The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh. William Makepeace Thackeray

marvellously graceful and delicate. There are three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and color; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very fine picture by Bon Bollongue, “Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,” deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of color. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has produced—as deep as Poussin, of a better color, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.

      Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and admiring; they are full of “unction” and pious mystical grace. “Saint Scholastica” is divine; and the “Taking down from the Cross” as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the “Jardinière” is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the “Saint Elizabeth” is a bad picture—a bad composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad imitation of Titian—a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when Raphael painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; IT WAS TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!

      There—the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is no time to speak of Lesueur's “Crucifixion,” which is odiously colored, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most difficult to translate into words;—one lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colors are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which, for the present, adieu.

      Your faithful

      M. A. T.

      To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,

      NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.