 

 that they not merely seem to reflect a brilliant white light, but they 

 actually do reflect it ; so that the dazzling effect of these points is not an 

 illusion of the pencil, but a reality. The same thing occurs in other parts 

 of the picture, though in an inferior degree. The secondary group con- 

 sists of two persons merely one approaching in the act of dignified won- 

 der and admiration ; and the other standing motionless by his side, 

 affording a fine contrast of mere animal repose. The whole of the 

 expressions of this front department of the picture are also singularly 

 fine in their way : though justly to appreciate and sincerely approve them 

 requires a somewhat more full reliance on the bare simplicities of nature 

 than our present taste can boast. There is no elegant inanity here no 

 effeminate striving and hankering after artificial refinement no finical 

 fining down of the mere men and women with which our world is peopled, 

 into sylphs of the air and sylvans of the grove. In short, " not to speak 

 it profanely," the Infant of Rembrandt's Adoration of the Magi is a 

 mere blubbering baby ; the Virgin Mother is no better than a handsome 

 milkmaid ; and the Magi themselves are a set of pampered, gross-feeding, 

 carnivorous looking persons, endued indeed with all the mere external 

 dignity of air and action, which high station always more or less creates, 

 but in other respects as little sublimated as the meanest of their 

 attendants : for as all the noticeable difference between the great arid the 

 little consists in the greater degree in which the former are enabled to give 

 the rein to their appetites and passions, so the more intellectual nature of 

 their habits and pursuits (if indeed they be more intellectual) is at the 



