18 CAENIVOROUS QUADRUPEDS. 



No. XV. 



A LION and LIONESS, after RUBENS, where we esteem the execution more especially of the 

 parts which are brought into muscular action, and the rich hairy texture of the fur to be hig-hly 

 creditable to the artists concerned. In these respects, it transcends beyond all comparison the 

 Etching by PICART of the same subject. We were about to say more of these things, and to 

 request attention more particularly to the hinder parts of the female, but the knit brow and threaten- 

 ing- eye of the Lion glares upon us with its high claims, and terrible truth, and we cannot but 

 perceive a broad, pervading-, and dextrous display of light, shade, and expression of texture. 

 Now, where there is just harmony of parts, it is the whole which merits praise ; and this praise is 

 of a hig-her kind than could possibly be bestowed with propriety on any part. 



The Expression of the Lion is not here so self-possessed and majestic as in some of the examples 

 which we have passed. His magnanimity is exchang-ed for that dark treachery and cruel-minded- 

 ness, which some modern authors ascribe to him. Nor is the Lioness more amiable : both seem 

 lurking, malicious, and as if animated by some horrid hope. 



RUBENS seems to have let them into his Assyrian den, in order to let the world see from how 

 dreadful animals Providence was protecting its favoured minister. 



No. XVI. 



RUBENS has here painted one Lion as scowling, another as if in a sort of mysterious 

 meditation, and a third yawning with ennui no doubt to diversify a composition wherein he was 

 of necessity obliged to introduce a considerable number of animals of the same kind. 



The Lion has been, of all quadrupeds whatever, the most idealised by the Arts, and the most 

 variously represented. The tide of opinion ran for centuries in his favour. Kings took their 

 designations from him : amongst whom have been our first RICHARD ; but of late years very reputa- 

 ble travellers and other authors have appeared, who would bring down the poetic generosity, the 

 reputation of which the Lion has so long enjoyed, to the plain prose craft and cruelty of the rest 

 of the feline tace. 



The noble disdain with which a Lioness, though half famished, and " with udders all drawn 

 dr y/' scorned to prey on a sleeping man Must we part with the sentiment? Must we also 

 disbelieve the story which has been commemorated by a large French engraving, of a Lion gently 



