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THE TIGER AND THE SYLPH. AN APOLOGUE. Th...
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I found this apologue, Avritten in quain...
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A PARTING GLANCE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY EX...
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M A1VEMOISELLE EM 1 Ll F VAN DEH.MEERSCI...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Tiger And The Sylph. An Apologue. Th...
THE TIGER AND THE SYLPH . AN APOLOGUE . There was once an old Tiger , of the royal Bengal race , who lived in his jungle solitary , and yet happy . Life was not to him what it was to other Tigers , for he had suffered much , and seen the vanity of earthly jungles . He had views for the " elevation of his race , " believing in the undeveloped capacity of Tigers for higher things . But he did nothing . He wanted the stimulus . He had lost his Tigress—she who would have sustained and comforted him in his " mission . " A dreamy old Tiger he waspensive , yet not unhappy .
A change came over him . He fell in love with a delicate sylph-like woman , who visited him in his jungle , and avIio enticed him by soft words and winning smiles to follow her wherever she Avent . A curious sight it was to see this old Tiger trotting by her side—not comprehending her , but mysteriously adoring her , the yearning of his dumb soul painfully visible in his green collapsing eyes . And she , too , was mysteriously attracted towards him . Not that she loved him . How could a Avoman stoop to a tiger ? Yet she made him believe she loved him ; her manner said it , and the foolish old beast believed her . Great is the coquetry of woman ! no admiration comes amiss to it ; and the admiration of this inarticulate , yearning , rugged beast , AA'hose fierceness became gentleness to her , . whose strength Avas laid at her feet , Avhose life seemed in her smile , Avas too pleasant for her to forego . She saw he loved her , and she led him on .
Surely it Avas not Avell for that young sylph to treat the poor brute so ? She was young , and beautiful , and loved ; he Avas old , and sad , and needing love . She opened the portals of a new life to him , but never meant to let him enter . At last she began to tremble at her success . She had made this Tiger her slave , and now her face grew pale at the vehemence of the passion she had aroused . She had suffered him to lick her hand , till he tasted of her blood , and then a sudden glare of the green eyes revealed the terrible nature she Avas playing Avith !
He felt that it _ivas so . He knew the glare of his passionate eyes had betrayed him , and terrified her . His first thought was to spring upon her , and Avith one bloAV of his huge paw to crush the feeble life out of her . But if his first thought Avas one of hate , his second thought was one of love . He smothered a ' low growl , licked the dust from off her feet , gave one long , wistful , farewell look into the loved face , and slowly , sadly turned back to his jungle .
She felt a great relief when he was gone . She waltzed and san g Avith foolish men , and seldom gave a thought to the poor old Tiger , who once more solitary , but with the arroAv in his heart , lived forlorn and silent in his jungle , thinking of the paradise he had seen onl y to yeam for and to lose . In his declining years , he told the story to the indignant Tiger-youth of that day ; and the wild deep roar that made the forest tremble when they heard this story , was the first proclamation of that eternal Avar which rages betwixt tigers and the sons of Avoman .
I Found This Apologue, Avritten In Quain...
I found this apologue , Avritten in quaint Spanish , on the fly-leaf of a volume of Jose Lusada , the old chronicler of Las hidias . It was barely decipherable in parts , as if the foolish old fellow had let the salt tears fall upon his own composition ; and if I have rather freely paraphrased it , that Avas only because I despaired of giving the touching accents of the original . My own comment on the apologue is brief : "Served him right ! With so many tigresses unwedded , what did the old fool Avant with a sylph ?" Vivian .
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A Parting Glance At The Royal Academy Ex...
A PARTING GLANCE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION . A v Aim-no . glance nt the Exhibition confirms ihe impression Avhich Ave had when our eyes first traversed its walls ; that , although it is devoid of great p ictures , it i . s far from being devoid of great promise ; that if has , indeed , more of promise than many of its predecessors ; and it also confirms our impression , that fhe vitality lies mainly in the spirit Avhieh has animated the Prsc-. Raphuolite school . The , disruption of parties ia observable in painting as well as in politics . The old mannerisms of historypaint ing and landscape , are at a , discount , and even where the _Vne-Ra-Iihaolife guide has not been followed , new movements are observable . . Villi may be considered to have brought , the careful imitative ! style of
ihe characteristic English school fo its perfection in his picture of " Pope and Lady Mary Wort ley Montague ; " but he has also endeavoured to pass beyond the aim of that school , which is to express life in its smaller traits , and has imparted greater freedom to the composition of his figures . The attitude of Lady Mary in particular is far less set than any figure of Willne _' _s ; it has the free play ol * the joints , which Hogarth ' s " Ifecu sense of expression enabled him to comprehend , in spite of his miserable drawing ; Frith ' s drawing being much above the average of the _ll-iiglish school . In the "Execution of Charlotte Corday , " E . M . Ward has successfully aimed not only at local colour ami costume , but af seizing fhe _^ p irif ; of the 1 , ' _imo and place . He has fairly performed the work of imagining the scene _ns if may have passed , and has not merely Hid , English figures in fhe . situation of the French actors of that tragedy .
