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* ith the golden fulness of life , the pomps of the heavens above or the ^ tayof th flowers below , and turning when it settled upon the frost which owjmd my sister ' s face , instantly a trance fell upon me . A vault seemed to open , ^ the zenith of the far blue sky , a shaft which ran up for ever . I , in ^* «™ » *™ billows that also ran up the shaft for ever ; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God ; but that also ran before us and fled away continually . The flight and the pursuit seemed t o go on for ever and ever Frost S ^™ S « ost ^ some Sarsar wind of death seemed to repel me ; some mighty relation between . God and death dimlv struggled to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them , Idowy ^ aning f even yet continue to exercise and torment m dre ^ tte deciphering oracle within me . I slept ^ -for how long I cannot say ; slowly I ^ recovered Tny self-possession ; and , when I woke , found myself standing , as before , ^ Vhave ' reaSn ^ believe that a very long interval bad elapsed during this
wandering or suspension of my perfect mind . When I returned to myself there was a foot ( or I fancied so ) on the stairs . I was alarmed ; for , if anybody had detected me , means would have been taken to prevent my coming again Hastily , therefore , I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more , and slunk , like a guilty thin- with stealthy steps from the room . Thus perished the vision , loveliest amonVst all the shows which earth has revealed to me ; thus mutilated was the parting which should have lasted for ever ; tainted thus with fear was that farewell sacred to love and grief , to perfect love and to grief that could not be healed . " Is not that matchless writing , so musical , so picturesque , so vivid , yet so dim and dreamy ! Hear him in continuation : —
" Now began to unfold themselves the consolations of solitude , those consolations which only f was destined to taste "; now , therefore , began to open upon me those fascinations of solitude , which , when acting as a co-agency with unresisted grief , end in the paradoxical result of making out of grief itself a luxury ; such a luxury as finally becomes a snare , overhanging life itself , and the energies of life , with growing menaces . All deep feelings of a chronic class agree in this , that they seek for solitude , and are fed by solitude . Deep grief , deep love , how naturally do these ally themselves with relig ious feeling ! and all three—love , grief , religion—are haunters of solitary places . Love , grief , and the mystery of devotion—what were these without solitude ? All day long , when it was not impossible for me to do so , I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house , or in th ( T neighbouring fields . The awful stillness oftentimes of summer noons , when no winds were abroad , the appealing silence of grey or misty afternoons—these were fascinations as of witchcraft . Into the woods , into the desert air , I gazed , as
if some comfort lay hid in them . I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks . Obstinately I tormented the blue depths with my scrutiny , sweeping them for ever with my eyes , and searching them for one angelic face that mi-lit , perhaps , have permission to reveal itself for a moment . "At this time , and under this impulse of rapacious grief , that graced at what it could not obtain , the faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight elements , and "Touping them after the yearn ings of the heart , grew upon me in morbid excess . And 1 recall at the present moment one instance of that sort , which may show how merely shadows , or a gleam of brightness , or nothing at all , could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty .
