On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (6)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
€ljt irk
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
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 who enticed him by soft words and winning smiles to follow her wherever she went . 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 woman 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 , whose fierceness became gentleness to her , whose strength was laid at her feet , whose life seemed in her smile , was too pleasant for her to forego . She saw he loved her , and she led him on .
Surely it was not well for that young sylph to treat the poor brute so ? She was young , and beautiful , and loved ; he was 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 was playing with !
He felt that it was so . He knew the glare of his passionate eyes had betrayed him , and terrified her . His first thought was to spring upon her , and with one blow of his huge paw to crush the feeble life out of her . But if his first thought was 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 sang with foolish men , and seldom gave a thought to the poor old Tiger , who once more solitary , but with the arrow in his heart , lived forlorn and silent in his jungle , thinking of the paradise he had seen only to yearn 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 war which rages betwixt tigers and the sons of woman .
Untitled Article
I found this apologue , written in quaint Spanish , on the fly-leaf of a volume of Jose Lusada , the old chronicler of Las Indias . 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 was 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 want with a sylph ?" Vivian .
Untitled Article
MADiSMOISKLLE EM I Lift VAN 1 XRRMEERSCH . TifTfl very fascinating young wizard-maiden lm . s given two farewell wntinteti , before taking her marvellous little winged ministers into the country . A more refined and graceful , as well as ciirioun and original entertainment , cannot , be conceived ; and we hope- our country readers will take the first opportunity to enliven an evening at homo with iu « charming presence ol Mdlle . VandermeerBch und her magic birds .
Untitled Article
714 THE LEADE R . [ Saturday ,
€Ljt Irk
€ ljt irk
Untitled Article
A PARTING- GLANCE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION . A VAitTiNr ; glance at the Exhibition confirms the impression which we hud when our eyes first traversed its walls ; that , although it is devoid of great , pictures , it is far from being devoid of great promise ; that it has , indeed , more of promise than many of its predecessors ; and it also confirms our impression , that the vitality lies mainly in the spirit which has animated the PravRaphaelite school . The disruption of parties is observable in painting as well as in politics . The old mannerisms of historypainting and landscape , are at a , discount , and even where the Pra > -Raphael ite guide has not been followed , new movements are observable . . Frith may be considered to have brought the careful imitative style of the characteristic English school to 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 act than any figure of Wilkie's ; it lias the free play of the joints , which Hogarth ' s Iceen sense of expression enabled him to comprehend , in spite of Ins miserable drawing ; Erith's drawing being much above the average of the English Hchool . In the " Execution of Charlotte Co relay , " E . M . Ward has successfully airrifd not only at local colour and costume , but at seizing the npirit of the time and place . Ho has fairly performed the work of imaf / initu / the scene as it may have passed , and has not merely set English figures in the situation of the . French actors of that tragedy . It is the name in landscape . While Stanfield lias , in his principal Italian scene , retained that power of life which w necessarily aimed at b y every scene painter who desires to succeed in his own branch , NHkV ' -upnil , { 1 vfy | h animates PraJ-Baphaelitism , arising spontaneously in / -. |^ ^ Wjjerepfr . , ^ 3 lt of art , has impelled Redgrave to labour on behalf of , 7 ;'; '•" " 7 ¦ ' )" - •• ' \ V . ' / 'l :. < ¦ : !;• ¦ ¦¦^ - '¦ ¦ Ir'i
greater justice towards vegetative organization ; and , in his "View of the Bay of a shady Pool" ( 22 ) , he has introduced a novel ty , the portraiture of the plant creation—an organic freedom which restores landscape painting from the washy generalism into which English mannerism has degenerated , to more of the conscientious portraiture at which the Italian masters aimed . Like them , though perhaps with an expanded idea of the subject , he aims at the characteristics of life . A certain stiffness in Redgrave's execution , and crudity of manner , belonging in part perhaps to a want of strength in the artist , and in part to the newness of his style , do not at all derogate from the spirit of our remarks . Anthony comes much nearer to the Prse-Raphaebte school , defects
both in his greater force and in bis . He despises , or cannot apprehend , the resources of chiaroscuro . Unlike the Pree-Raphaelites , Anthony is chargeable with slurring some parts of his subjects : this fact is strongly 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 when she is cut out m 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 an exact parallel to it ; hence it is necessary to have some fixed style , or method , of determining the relation which the work of art bears to some Tiflrtirailnr tumaab . or aspects of nature , either in succession or collectively .
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 venting our indignation in the strongest terms we could select , Millais , following the weaker dictate of Prffi-Raphaelitism , has exaggerated merely the imitative view , and has endeavoured to fix the unfortunate subject of Ris 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 exemplifies 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 Henry Taylor , in the miniature-room , quiet and evibdued ae it is , is a far tetter 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 dresa and manners which lend a currency to the sprightly order of portraits shall have passed away , and have 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 gown , is another testification of the movement . Some foreign importations may serve 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 picture became as finished and compacted as a sonnet , shows how much cultivation may do with very little substance or spirit to work upon . Penetrate to the meaning of his picture
from Count Roderic , and you find almost nothing in it ; still it is a , graceful composition , shaded with an atmosphere of chiaroscuro which endues it with a symmetrical unity , and gives to it an impressiveness wanting to many of the crude , unstudied pictures around . On the other hand , two pictures from the barbaric regions of Russia , if they strike upon the palled sense of the pictorial schoolster , as somewhat rude and raw , have about them a freshness which might encourage our more timid artists of the schools . The " Russian Peasant Girl , " by Zeleski , who 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 by our more careful painters . Not that these pictures are without industry . The costume is well compiled , the figure is completed , and the idea comprehended and well worked out . But the artist is not always master of his pigments ; we recognised here and there a grey belonging to the studio rather than to the limbs which it ih intended to " shade ; and in the brighter parts there is a harshness soinowhat startling ; but the painter has attained his object , and places before you the rustic flesh and blood of unsophisticated nature , in a way winch makes us understand why the artist if ) eminent amongst his countrymen ,
and which may encourage , as we have said , our tamer artists to escape from their routine of the studio . The full lifts of ilio exhibition is still to be sought in the Pra :-Rap lwielite chiefs—in the crude vigour of Hunt ; and in the perfect beauty , both in material elaboration and in sentiment ; , of Millais ' s " Catholic Girl .
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), July 24, 1852, page 714, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1944/page/22/
-