612 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



FINE ARTS. 



Sir Thomas Lawrence's Cabinet of Gems. London. Ackerman & Co. 



THIS volume consists of a number of fac-simile imitations of some sketches 

 in chalk by Sir T. Lawrence. The plates are by J. C. Lewis, and are such 

 faithful copies that for every essential purpose they answer quite as well as 

 the drawings themselves. The reputation of the late president of the Royal 

 Academy as a draughtsman ranked very high, and his power of drawing was 

 certainly very great, but there is a factitious ideal character about the produc- 

 tions of his pencil, which deprive them of much of their merit as transcripts 

 of nature. It is an admitted aphorism that ce qui n'est pas vrai, n'est pas 

 beau, and by how much a pictorial representation of any kind is wanting in 

 truth, by so much at least is it removed from perfection. We do not wish 

 to deny or derogate from the elegance and refinement of the works of Law- 

 rence's pencil, but we do assert that there is a mannerism and affectation about 

 them which most certainly does not enhance their value. To proceed to the 

 work under our inspection, we would in the first place notice the portrait of 

 Sir Thomas which faces the title-page. We should not have recognised it in 

 any other situation, but as it bears some resemblance to the late Mr. Canning, 

 and as they were said to be like each other, the defect may be in our vision, 

 not in the portrait. This want however, if it be a want, is supplied by the 

 first drawing, a portrait of his father, from which if you take away the wig, 

 and add a neckcloth, you have an excellent likeness of the great painter him- 

 self. The third in the collection is his much vaunted portrait of the beautiful 

 Lady Hamilton Nelson's Lady Hamilton. We are not inclined to fall in 

 with the general opinion of its merits, thinking that there is less of truth and 

 more of a visionary character in this than in any other specimen in the col- 

 lection. Of so light and flimsy a texture is the drawing, that you can almost 

 see through it, more like a spirit of air than an embodied soul. Artists, and 

 especially young ones, should never forget that the markings of nature are 

 strong and decided, and thather lights and shadows are, to use a French term, 

 plus prononcee than any thing that the most skilful artist has yet ventured 

 to exhibit. These films then, these gossamer webs, are but weak shadows of 

 reality, and as truth is enduring, so will their falsehood render them evanescent. 

 However, as a whole, this work is eminently beautiful, whether as regards 

 the material or the execution, and the admirers of Lawrence will find in it by 

 far the best remembrancer extant of his genius, and the only one that we 

 know of, of his skill in the use of the crayon. 



Finden's Ports and Harbours of Great Britain. Part 3. Charles Tilt, 

 86, Fleet Street. 



IN these days of poverty and economy, none will think of laying out their 

 money for works of art, except perchance those of a very distinguished merit, 

 and that too, supported by the name of an artist of established reputation, 

 unless they have a good penny-worth for their penny. It accordingly hap- 

 pens that the town is inundated with rival productions of permanent or tem- 

 porary interest, as it may be, but all of them at a very low price. Each suc- 

 cessive candidate for the favour of the public, being, if possible, at a more 

 reasonable rate than its predecessors. The employment of steel instead of 

 copper, for the materials of the plates, enabling a proprietor to obtain as many 

 thousand impressions as he formerly could hundreds, has materially affected 

 the price of engravings of this class. The expense of production is not very 

 much increased, and if the sale be sufficiently extensive, the aggregate of very 

 small profits on each individual print will make a sum large enough to justify 

 the investment of capital. It is true that small engravings, book plates, and 

 such others, have considerably deteriorated as works of art, inasmuch as no 

 connoisseur cares to exhibit as a choice specimen of his collection, a print of 