" On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my family to church : it was a church on the ancient model of England , having aisles , galleries , organ , all things ancient and venerable , and the proportions majestic . Here , whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany , as often as we came to that passage , so beautiful amongst many that are so , where ( rod is supplicated on behalf of ' all sick persons and young children , ' and that he would ' show his pity upon all prisoners and captives , ' J went in secret ; and raising my streaming eyes to the upper windows of the galleries , saw , on days when the sun was shining , a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld . The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass ; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light ; emblazonries of heavenly illumination ( from the sun ) mingling with the earthly
emblazonries ( from art niul its gorgeous colouring ) of what is grandest in man , There were the apostles that had trampled upon earth , and the glories of earth , out of celestial love to man . There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the ; truth through flames , through torments , and through armies of fierce , insulting fiiccs . There were the saints who , under intolerable Jiangs , had glorified . God by meek submission to his will . And all the time , whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from . sonic accompaniment in the bass , 1 saw through the wide central field of the window , where the glass was / mcoloured , white , fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky ; were it but a fragment or a * hint of such a cloud , immediately under the Hash of my sorrow-lunmted
cyi 1 , it grew and shaped itself into visions of beds with white lawny curtains ; and in the beds lay sick children , dying children , that were tossing in anguish , and weeping clamorously for death . ( Jod , lor sonic mysterious reason , could not suddenly release them from their pain ; but he sullered the beds , us it seemed , to rise slowly through thu clouds ; slowly the beds ascended into the chambers of the air ; slowly , also , his arms descended from the heavens , that he and bis young children , whom in Palestine , once and for ever , he had blessed , though they must pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of separation , might yet meet the sooner . These visions were self-sustained . These visions needed not that any sound should M ] H > iik ( o me , or music mould my feelings . The hint from the litany , the fragment from thu cloiuls—those and flie storied windows wore sufficient . Hut not the less
tlio blare of I he tumultuous organ wrought its own separate cicaLions . And oftentimes in anthems , when thu mighty instrument threw its vast columns of sound , fierce yet melodious , over thu voices of the choir-- high in arches , when it seemed to rise , surmounting and overriding the strife of the vocal party , and gathering by strong coercion the total storm into unify sometimes 1 seemed to rise and walk triumphantly upon those clouds which , but a moment before , . 1 had looked up to as mementos of prostrate sorrow ; yes , sometimes under the transfigurations of music , felt of gi-ief itself as of a fiery chariot for mounting victoriously above the causes of in-ief .
" ( Jod upeaks to children , also , in dreams , and by the oracles that lurk in darkness . Hut in solitude , above all things , when made vocal to the meditative heart liy the truths and services of a national church , ( Jod holds with children ' communion undisturbed . ' Solitude , though it may be silent as light , is , like light , thu mightiest of agencies ; lor solitude is essential to inan . AH inoii come into this world alone ; all leave it alone . Kven a little child has a dread , whispering connciou « nobiJ , that , if ho nhould bo summoned to truvol into Ood ' u ihchoucOj no
gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand nor mother to « £ 7 *» J £ her arm 8 , nor little sister to share his trepidations . King and priest warrior an * maiden , philosopher and child , all must walk those mighty gaUenes . alone The solitude , therefore , which in this world appals or fascinates a child s heart is but the echo of a far deeper solitude , through which already he has pa «^ ™* « another solitude , deeper stUl , through which he has to pass : reflex of one solitude —prefiguration of another . " . Our space is run out , and we must postpone until next week all other extracts and comments .
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ENGLISH ART . The Lake Scenery of England . A Series of Twenty-five J ^^/ J ?^* ?* * J . B . Pyne , Esq . Thomas Agnew and Sons , ( Manchester . ) The Pilgrims ' Progress . By John Bunyan . With Thirty Outline £ »« " £ ¦» , « " * numerous Interesting Engravings . Ingram , Cooke , and Co . We desire to call attention to two English artists—one , a name tolerably familiar to lovers of landscape , though not so familiar as it deserves to be : J . B . Pyne ; the other , a name totally unknown to us and to every person of whom we have inquired ; yet surely the name of one whose genuine feeling for Artand uuusual power in essential requisites , must ultimately
, become famous , unless some perverse misdirection of his talent , or some cruel limitation of it lying in the very imperfection of its organization , prevent these blossoms ripening into fruits . That name wJ . Jf Clayton . Heard you ever the name before ? It meets us for the first time on the title-page of one of Ingram and Cooke ' svery cheap volumes of Ihe Illustrated Library ; and because the drawings signed by that name appear in a cheap volume , where an ignorant public will be prone to estimate Art by the price paid for it , and where indolent critics ( there are none ignorant !) will be apt to overlook them , we feel ourselves called upon to notice them with unusual attention . _
These thirty Outlines , illustrating the " Pilgrim ' s Progress , are , it must be confessed , very unequal , and seem every now and then as it they were the work of an amateur , but always of an amateur with a real instinct for Art . Their proportions are sometimes strangely inaccurate ; the limbs wont articulate ; the expression is missed . But take the best , and they are gems—gems fit to have a modest place beside those of Flaxman and Retsch , and altogether of a different cast from the numerous German and English imitations of these masters of outline . The conception is fine , the composition graceful and often remarkable , the attitudes easy , natural , life-like ; the attitudes into which men , women , and children do dispose their limbs ; and , rarest of merits , the figures sometimes give you a sense of their standing and of their capability for movement .
