durable. The modes of operation, indeed, depend very much upon the greater or less degree of facility which the artist may possess. "Rembrandt," says the author, "was obliged to return to his work repeatedly; he had not the power of painting it all at once like Rubens therefore, each must choose that method of operating which is most convenient and agreeable to himself." We may add, that M. Mérimée expresses himself very freely and by no means in a flattering manner of the French, as regards colouring and some points in the history of their school of painting. Sound thought, impartiality, extensive knowledge, and manly sentiment, pervade the work.

The translator's "Original Observations on the Rise and Progress of British Art, the French and English Chromatic Scales, and Theories of Colouring," which are appended, present a clear and succinct account of the past and present state of painting in this country. An extract from his introduction will exhibit what his design is :

"An historical sketch is submitted to the public in a chronological form, as the best calculated to give a clear and consecutive view of the whole question of the arts, from the earliest records in England. It will thus be seen at a glance, that the art of painting has not been decidedly naturalized in this country for a longer period than seventy or eighty years; we shall then find that the honours and profits of this profession were, with a very few exceptions, exclusively in the hands of foreigners, the greater part of whom returned home when they had realized some property, and then sent over other parties to supply the demand for pictures; but no attempt had been made to establish a school to instruct the natives, nor were the latter properly encouraged, even when some of them did display good talents.

"It is therefore quite evident, that our native schools of arts did not commence until the time of Hogarth, Hudson, and Reynolds, but it was not properly established until the chartered society of native artists commenced their living model school in St. Martin's Lane, 1760; and it only became permanent when the Royal Academy was embodied by George III., in 1768, (seventy years); and during that brief period we should think it would be difficult, if not quite impossible, to point out any school of painting which has advanced more rapidly in improvement; we should also recollect, that whatever encouragement our school may have received, is from the private funds of the nobility and gentry of this country, and not at all, as in the continental schools, from the State treasury, as a remuneration for great works executed for the public edifices. Besides, it should be recollected, that the schools of Italy were full two hundred years (1260 to 1480) in activity, before they displayed works much above mediocrity, though assisted by every sort of encouragement, public and private, and that the highest honours were at that time conferred upon the professors of the arts.

"The northern schools of Europe were still slower in arriving at the power of producing such splendid works as Rubens, Vandyke, and Rembrandt have left us. It is clear, therefore, that the cases of those schools,

and of ours, are not at all parallel: they are by no means analogous to each other; and therefore the reasoning applicable to one class cannot have the slightest application to the other. And it was from the erroneous idea, that these cases were parallel, that false reasoning was applied to them, and consequently the most erroneous opinions were held, and injurious reflections were freely thrown, not only upon the British School of Art, but even upon the intellectual capabilities of the nation.

"The object of the writer of this essay being solely to lay before the British public a plain historic sketch, supported by a few strong facts, to show the state of neglect with which the English artists had contended so long in their native land, and thereby to disabuse the general mind of the distorted and erroneous notions which still float indistinctly through society on that subject, to the detriment of native talent, he now feels himself called on to state, that his arguments have nothing whatever to do with the foreign artists of the present time. The facts regarding those of previous ages are stated merely to prove that there was a bad and unnatural system pursued generally by the English governments of those days, for which the foreign artists were not accountable; and to show that, whilst every other government in Europe was justly emulous to elicit the native talents of their people, our monarchs and statesmen, with the exceptions stated, were acting directly contrary to those rational purposes.

At present, however, these matters are greatly altered for the better: there is evidently a good deal of encouragement for pictures, and other works of art, not, to be sure, of the highest class of art; but in the classes that are encouraged there is, in general, much, very often high, talent displayed: and if our school may have got the character of being more of the ornamental, than of the historic, or epic style, this may well be accounted for when we see how very small the encouragement is for works of the higher classes of poetic or historic art.

