1842.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



207 



veying books written by our ancestors, and they both contain the same 

 ample variety of expedients for doing lliat which no one was ever 

 puzzled to do, and probably will never be required to do if he should 

 practice surveying for 100 years. To give an idea of the extent to 

 which the most approved system of bookniaking has been followed 

 by Mr. Gregory, we may state that out of the 300 pages which com- 

 pose the book, the tiist IGO are filled with a treatise on logarithms ami 

 plane trigonometry, and with tables of logarithms and suies and tan- 

 gents, which tables to the amount of 50 pages being duly set forth in 

 the middle of the book, produce the agreeable eft'eet of varying the 

 monotony of the letter-press, at the same time that Ihey serve to eke 

 out the contents of the book to a very respectable bulk. This work of 

 Mr. Gregory's is called a course of civil engineering, and this is the 

 first volume of it. None of this relates to engineering, but one may 

 anticipate, from the specimen before us, what a splendid contribution 

 to engineering science tlie succeeding volumes will constitute. 



Lecture on Fresco Painting. 

 1842. 



By Mr. Haydon-. London : H. Hooper, 



Among the labourers in introducing fresco, Mr. Haydon has taken 

 a prominent position, and we hope will do much good. We are 

 pleased to see that he is no longer what he was, for though occasion- 

 ally breaking out against "cocked hats," and the detestable Academy, 

 his opposition is more tempered, and his exertions better directed. 

 As a lecturer on the arts, he has done more than any man of the day 

 in making them popular, his address is striking, his' mode of treating 

 his subject pleasing, his acquaintance with liis subject extensive, and 

 his teachings, if not always sound, erring only by aiming at an unat- 

 tainable standard. As a public man, Mr. Haydon is now in the third 

 act of his career; his first was that of the promising artist, his second 

 that of the embittered, disappointed, and overweening opponent of 

 the whole artistic community; in his third act, as a public teacher, he 

 has given a popularity to art by lectures both in the metropolis and 

 the provinces, which have not only led to the formation of many 

 schools of design and classes for drawing, but have raised the character 

 of the artist and the srtisan. After exhibiting at the British Artists' 

 Institution last year, and the Royal Academy this, and hiving seen 

 that both now and on some former occasions, he could deliver an 

 hour's discourse without vituperating the "cocked hats," we look 

 upon him as an artist restored to the world, and we rejoice for him. 

 He is now, we hope, about to do service to the public, and honour to 

 himself, by promoting the national celebration of all the arts, whicli 

 the Houses of Parliament will immortalize. 



Mr. Haydon is one of the west countrymen who have given so many 

 illustrious names to art, numbering two presidencies and the triumphs 

 of Reynolds, Lawrence, Opie and Daily. He came up from Devon- 

 shire one of the most promising men of the day, and started with 

 Wilkie, to whom he was equal in the delineation" of nature, while he 

 was then superior in having the choice of southern instead of northern 

 features, and having higher artistic aspirations. Wilkie's subsequent 

 career of hononr, all know. A schoolboy quarrel with the Royal Aca- 

 demy, one of whose members is said to have exclaimed, on hearing of 

 the arrival of Haydon's pictures for the exhibition, "Oh! Haydon's 

 pictures to the coal-hole," made him the Timon of modern art. " Hinc 

 illae lachrymae. He had rivals and he had partisans, he ruled his small 

 senate at Utica, and the class-book of human nature teaches us the 

 result, the ruin of his social and artistic position, and the gradual nar- 

 rowing of the circle of retainers, and the increase of that of foes. 

 Even with extraordinary men, the end of this has generally been fatal ; 

 Mr. Haydon owes it to his " bona indoles " that he has survived to 

 lead a more useful career. After being run after by the crowd, and 

 the master of Eastlake, Lance, and many eminent men, he had almost 

 ceased to enjoy the public countenance. He was little cared for as 

 a martyr, and his pictures had become too academic to satisfy either 

 his own old admirers or the public at large. Then came a' change 

 over art, partly, it must be owned, the fruit of his own exertions, the 

 epoch of popular instruction, and he has taken a part, as we have 

 said, in carrying out this great end, which, recalling the kindly feel- 

 ings of his nature, and bringing him in close contact with the great 

 public mind, the mother goddess, has reanimated his exertions, and 

 directed them towards better ends, and he may rest assured that if he 

 do but show himself worthy,- he has awakened such a spirit as will 

 allow no faction to exclude him from public patronage, and no malig- 

 nity to deprive him of his reward. 