If is fhe same iti landscape . While Mfanficld has , in bin principal Italian scene , retained that power of life which i . s necessarily aimed id , by every scene painter who desires to succeed in his own ' branch , the spirit Avhich _nniniatoH _Pnc-Raphnelifisni , arising spontaneously in a different walk of art , bus impelled Redgrave to labour on behalf of
A Parting Glance At The Royal Academy Ex...
greater justice towards vegetative organization ; ana , _[ n _j _^ v . of the Bay of a shady Pool" ( 22 ) , he has introduced „ _, noveltv th portraiture of the plant creation—an organic freedom - which stores landscape painting from the washy _generaliBm . into w _i _•^ English mannerism has degenerated , to more of the con scientiou s n traiture at which the Italian masters aimed . Like them , _though p " haps with an . expanded idea of the subject , he aims at the _characterise of life . A certain stiffness in Redgrave ' s execution , and crudit y of _marf ner , belonging in part perhaps to a want of strength in the artist , and i part to the newness of his style , do not at all derogate from the spirit o _' f our remarks . Anthony comes much nearer to the Prse-Raphaelite school both in his greater force and in his defects . He despises , or cannot an
thony is chargeable with slurring some parts of his subjects : this fact - j * strongl _y exemplified by his " Churchyard Scene , " in the Suffolk-street Exhibition . The "Ferns and Beeches , " in the Royal Academy , are much more complete , but the picture has eminently the leading defect which we have mentioned . The artist accepts a fragment of nature exactly as he supposes himself to see it ; not reflecting that nature herself does not deal in fragments , and that Avhen she is cut out in pieces for prolonged contemplation , which brings her within the domains of art , the laws of art are then needed to justify that transfer ; and the resources of art , chiaroscuro especially , are required to give the spectator that point of view from which the artist contemplates the portion excised from
nature . In the portraits there is the same disposition to depart from the fashions as they were bequeathed by Reynolds , and kept up by Lawrence . The aim is less to reduce the sitter to a particular manner , than to sink the manner , and bring the sitter before the spectator . At the utmost , however , art is but an approach towards nature , and is by no means aa exact parallel to it ; hence it is necessary to havo some fixed st yle , or method , of determining the relation which the work of art bears to some particular aspect , or aspects of nature , either in succession or collectivel y . On the other hand , the younger artists feel very justly that the merely imitative reflex of the sitter at a particular moment , gives a far
less perfect idea of the being to be represented than art can reach ; and hence an effort to introduce a new spirit . In the portrait of Mrs . Coventry K . Patmore , on which we took the opportunity of A enting our indignation in the strongest terms we could select , Millais , following the weaker dictate of _Prse-Raphaelitism , has exaggerated merely the imitative view , and has endeavoured to fix the unfortunate subject of his _operations in that purely mechanical mirror , which is so unjust to her amiable and intellectual qualities ; for we believe most literally that the work of this admirable artist is a perfect libel on the original . Still the work _exemj ) lifies the struggle to escape from feeble imitativeness ; that sprightly mockery which attains its perfection in the portrait of Grant . S . Laurence has long been labouring to introduce into English portraiture the
modest _dignity , the transparent breadth of colouring , and the traits of living vitality in repose , which distinguish the best masters of the Italian schools , and he has succeeded . The portrait of Hemy Taylor , in the miniature-room , quiet and subdued as it is , is a far better reflex of life , both in the substance and in the spirit , than the sprightly mockery aforesaid , and it will be appreciated at a time when the fashion of dress and manners which lend a currency to the sprightly order of portraits shall haA e passed away , and haA e become as unintelligible to our children as the loveliness of our grandmothers is to us . The other portrait of Henry Taylor , by Watt , although conceived in a loose , magnified , Haydonesque style , altogether impertinent and irrelevant to the subject
of an English gentleman in his dressing goAvn , is another testification oC the movement . Some foreign importations may seiwe as a memento to our pictorial revolutionists . Winterhalter , by borrowing the cultivated chiaroscuro , and graceful , though somewhat petty , composition of the lower Italian schools , in whose hands a p icture became as finished and compacted as a sonnet , shows how much cultivation may do with A ery little substance or spirit to work upon . Penetrate to the meaning of his p icture from Count Itoderic , aud you find almost nothing in it ; still it is a graceful composition , shaded Avith an atmosphere of chiaroscuro which endues it Avith a symmetrical unity , and gives to it an _impressiveness wanting to many of the crude _imoii . < _liocl _piciurcs _m-mmd . On the other hand , tAVO pictures from tho barbaric regions of Russia , if they strike upon the palled sense of the pictorial sehoolster , as someht
what " rude and raw , have about , them a freshness which mig encourage our more timid artists of the schools . The " Russian Peasant Girl , " by Zeleski , Avho reposes from her reaping ; and "The Wet Nurse , " in the performance of her functions ( 720 , 881 ) , have about them a dash of vitality , seldom attained hy onr more careful painters . Not that these pictures are without industry . Tbe costume is Avell compiled , the figure is completed , and the idea comprehended and well worked out . But the artist is not always master of his pigments ; Ave _recognised hero ami there a , grey belonging to the studio rather than to the limbs which it is intended to shade ; and in the brighter parts there is a harshness somewhat startling ; but , fhe painter has attained his object , and places before you the rustic flesh and blood of unsophisticated nature , in a Avay which makes us understand Avhy the artist is eminent amongst his countrymen , and which may encourage , as aVo havo said , our tamer artists to escape
from their routine of the studio . The full life of the exhibition is still to be sought in fhe , Pru ' -Rap haeliU child ' s—in the crude vigour of Hunt ; and in the perfect beauty , both u material elaboration and in sentiment , of Millais ' h " Catholic Girl . "
M A1vemoiselle Em 1 Ll F Van Deh.Meersci...
M A 1 _VEMOISELLE EM 1 Ll F VAN DEH _. MEERSCII . Tins very fascinating young wizard-maiden has given two farewell nuttinrfes , before taking her nulrvolloim little winged ministers into the country . A . more refined _amj graceful , as _avcII as curious and original entertainment , cannot be _conceived ; and Ave hope our country readers will lake fhe first opportunity to enliven an evening at home with tho charming presence of Mdlle . vandermeersch and her magic birds .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 24, 1852, page 22, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24071852/page/22/
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