"In Queen Anne's reign there were three good native artists,-the two Olivers and Cooper; in Queen Victoria's reign there are most probably three thousand artists, most of whom can paint well-many of them are men of very superior talent: this must prove, that so soon as the incubus of neglect or contempt was removed from the native arts, these intellectual pursuits soon sprang into a vigorous existence."

There is therefore hope and promise of still greater things. The academies, societies, galleries, and other easily accessible sources of knowledge in art, are shortly characterized by Mr. Taylor, and hints are thrown out regarding the encouragement that would produce further an higher improvements, and nobler works, than have yet distinguished the nation. His suggestions do not appear to us extravagant, over sanguine, or fanciful. We may safely recommend the supplementary observations as a suitable and zealous accompaniment to the treatise of M. Mérimée.

524

ART. VI.

1.-Jamaica Plantership. By BENJAMIN MMAHON, Eighteen Years employed in the Planting Line in that Island. London: Effingham Wilson. 1839.

2. The African Slave Trade. By TH. F. BUXTON, Esq. London: Murray. 1839.

THE former of these works contains an appalling array of horrors, which the author declares have been witnessed or fully ascertained by him to have taken place in Jamaica; and where the black population were the victims. Planters, their agents, attorneys, overseers, &c., are the objects, en masse, or, as represented, with comparatively few exceptions, of his fearless exposure; the whole system of slavery, as can very easily be believed, being essentially and in every branch of its detail one of outrage and monstrous cruelty.

Not very many months ago we had an opportunity of directing the attention of our readers to this subject, and to an effective picture of British West India Society, its debasement and ridiculous pretensions, slavery being shown to be the rirus that had affected and poisoned these countries in all their moral and conventional relations. Mr. McMahon's volume is corroborative of the dark view we then obtained; and therefore we shall not at present dwell longer on the revolting topic than copy one or two of his reasons for coming forward at this time of day as an author regarding it, and the conclusion to which he conducts his compiled facts.

Mr. M'Mahon says, "I am anxious to expose the treachery, the torture, and the tyranny practised by overseers and attorneys towards the slaves." "I wish to shew to the public why it is that men who have not scorned to sacrifice their own honour, and, who have not hesitated to rob the property and take the lives of others, are the men who have almost exclusively been promoted to the highest offices, and to the most lucrative employments in our colonies." Now, if this latter statement assert no more than the truth, the reader will at once perceive how deeply the interests of the black population of the colonies in question, even in their declared free condition, may be affected and assailed. But it is not with comments on this point that our present paper is to be principally concerned; and therefore to certain conclusions as drawn by Mr. M'Mahon himself we alone claim observance in relation to his work. He says, "The narrative must be read as a whole, if my readers would form an adequate conception of the total unfitness of the old planters to manage the estates in the colonies, under their present altered circumstances. The tiger from the jungle may be tamed, but it is a matter of rare occurrence; it is far more probable that he will retain his ferociousness, though confined to his cage. But what cage is sufficiently strong to restrain these hungry tigers from the exercise of the bru

tality which has been sucked in with their mother's milk? Public opinion is a bugbear, and legislative enactments but the gossamer playing in the wind. Cruelty and oppression must ooze out so long as a font in their bodies remain open. The salvation of the colonies depends upon the destruction of that controul which they at present exercise over the emancipated negroes. Never can the resources of the British West Indian Colonies be fairly brought out, until the whole race of the planters be superseded by a new one." After quoting this latter burst, it is right to state that though the italics be ours, such is our copying of a still more emphatic intention; for the text is in that of capitals.

Before dismissing Mr. M'Mahon's book, we may be allowed to mention that although that sort of phraseology which is supposed to belong to the Emerald Isle, somewhat mars its purpose; yet it presents a mode of expression that has individual character, and is satisfactory as well as amusing, were it possible to be amused on a subject of the most arresting and appalling nature. By satisfactory we allude to the tokens of credibility; nor is it likely that the author would venture upon the fearless exposure which he makes, not only of the general atrocities of a system, but of the conduct of parties, when he instances most explicitly Christian and surname, were his challenge in danger of being accepted, seeing, as he tells us, that he is about to return to Jamaica and to spend his life there as a planter. How far prudence may have dictated such unreserved and personal attacks, in these circumstances, we pause not to conjecture.

