434 
that there is vigour and power, both in the 
conception and drawing of this group ; 
though we think a mind familiar with the 
poetic painting of Collins might have 
thrown more grace into the allegory (for 
such, imperfectly, it is), without diminish- 
ing its force. It is not actual nature—it 
should therefore haye been poetic nature. 
What it wants in historic interest, should 
be supplied by appeal to the imaginative 
sympathies : and certainly the female figure, 
though well drawn, is not exactly that 
beau-ideal which can be regarded as repre - 
sentative of the aggregate tenderness and 
loveliness of womankind. ‘The figure has 
all the appearance of a study. from indiyi- 
dual nature, such individuality as we may 
meet with every day, without even ascend- 
ing to the highest classes of refining deli- 
cacy. The idealism consists alone in the 
magnitude—not in the graces of proportion, 
or the sublimities of expression. In the 
struggle and contortion of muscular strength, 
the artist is more happy—in his disarmed 
and vanquished figure: though the limbs 
are rather too massy—at least, for the dis- 
tance at which they are now seen: but the 
passion is not either very sublimely or very 
distinctly marked on the features of the 
infuriate victor. The colouring of the naked 
figures is good. It is the colouring of 
nature. It is neither flesh-coloured mar- 
ble, nor flowers, nor ivory, nor satin ; but, 
flesh: and in this there should be no ideal- 
ism. In short, though the work of an 
academician, it has the appearance rather 
of a judicious study than a masterly picture 
—of that which must precede, rather than 
which belongs to the full accomplishment 
of the art. We must object, howeyer, to 
the mazarine blue sky, and too much flutter 
and fritter in the little drapery there is 
about the figures. 
_In No. 23—Wesrai’s Mary Magda- 
len, &c, at the Sepulchre of Christ, the morn- 
ing after the Resurrection:—we haye the 
very reverse of the preceding—the osten- 
tation of the art, without its fundamental 
prineiples—the fanciful instead of the ima- 
ginative—the straining of idealism, instead 
of its simplifying aud harmonizing grace ! 
Yet there is an imposing effect about the 
pictures of this artist, which, in the estima- 
tion of many, covers all offences ;-——a spark- 
ling brillianey of colour, with agreeable 
reliefs of light and shadow; a showiness, 
even in the very fallacy of his drawing; a 
refined affectation of something more than 
Improvements in the Neighbourhood of Charing- Coss. 
(Janel, 
beauty—something that would haye been 
really and exquisitely beautiful, if his pencit 
had known where to stop ; and which, even 
in its extravagance, does net permit us to 
forget the visions and the real shapes of the 
beautiful in which it originated. Nor will we 
deny to the picture under consideration 
the merit of conception in the arrangement, 
grouping, and development of the subject. 
But even this qualified commendation must 
be confined to the human figures ; the 
angel within the tomb is, in attitude, a 
statue; in colouring, a phantom; more 
like the permeable shadow reflected in 
certain aspects from the surface of plate- 
glass, than any thing that could present 
itself, in substance, to the eye—whether 
inhabitant of earth or of heaven. 
In short, to compare the two pictures, 
we should say, that Etty’s reminds us of a 
traveller who is in the right path, but has 
not yet reached the goal; Westall’s, of a 
racer of swifter foot, but who has gone 
far astray: that one is where every one 
must be, before he gains his end—that the 
other has already gone too far to retrace 
his steps, and has lost sight of genuine art, 
in the pursuit of mannerism. 
(To be continued. ) 
re 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE MAGNIFICENT 
IMPROVEMENTS ABOUT TO BE MADE 
INTHE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CHARING- 
CROSS, &c. 
he any person who had heretofore 
been a not merely stationary resi- 
dent of this great metropolis, but who, 
from some circumstance or other, had 
been absent from it for fifteen or twenty, 
nay, for ten or twelve years, what a new 
scene would many parts of it now ex- 
hibit! Its growing extent, however 
rapid, by spreading suburbs,—though 
of itself sufficient to excite some admi- 
ratiou, would be so far from being the 
principal object of his wonder, that it 
would almost escape his notice, in the 
astonishment excited by the splendid 
transformation of obscure and miserable 
neighbourhoods into spacious streets 
of palace fronts, adorned with all the 
pomps and all the vagaries of architec- 
ture. 
As he walked along the new line of 
the Regent Street, in particular, from 
Carlton-House to Portland-place, he 
would find it difficult to persuade him-: 
self that the ground he was treading was 
the same as that on which he had here- 
) tofore 
