610 Hints to Portrait Painters. [JuNE, 



And then I thought of days in anguish worn, 



When the sick spirit bowed beneath its weight, 

 And gibbering spectres, half of madness bom, 



Started from darkness round this couch by night. 

 Of those tumultuous hopes, as oft in vain, 

 The daring prisoner strove to break his chain, 



Ah me ! as often crushed by tyrannous despite. 

 ' 



But then a proud thought wakened, of the hour 



When Death's kind angel, from his feverish bed 

 Bade him arise, and scorn the despot's power, 



And broke his bonds, and weaved around his head 

 The laurel crown, while Heaven's own music near 

 Rung in rich strains of promise on his ear, 



And the scorned captive passed to join the mighty dead ! 



That despot sleeps accursed, that captive's song 



On earth, while earth remains, shall still live on ; 

 And he, who holds the scales of right and wrong, 



Hath richly recompensed his gifted son, 

 With freedom in the land of heavenly rest, 

 Glad meetings with the purified and blest, 



And never ending peace, by patient suft'ering won ! C. 



HINTS TO PORTRAIT PAINTERS. 



WE were much amused the other day with a passage in GERARD DE 

 LAIRESSE'S Art of Painting, a volume written about the middle of the 

 last century. It was pointed out to us by a friend whose devotion to art 

 is only equalled by his thirst for the humorous. We particularly thank 

 him for calling our attention to the subject at this exhibition-period of the 

 year, when portraits are among the popular topics. 



The instructions laid down for the young painter by Gerard de Lairesse, 

 are expressed with so much simplicity, that, to the meanest capacity, they 

 must IDC intelligible. Surely, those Painters who have lived since, (the 

 most famous we mean,) must owe their immortality principally to the cut- 

 and-dry rules contained in this most honest book ; and hundreds of poor 

 artists whose efforts have perished with their names, must have failed, 

 either through inability to purchase it or ignorance of its existence. How 

 Raffaelle or Rosa, Rubens or Rembrandt, managed without it, is marvellous 

 indeed ! We recommend Mr. Phillips, whose lectures at the academy have 

 been abused for a lack of variety, to study its contents, with an eye to the 

 more solid edification of the present race of students and if he has not 

 read it, which we can scarce imagine, we herewith produce a specimen of 

 its contents. The reader of Sir Joshua Reynolds' discourses will be 

 shrewdly suspicious as to the secret source of that admirable flow of lan- 

 guage, and those tasteful principles of art, by which they are distinguished, 

 when he shall have perused the following : 



RULES FOR PORTRAITURE. 

 BOOK VII. 



Emblem. Touching the handling Portraits. 



" Nature, with her many breasts, is in a sitting posture, near her stands a child 

 lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side stands Truth, holding a 