We have now to come to his doctrines. Struck with the Prome- 

 thean fire of the Elgin marbles, he has for years breathed nothing but 

 Greek art, and looking at those works as the masterpieces of the 



world, he has become their secretary. He holds that high art consists 

 in the selection of the best parts of 'the best models and in their union, 

 a theory which, however specious it may be, is opposed to all natural 

 laws. Nature always requires a balance of powers, a repose after 

 exertion, and the practical effectof the to lialon principle in art has been 

 well shown by Mr. Severn in the last and present number of the Journal. 

 It is to vitiate and weaken the hand of the artist, while it produces a 

 work which palls on the eye. We believe that it is possible to pro- 

 duce a greater work than the Transfiguration or the Assumption, but 

 then it is not by going out of nature, but bv availing ourselves of it. 

 The all-exquisite, for it is not the all-beautiful, seems not to have 

 been sanctioned by the Creator, nor to be pleasing to his creatures, 

 and a collection of Apollos, Venuses, Theseuses and Ilissuses, are 

 about as unpromising on canvas, as the career of a modern Adonis is 

 represented in an annual, who, too handsome for anything, wished for 

 the horrors of the small pox to relieve him from hi's splendid misery. 

 The mind will look in the picture- for what occurs in the world, and 

 when it knows what English princes and great men are, what an Eng- 

 lish senate is, and what a mass of linman beings is in any place, it 

 cannot attach the idea of nature to the paradisaic creatures who are 

 grouped by the academists. We may look at the Ilissus or the 

 Apollo singly, we may bear the Graces united, but we could not in- 

 terest ourselves even in the whole family of the Niobes, if thev were 

 too much above the everyday standard. It would be well fo'r art if 

 its professors would oftener refer to the politico-economical doctrine 

 that to be beautiful a thing must be fitting, and we sliould have less 

 of the prettiness of art. That we are very backward in drawing we 

 know, and we are indebted to Mr. Haydon for having called public 

 attention to this defect, but we cannot, and particularly with his own 

 wurks before us, believe that the paukalon or rather i\\e pantariston is 

 the right principle in art. To our seeming, his sketches, John Bull at 

 Breakfast and Traveller reading the Times, contain more true art, 

 than any of his recent grand works, and the Mock Election in the 

 King's Bench and Chairing the Member are better worthy of immor- 

 tality than his infant Mary Queen of Scots, now in the Royal Academy. 

 How Mr. Haydon can reject David and the votaries of lower Greek 

 sculpture on the one hand, and pin himself to elder Greek sculpture 

 on the other, is a phenomenon we do not attempt to explain, we can 

 only say that sculptural partisanship is equally bad whatever may be 

 its standard. Another, but more harmless dogma of Mr. Haydon is 

 the sovereignity of Greek painters, and he talks as confidently of Parr- 

 hasius and Polyguostus, and Apelles, as if their master works were at 

 Hampton Court or the .Statlbrd Gallery, and engravings of them in 

 every parlour. That this subject is involved in uncertainty, and that 

 not a fragment exists on which we can build up a judgment, is of 

 course no argument against enthusiasm. 



We have devoted this length to an exemplification of Mr. Haydon's 

 views, because they are those propounded in the work before us, and 

 because they are widely disseminated among the public, while we 

 thought we should be rendering a greater service to our readers by 

 warning them against Haydonism, than by giving them another dis- 

 sertation on trullisatio and marmoratum. Mr. Haydon's lecture is one 

 which the public \y\\\ greedily devour; according to the modern syncre- 

 tic arid a;sthetic phraseology, it is highly suggestive. The artistical 

 part is good, the practical part is good, and with a "cave canem"asto 

 Haydonism, it is all good. It breathes a manly, a kindly, and an Eng- 

 lish feeling, it reminds us of what our forefathers have done, and if 

 Mr. Haydon and his brethren can but paint as he speaks, the second 

 St. Stephen's shall be painted by Englishmen as the first was. As to 

 his recommendations of painting the house with allegorical illustra- 

 tion of abstract principles, the Blessings of Peace, and the Horrors of 

 Anarchy, it may please advocates of high art and metaphysics, but 

 we would much rather see the Painting of the Potatoe, or the Triumph 

 of Punch, than any such Bolognese and un-English performances. The 

 allegories belong to high art, which if it recommends and executes 

 such things, we think is deservedly named by the bulk of the artists, 

 a great humbug. The commissioners have left in the choice of sub- 

 jects from our poetry and our history abundant scope for the de- 

 lineation of nature, and nature let us have. 



..G? Catalogue of Worki in all Deparlmtnla of Englm/t Literature, 

 clasistjitd milk a Gtntral Alphabetical Index. By Longman & Co. 

 In this age of catalogues raisonnees, w-e suppose we must hail with 

 pleasure any accession to the coUeclion. Messrs. Longman's is a 

 pretty large one, and may be advantageously consulted. 



2 G > 



