360 Picture-Notes. — The Royal Academy. 



broidered surcoat of Othello is more conspicuous than its 

 wearer or his wife. 



A third, and more recent K.A., very clever in the techni- 

 calities of his art, full of talent, destitute of genius, and there- 

 fore able without compunction to paint down to the taste of 

 the vulgar rich, has chosen for his theme " King Charles the* 

 Second's Last Sunday/' a picture for which a perfectly ridiculous 

 price is reported to have been promised or paid. John Evelyn 

 in his Diary speaks of " the inexpressible luxury, profaneness, 

 gaming, and all dissoluteness" which characterized the last 

 Sunday of Charles the Second's disreputable life. Towards 

 the close of his reign England was profoundly disgraced by 

 the policy as well as by the personal conduct of the wearer of 

 the crown. Little better than a satrap of Louis XIV., looking 

 to his aid in reducing this country to a despotism, usually 

 neglecting public business, and passing his time in a round of 

 debauchery and licentiousness, the king, as his end approached, 

 was often a prey to melancholy, and possibly of remorse. 

 Surrounded with gamblers and harlots, with a broken down 

 constitution, satiated with vicious indulgence, without a real 

 friend, an honest thought, or an inspiring hope, the last days 

 of the Second Charles were passed in a degradation that no 

 glitter of wine cups could illumine, no court splendours could 

 dignify, and his "last Sunday''' on earth, as described by 

 Evelyn, was a scene of vanity and wickedness on which the 

 preacher might dilate. All vile passions and low desires were 

 represented at "Whitehall on that occasion. Woman was there 

 in a moral abasement, made all the more conspicuous by the 

 mingled costliness and indecency of her costume ; man figured 

 as a beast, led by the two attendant demons, Licentiousness and 

 Profanity. Eevelry stilled conscience, lust smothered reason, 

 — the devil seemed triumphant, but the avenger was nigh. 

 Death was at work on the disreputable hero of the disgraceful 

 scene, his seal was on his victim, and in six days the guilty 

 monarch had to render his account of deeds done in the body — 

 nearly all of shame. 



A great artist is a great thinker, and such an one could 

 only have selected such a theme for the purpose of contem- 

 plating it from a moral and ideal point of view. AVhy paint 

 twenty dead and forgotten courtiers round gambling' tables 

 that have long mouldered into dust, except to show the stormy 

 passions that attend such a career— -recklessness, greed of 

 unhallowed gain, violent disappointment, bitter remorse, and 

 grim despair. These are the feelings which a great artist 

 would briug before us in all their force and horror, if he 

 obtruded a party of gamesters on our view ; and if he depicted 

 harlots at their revels, and a monarch sullying his crown in 



