94 
REVIEWS. 
[Nature and Art, March 1, 1867 
where death seemed to share equal honours with heaven,” 
to Cashmere. 
“ Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere, 
With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave, 
Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear 
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave ? 
Oh ! to see it at sunset, when warm o’er the lake, 
Its splendour at parting a summer eve throws.” 
But to pursue the path travelled by Moore’s sweet “ Lalla 
Bookh,” on her romantic love-errand, it is necessary to get 
far beyond the range of English mechanical and engineering 
science. Bugged mountain-passes must be crossed by hard, 
old-fashioned means of travelling, before the loveliest valley 
in the world can be reached. But, really, it would scarcely 
be astonishing - , within the next few years, to see the an- 
nouncement of an excursion Peninsular and Oriental boat, 
in connection with the railway, dak gharrie, and palkee dak, 
or journeying by palanquin, to Cashmei'e and back, proceed- 
ing thither by Calcutta, stopping at Ceylon for prawn curry 
and cocoa-nut chutney, and returning down the Indus to 
Kurrachee. 
Meanwhile, however, we are happy in being able to re- 
commend to those of our readers who do not possess the op- 
portunity, or the ambition, to extend their tours so far, yet 
are interested in this great, glittering Eastern realm of ours, 
a means by which they may most agreeably gratify their 
very laudable curiosity. Mr. William Simpson, who recently 
exhibited at the German gallery, his admirable collection of 
water-colour drawings of India, Thibet, and Cashmere, is 
about to publish them, reproduced by the chromo-litho- 
graphic process, with an account of the country under its 
historical, religious, and other aspects ; and we cannot con- 
ceive anything calculated to give a more complete idea of 
the scenei’y and life of our Asiatic dominions than 
these pictures. A specimen of the forty-two monthly 
parts of which the work will consist, is now 1 before 
us, containing six fac-simile drawings, of the full 
size of the originals, and preserving their brilliance of 
colouring. We have the “ Chitpore Boad, Calcutta,” 
a very good specimen of the native part of the town, 
and affording an accurate notion of Indian customs, from 
the artistic skill with which characteristic details have 
been inserted in the picture : such as the man in the corner 
cleaning his teeth with a bit of stick, and the illustration of 
the manner in which mothers carry their children. Then we 
have the “ Lanka Cave, Ellora,” one of the most artistic of 
all the excavated works of the Brahmins ; and the “ Summer 
Palace on the Lake of Oodeypore,” a beautiful structure of 
white marble, picturesquely situated on an island, to which 
the Bana goes in state, accompanied by his hareem, in an 
enclosed barge : cotton-boats on the Ganges, and’two scenes 
of Cashmere life, occupy the remaining places. The style 
of the accompanying literary portion of the undertaking, by 
Mr. J. W. Kaye, the accomplished author of “ Christianity 
in India,” and the official editor of the Canning - , Clyde, and 
other papers bearing upon the Indian Mutiny, is in every 
way worthy of the really exquisite sketches it is designed 
to illustrate. The illuminated dedication to Her Majesty, 
printed in many colours from an oriental design of rare 
elegance composed by Mr. Owen Jones, is not the least re- 
markable feature of the work. Mr. Simpson remained for 
three years in India, during which he visited nearly every place 
of interest in the great continent, from Cape Comorin to Pesha- 
Wur ; and some of the picturesque regions beyond the British 
frontier, as Cashmere and Thibet, as we were informed in | 
the publisher’s preface to the descriptive catalogue of his j 
exhibition. He enjoyed peculiar advantages for seeing the j 
country under its most favourable aspects, as he was 
invited by Lord Canning to join the vice regal camp on the 
triumphal march through the scenes of the defeated re- 
bellion ; during which tour numerous great durbars, or 
levees of Indian princes, were held, some of which are j 
depicted among his drawings. Altogether, we think that 
it would be impossible to find a country more adapted for 
the exercise of the artist’s taste and skill, from the beauty 
and variety of its scenes, both of nature and art ; or an 
artist more capable of giving a correct and pleasing im- 
pression of the scenes which he has made it his occupation 
to portray. 
A Fox’s Tale, a Sketch of the Hunting -field. Day and Son 
(Limited) London. 
This is a most worthy pendant, by the same author, to 
“ The Autobiography of a Salmon,” of which we expressed 
such unqualified approval in our last. “The Fox’s Tale ” 
is an unaffected narrative “ by one of themselves,” of the 
joys and sorrows of the Vulpine race, interspersed with 
sketches of the characters and characteristics of a hunt and 
hunting-field, but with no tinge of the fast or trace of 
slang to mar its agreeable flavour. It would seem im- 
possible to have compressed into less than one hundred 
pages more or prettier cabinet studies of landscape and 
figure than we have found here. The life of a vixen and 
her cubs in haystack and gorse, the gentleman farmer, 
the master of hounds, the huntsman and his aides, the field, 
and the meet, are all sketched with singular brevity and 
precision, and “ the Bun,” with its every incident, is so 
felicitous that we defy any lover of the country and the 
sport to lay it down unfinished. Poor Renard, indeed, tells 
his story so well as to enlist our sympathy, and the reader 
is excellently well pleased with the dramatic artifice — 
albeit a true story — by which the editor avoids so unpleasant 
a catastrophe as the fall of the curtain over a scene of 
blood. 
Manuel_ Pratique et Baisonni de V Amateur de Tableaux. 
By Dr. Lachaise. Paris. 18mo. 
A very useful work by a well-known art critic. The 
manual, which contains a large amount of information 
in a small compass, includes an excellent chapter on the 
history of art ; valuable hints on the distinctive character- 
istics of all the schools and of the principal masters ; on the 
means of judging whether a picture is really an original, an 
imitation, or a copy, and whether it remains intact or has 
been submitted to the tender or other mercies of the 
restorers ; on the perils of public and private sales, and the 
laws and regulations relating thereto ; and on the preser- 
) vation of pictures, and the precautions necessary to be 
observed in their restoration. 
Dr. Lachaise naturally devotes a considerable part of 
this work to the French school, and a short extract from his 
observations under that head will give an idea of his views 
relative to the painters of the nineteenth century : — - 
“In the eighteenth century French art went through 
three marked phases. The first was that of gallantry or 
courtly politeness, personified in Watteau, and. which was 
endowed by a veritably official character by the creation, in 
the Academy of the Fine Arts itself, of a section of painting 
entitled Fetes galantes. The second, quite as distinctly 
defined as the first, was the reign of pure sensuality, and 
had for its leader Francois Boucher. The third, still 
marked in the corner, as it were, with the same stamp, that 
of love, accommodated itself to the feeling of the time, and 
exhibited, in the works of Fragonard, a tendency towards 
sentiment. Greuze and Prud’hon, without forming a school, 
took up the moral and the poetic side, and remain the 
masters of the transition. In truth, the poetic transfor- 
mation through which France was then passing, and which 
culminated in 1789, occupied all minds and demanded of 
art something more than the frivolities with which the pre- 
ceding century was satisfied. 
“ From the epoch we have named, painting seemed to 
have no other mission but that of inspiring the masses with 
feelings of abnegation and disinterestedness, with the senti- 
ment of liberty and devotion to their country. The Oath of 
the Horatii, Belisarius asking alms, and the Death of the 
Sons of Brutus, placed David at the head of those who could 
comprehend the powerful aid which painting could give to 
new ideas, and made him the chief of a school which had 
great iclat , but which did not sufficiently understand its 
own origin to see that, in matters of art as in politics, to 
