Page:The London Magazine, volume 7 (January–June 1823).djvu/523

 tificate of having acquitted herself to his satisfaction?

To rid himself of spectators, Mr. Jeremiah willingly paid the old woman the full amount of her demand, and then returned to the city. It disturbed him greatly, however, that the princess should thus again have seen him under circumstances of disgrace. Anxious desire to lay open his heart before her—and to place himself in a more advantageous light, if not as to his body, yet at all events as to his intellect—determined him to use his utmost interest with her to obtain a private audience; “at which,” thought he, “I can easily beg her pardon for having overslept the appointed hour.”





a passionate admirer of painting, I took up this little volume, with an anxious hope to discover a better medium than any at present in use. Whether or not the author has been successful must be a matter of experiment; and I am very desirous that Mr. Vink Booms should make a trial of the New Process, and give his fair judgment upon it; to which I promise to bow with the most implicit submission. To me, who live at a great distance from the metropolis, and, consequently, cannot see the specimens offered to the public notice by the author, an imitation of Teniers by this method appears a thing incomprehensible. I should have thought the effect must inevitably be woolly.

The author is at least a convert to his own experiments, a happiness, to deprive him of which would be real cruelty; but when it is considered that he has been indefatigable in the pursuit for the space of fifteen years, and, like Dr. Sangrado, has committed himself by publishing upon the subject, there is little occasion to fear he will ever be made so miserable as to be persuaded of the fallacy of his schemes,—though far be it from me to deny to them the very quintessence of truth. I would not quarrel with the inventor, admiring his enthusiasm, and congratulating him upon his satisfaction. He, with much propriety (possibly), entitles his invention a New Process, but is quite wrong in his attempt to prove it the Old.

That we do not now use the same medium as the old masters did, a very careless observer, who is not prejudiced in favour of his megillups, cannot deny. There is a texture about the old pictures very unlike our own, and a richness like jewellery in the paint, that, independent of the charm of subject, is of itself a great gratification to the eye. To discover what that peculiar medium was, is indeed a great desideratum, and more worthy the attention and liberality of the Directors of the British Gallery, than the purchasing at costly prices the second-rate performances of the Venetian school,

Far from decrying modern artists, I am willing to allow that they stand unrivalled in some branches of the art; and, notwithstanding the difference of medium, have made, and are continuing to make, great progress. All I affirm is, that they labour under disadvantages, a great secret in the art being lost; and I most anxiously look to the recovery of it, with a confidence that England will be as Italy has been—the seat of the arts. There is now amongst artists a per-