Terrific as slavery assuredly is, or alarming as even the condition of the emancipated blacks in our West India colonies at this moment may be, after twenty millions have been given to purchase unrestricted freedom for them, there is still another aspect presented to us in the history of the slave system that is more discouraging and astounding. That aspect, more hideous and terrible than all which this country has been called upon hitherto to behold and scrutinize, is now held up to us by Mr. Buxton, the worthy fellowlabourer and successor of Wilberforce. Englishmen! the Slavetrade is at this moment conducted upon a scale far more extensive, far more inveterate, far more desolating than it was half a century ago, or when the voice of England went forth, when her strong arm was first stretched out to put a stop to the accursed traffic. Nay, we have encountered a blush in going through Mr. Buxton's volume, as if witnessed on the countenance of sentimentalism as applied to the philanthropists who were most conspicuous in the work of legislative abolition, when more enlightened and enlarged or more sound and far-reaching perspective measures might have been devised.

Mr. Buxton is of opinion and furnishes, according to an anxiously correct and sober calculation, that slavery, the vastest and most regularly sustained scourge and consumer of mankind, requires at the rate of one thousand victims daily to gorge its ravenous claims.

this is not the whole of the matchless evil, for the very measures that have been adopted to repress the trade in question have not only been the occasion of increasing its extent at a frightful ratio, but of mightily aggravating the sufferings of the kidnapped victims, chiefly as respects the case of each individual victim during the "Middle passage." These facts appear with blighting force from the awakening work before us. Do not let it for a moment be supposed that we are exaggerating; for, alas! Mr. Buxton's statements and proofs are too multitudinous and expressive to require much pains to convince our readers that what we have asserted comes short of the truth. His word alone, without figures, would be taken by every one as sufficient evidence in support of what he advances; and he declares, "Millions of money and multitudes of lives have been sacrificed; and in return for all we have only the afflicting conviction, that the Slave Trade is as far as ever from being suppressed. Nay, I am afraid the fact is not to be disputed, that while we have thus been endeavouring to extinguish the traffic, it has actually doubled in amount. Again, Again, "Passing over hundreds of cases of a description similar to those which I have noticed, I have now done with these heart-sickening details; and the melancholy truth is forced upon us, notwithstanding all that has been accomplished, that the cruelties and horrors of the passage across the Atlantic have increased; nay more, they have been aggravated by the very efforts which we have made for the abolition of the traffic." Again, "Hitherto we have effected no other change than a change in the flag under which the trade is carried on." 66 Portugal sells her flag;" "her governors openly sell at a fixed price, the use of Portuguese papers and flag." Again, "The efforts which we have so long and perseveringly made for the abolition of the Slave Trade," he asseverates, "not only have been attended with complete failure, but with an increase of Negro mortality."

But even this is not all; for it necessarily follows, indeed it is Mr. Buxton's expressed opinion, a point towards which the whole of his facts and arguments are made to turn, that although a treaty should bind Portugal in the strongest and most cordial manner to the views and desires so dear to Britain, and although our maritime exertions were doubled, redoubled, or made to amount to any conceivable protective and vigilant complement, it would not accomplish the thing so solicitously aimed at. The profits of the Slave Trade are enormous; sufficient, according to the present order of things, to make smuggling a speculation which no restrictive or preventive system can repress, while this system of smuggling has produced necessarily in the condition of the smuggled article, viz., mankind, vastly more severe treatment. More are crowded into one ship, the demands are increasing for the commodity. Portugal as well as Spain may become bound by and faithful to a treaty co-operative with English feeling; but then there is an immense demand in South