Let us take the very first , —Christian resolves to depart from the City of Destruction . It might have been composed by Flaxman , who would not have objected ( aa we are inclined to object ) to the attitude of Christian , which is too symmetrical and quiet for the passion of despair , but who would certainly have applauded the old woman ( notice her hand ) and the recumbent child at her feet . In the next , —Christian directed on his way by Evangelist , —note the fine conception of the erect , commanding apostle , with one outstretched arm p ointing to a land , he knows without misgiving , with the other hand kindly sustaining the young man ' s elbow , and see how the dependant , ignorant , inquiring Christian leans towards him , and has to sliade his eyes with hi 3 hand . Note the brawny strength of Help plucking Christian from the Slough of Despond—not a good
illustration on the whole , hut remarkable for that one figure . Pass on to f > . 85 , and look at Christian heing armed , for—among obvious faults—a ovely sculpturesque composition ; Vanity Fair has many fine points , though scarcely up to the artist ' s own standard ; but Christian conversing with Atheist only needs a little correction of the drawing to be a wonderful p icture . We cannot praise too highly the conception . Atheist is standing before a dead-blank wall , finely suggestive of limitation and negation , a suggestion carried out by the free view of open country forming the background to Christian and Hopeful . Look , moreover , at the attitudos of the three—one believer is erect , pointing with assurance to the horizon ; the other is bending forward in eager dispute ; while Atheist , wrapped up in his cloak , stands with only one leg on the ground , the other resting on a stone—not on the secure foundation of earth—and that stone is itself
resting apparently on other , smaller stones—a more perfect representation of scepticism , with finer symbolism in the details , wo do not remember . Mr . Clayton has tho roul artistic instinct which seeks bofore all things to represent by means of graceful forms the actual passion of the subject , and not tho conventional idea of that passion . We aoo this , and this it is which makes us call attention to him . Critics more learned in Art than we can pretend to be , may make what deductions from our praise tho case may require , but they cannot , we venture to say , disturb our verdict iri respect of his genuine power as an nrtist . Lot us , as a final example , point to the figure of Christiana awaking from lior terrible dream ( p . 20 ( 5 . )
Here , while every attention is paid to graceful distribution of lines , see how intensely true is the dramatic expression of Christiana—one hand pressing back her head as she shuts tho horror from her sight , the other vaguely stretched forth to shield her from it . We need say no more . These works are in a half-crown edition of one of the niOHt popular of books—an edition worthy of notice for its own Hake—but no person pretending to a taste for Art should delay purchasing it , and then they can judge ( or themselves whether wo have not done
well in going out of our way to eull attention to J . . It . Clayton . Of J . H . Pyne , happily we have no neeoHHity to speak in that stylo , lie is no discovery of ours . Every lover of landscape has seen—or heard praises of—the truly Un ^ lish charms he has fixed by his pencil , evanescent , as they are ; and IlicHe specimens of Lake Hcenery , which were exhibited not long ago , are now published by tho liberal and spirited firm or Thomas Agnew and Son , of Manchester , who gave Mr . Pyne tho magnificent commission to paint those livo-and-twunty pictures ibr them . The iiret part is boforo ug . It consists of Uhogravlm from Mr . Pyne ' a
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W 8 THE LEADER . [ SATtmp ^ W ^ w * ¦ ¦ . ^ — ' . _ ^ ^—<———i ^^^^^^^^^^— "
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Leader (1850-1860), June 11, 1853, page 572, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1990/page/20/
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