Then his directing wand seems to contract itself to a space within his grasp. It becomes that magic prism with which he intercepts a ray from the sun on his passage to earth; and as a bird seizes in its flight the bee laden with its honey, and robs it of its sweet treasure—even so he compels the messenger of light to unfold itself before us, and lay bare to our sight the rich colors which the rainbow had exhibited to man since the deluge, and which had lain concealed since creation, in every sunbeam that had passed through our atmosphere. And further still, he bequeathes that wonderful alembic of light [{565}] to succeeding generations, till, in the hand of new discoverers, it has become the key of nature's laboratory, in which she has been surprised melting and compounding, in crucibles huge as ocean, the rich hues with which she overlays the surfaces of suns and stars, yet, at the same time, breathes its delicate blush upon the tenderest petals of the opening rose.
And all the laws and all the rules which form his code of nature seem engraved, as with a diamond point, upon a granite surface of the primitive rocks—inflexible, immovable, unchangeable as the system which they represent.
Beside him stands the Ruler of that world, which, though even sublimely intellectual, is governed by him with laws in which the affections, even the passions, the moralities, and the anxieties of life have their share; in which there is no severity but for vice, no slavery but for baseness, no unforgivingness but for calculating wickedness. In his hand is not the staff of authority, whether it take the form of a royal sceptre or of a knightly lance, whether it be the shepherdess's crook or the fool's bauble, it is still the same, the magician's wand. Whether it be the divining rod with which he draws up to light the most hidden streams of nature's emotions, or the potential instrument of Prospero's spells, which raises storms in the deep or works spirit-music in the air, or the wicked implement with which the witches mingle their unholy charm, its cunning and its might have no limit among created things. But it is not a world of stately order which he rules, nor are the laws of unvarying rigor by which it is commanded. The wildest paroxysms of passion; the softest delicacy of emotions; the most extravagant accident of fortune; the tenderest incidents of home; the king and the beggar, the sage and the jester, the tyrant and his victim; the maiden from the cloister and the peasant from the mountains; the Italian school-child and the Roman matron; the princes of Denmark and the lords of Troy—all these and much more are comprised in the vast embrace of his dominions. Scarcely a rule can be drawn from them, yet each forms a model separately, a finished group in combination. Unconsciously as he weaves his work, apparently without pattern or design, he interlaces and combines in its surface and its depth images of the most charming variety and beauty; now the stern mosaic, without coloring, of an ancient pavement, now the flowing and intertwining arabesque of the fanciful east; now the rude scenes of ancient mediaeval tapestry like that of Beauvais, and then the finished and richly tinted production of the Gobelins loom.
And yet through this seeming chaos the light permeates, and that so clear and so brilliant as equally to define and to dazzle. Every portion, every fragment, every particle, stands forth separate and particular, so as to be handled, measured, and weighed in the balance of critic and poet. Each has its own exact form and accurate place, so that, while separately they are beautiful, united they are perfect. Hence their combinations have become sacred rules, and have given inviolable maxims not only to English but to universal literature. Germany, as we have seen, studies with love and almost veneration every page of Shakespeare; national sympathies and kindred speech make it not merely easy but natural to all people of the Teutonic family to assimilate their literature to that its highest standard. France has departed, or is fast departing, from its favorite classical type, and adopting, though with unequal power, the broader and more natural lines of the Shakespearian model. His practice is an example, his declarations are oracles.
Still, as I have said, the wide region of intellectual enjoyment over which our great bard exerts dominion, is not one parcelled out or divided into formal and state-like provinces. While the student of science is reading in his [{566}] chamber the great "Principia" of Newton, he must keep before him the solution of only one problem. On that his mind must undistractedly rest, on that his power of thought be intensely concentrated. Woe to him if imagination leads his reason into truant wanderings; woe if he drop the thread of finely-drawn deductions! He will find his wearied intelligence drowsily floundering in a sea of swimming figures and evanescent quantities, or floating amidst the fragments of a shipwrecked diagram. But over Shakespeare one may dream no less than pore; we may drop the book from our hand and the contents remain equally before us. Stretched in the shade by a brook in summer, or sunk in the reading chair by the hearth in winter, in the imaginative vigor of health, in the drooping spirits of indisposition, one may read, and allow the trains of fancy which spring up in any scene to pursue their own way, and minister their own varied pleasure or relief; and when by degrees we have become familiar with the inexhaustible resources of his genius, there is scarcely a want in mind or the affections that needs no higher than human succor, which will not find in one or other of his works that which will soothe suffering, comfort grief, strengthen good desires, and present some majestic example to copy, or some fearful phantom. But when we endeavor to contemplate all his infinitely varied conceptions as blended together in one picture, so as to take in, if possible, at one glance the prodigious extent of his prolific genius, we thereby build up what he himself so beautifully called the "fabric of a vision," matchless in its architecture as in the airiness of its materials. There are forms fantastically sketched in cloud-shapes, such as Hamlet showed to Polonius, in the midst of others rounded and full, which open and unfold ever-changing varieties, now gloomy and threatening, then tipped with gold and tinted with azure, ever-rolling, ever-moving, melting the one into the other, or extricating each itself from the general mass. Dwelling upon this maze of things and imaginations, the most incongruous combinations come before the dreamy thought, fascinated, spell-bound, and entranced. The wild Ardennes and Windsor Park seem to run into one another, their firs and their oaks mingle together; the boisterous ocean boiling round "the still vexed Bermoothes" runs smoothly into the lagoons of Venice; the old gray porticos of republican Rome, like the transition in a dissolving view, are confused and entangled with the slim and fluted pillars of a Gothic hall; here the golden orb, dropped from the hand of a captive king, rolls on the ground side by side with a jester's mouldy skull—both emblems of a common fate in human things. Then the grave chief-justice seems incorporated in the bloated Falstaff; King John and his barons are wassailing with Poins and Bardolph at an inn door; Coriolanus and Shylock are contending for the right of human sensibilities; Macbeth and Jacques are moralizing together on tenderness even to the brute. And so of other more delicate creations of the poet's mind—Isabella and Ophelia, Desdemona and the Scotch Thane's wife, produce respectively composite figures of inextricable confusion. And around and above is that filmy world, Ariel and Titania and Peas-blossom and Cobweb and Moth, who weave as a gossamer cloud around the vision, dimming it gradually before our eyes, in the last drooping of weariness, or the last hour of wakefulness.
MISCELLANY.
ART.
Domestic.—The south gallery of the new academy is the largest and best lighted of the several exhibition rooms, and contains some of the most ambitious pictures of the year. As the visitor, pausing for a moment to survey the paintings, drawings, studies, architectural designs, and miscellanea which are hung around the four sides of the open corridor at the head of the grand staircase, turns naturally into the great gallery, through whose wide entrance he catches glimpses of the art treasures within, so do we propose to conduct the reader thither without further parley. Here confront us specimens of almost every subject legitimate to the art, and of some not legitimate—great pictures and little pictures, grave pictures and gay pictures, landscape and genre, history and portraiture, beasts, birds, fishes, and flowers. At either end of the room hangs a full-length portrait of a gentleman of note, which challenges the visitor's attention, be he never so reluctant. No. 464, the late Governor Gamble, of Missouri, by F.T.L. Boyle, belongs to a family only too numerous among us (we speak of the picture only), and whose acquaintance one feels strongly inclined to cut in the present instance. But that is impossible. There stands the familiar lay-figure in the old conventional attitude, which we feel sure the governor never assumed of his own accord. The marble columns, the draped curtain, the library table and the books—all the stock accessories in fine—are there; and either for the purpose of pointing a moral, of instituting a personal comparison, or of calling attention to its workmanship, the governor blandly directs your attention to a bust of Washington. He might be intending to do any one or all of these things so far as the expression of his face affords an indication. The idea on which the portrait is painted is thoroughly false, and ought to be by this time discarded; but year after year artists continue to mint these modish, stiff, and ridiculous figures, when with a little regard to common sense they could produce portraits which all would recognize as natural and effective. Especially is this the case with the present picture, which evinces considerable executive ability. The other portrait to which we alluded, No. 412, a full length of Ex-Governor Morgan, painted by Huntington, for the Governor's Room in the City Hall, is one of the least creditable works ever produced by that artist, cold and repulsive in color, awkward in attitude, and unsatisfactory as a likeness.
Occupying a less prominent position than either of these pictures, but conspicuous enough to attract a large share of attention, is the full-length portrait of Archbishop McCloskey, No. 438, by G.P.A. Healy. Mr. Healy, though never very happy as a colorist and often disposed to sacrifice characteristic expression to a passion for painting brocades and draperies, has generally succeeded in imparting a refined air to his portraits, however feeble they might be as likenesses. The present work is coarse in expression, and untrue as a likeness. It is a mistake to suppose that a free, rapid touch is adapted to every style of face. The small and delicate features of the archbishop, with their shrewd, yet refined and benevolent expression, cannot be dashed off with a few strokes of the brush, but require careful painting, and, above all, patient painting. Mr. Healy's portrait of Dr. Brownson in last year's exhibition, though of little merit as a painting, was much better than this. No. 448, a portrait of the late Peletiah Perit, by Hicks, is one of the most creditable specimens of that very unequal painter that we have recently seen. Mr. Perit is sitting easily and naturally in his library chair, and is not made to assume the attitude of a posture-master for the time being, in order that posterity may know how he did not look in life. The likeness is not remarkable; but the accessories are carefully painted and agreeably colored. No. 423, portrait of a lady, by R.M. Staigg, is exactly what it assumes to be—a lady. In the refined air of the gentlewoman which the artist has so happily conveyed, he recalls some of the female heads of Stuart, though in the present instance he had no wide scope for the display [{568}] of Stuart's charming gift of color. The resemblance is more in the general sentiment than in any technical qualities. Almost adjoining this work is another portrait of a lady, No. 425, by W.H. Furness, a forcible example of the naturalistic school, of great solidity of texture and purity of color. There is intelligence, earnestness, and strength in this face, and in the attitude, though the latter, as well as the accessories, is studiously simple. Baker and Stone contribute some attractive portraits to this room. No. 454, a lady, by the latter, is a good specimen of a style neither strong nor founded on true principles, but which, on account of a certain conventional gracefulness, which amply satisfies those who look no deeper than the surface of the canvas, will always find admirers. No. 458, a portrait of Capt. Riblett, of the New York 7th Regiment, by Baker, is a clever work, noticeable for the easy pose of the figure, the clear fresh coloring, and the firm handling.