fire into thy hapless body some eighty shots, bade thee kneel, little expecting, we may be sure, thou wouldst obey; but thou didst; and he beheld thee, in the midst of all thy agony, kneel down. Gradually thou droppest on thy knees, and in calm dignity let the pitiless storm beat on. When they grew tired, they found thee still in that posture, erect, but dead.

The skeleton of poor Chuny is flanked on either side by remarkable companions-a giraffe and a Bactrian camel. From this end of the room a door on the left opens into another Museum, of the same height, but comparatively small in its other dimensions. In front of the lofty gallery pictures hang at intervals, portraits and illustrations of surgical marvels: the room itself is chiefly devoted to preparations of extraordinary surgical cases of disease, &c., monstrosities (here is a cast of the band of the Siamese twins, for instance), and a variety of miscellaneous objects, among which the most striking are the row of mummies standing upright in open wooden boxes along the end facing you as you enter. One of them is the embalmed wife of the once notorious Martin van Butchell, with a parrot or some similar bird in the case with her: this was prepared at his request by Mr. William Hunter and Mr. Cruickshank, in 1775. But the most interesting mummy is that of an Egyptian in its inner case, unopened, brought to England in 1820, and we know not how many thousand years old. It is in a perfect state of preservation, and affords an excellent example of the mode of embalming practised in ancient Egypt. The external case, generally of sycamore, has been removed: the internal case, which more immediately envelopes the body, and partakes of its form, is composed of many layers of cloth cemented together, and faced or externally covered with a white composition, affording a smooth and uniform surface, upon which an endless variety of hieroglyphical figures and devices are drawn in vivid, and, to this day, comparatively wellpreserved colours. In strange contrast with this artificially preserved human being is that painful-looking figure raised upon a high pedestal, scated on its haunches, the knees against the chin, and the hands pressing against the sunken cheeks. There is every reason to consider the history of this figure as extraordinary as its appearance. The governor of the district of Caxamarca, in Peru, became much interested in a tradition preserved among the natives of the place, that a certain guaca, or sepulchre, was the site of the voluntary sacrifice of the life of a Curaca, one of the order of nobles next in rank to the members of the royal family. He determined accordingly to have it opened, which was done in 1821; and at the depth of about ten or twelve feet three bodies were found-a female, which crumbled to dust on exposure to the air; a child, which is now in the museum of Buenos Ayres; and a man, the figure we are now gazing on. In all probability the three stood in the relation of husband, wife, and child. This dreadful instance of the lengths to which man's wild imagination will carry him is supposed to have taken place some little time before the arrival of Pizarro, or between the years of 1530 and 1540. The preservation of the bodies is owing to the peculiar character of the soil. With them were found various articles of interest-an axe or bludgeon of green jade-stone, and a ball of very fine thread or worsted, two or three inches in diameter, which was placed under the arm of the child, a symbol, probably, in some way, of its own undeveloped career.

As we wander to and fro, lingering among the many objects that call upon our attention, but which our space will not admit us to mention, we perceive in front of the pedestal on which stands the giant elephant, a bust, the only one, as in the case of the Theatre, which decorates the place. Need we add it is the idol of the shrine, the creator of all we see around-JOHN HUNTER.

[John Hunter.]

DURING the reign of the first George and part of that of the second, it seemed as though the nation at large was inclined to participate in the well-known contempt of one of those monarchs for "Bainting," whatever it might do as regards his similar opinion of "Boetry;" at all events, since anything deserving the name of art had existed in this country, never before had the prospect seemed so hopeless. The admirable works of Holbein and Vandyke, and, in a lesser degree, of Lely and Kneller (all foreigners), which had been scattered so profusely abroad through the palaces and mansions of England, appeared to have fallen on a soil barren, as far as they were concerned, but most prolific of the ranker and more gaudy kinds of vegetation. Whilst the national mind appeared to make no response to the exertions of the great painters we have mentioned, the sight of the acres of garish canvas

'Where sprawl the saints of Verrio and La Guerre,'

set us all decorating our staircases and ceilings in a similar manner; mythology was made easy to the humblest capacities; Jupiters and Junos, Venuses and Mercuries, flocked about us in the most condescending fashion-high art was to be our own at once: there is no saying how soon the spirit as well as the forms of the art-religion of ancient Greece might not have been revived among us, but for the unlucky sarcasms of those wicked poets! At the period of the accession of George II., our most eminent native artists were Sir James Thornhill, the

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painter of the dome of St. Paul's and the great hall of Greenwich Hospital, works which, whatever admiration they excited in his own day, when he successfully disputed the palm of reputation with La Guerre, are now at least as remarkable for the mode in which they were paid (forty shillings a square yard), as for their excellence; Hudson, the chief portrait-painter; and Hayman, the decorator of Vauxhall, and the author of many illustrative designs of Don Quixote' and other publications. When such were our great men, no wonder that French critics amused themselves with speculations on the cause of what they declared to be our evident unfitness ever to be distinguished in art, and kindly condoled with us on our ungenial climate and our defective physical organization. If they could have seen what was then going silently on in different parts of England, these sagacious critics would have saved themselves much trouble, some confusion, and have derived a lesson as to putting their own house into order, which would have been useful. Holbein and his immortal followers, it turned out after all, had not come to an ungenial soil; on the contrary, it appeared they had been slowly doing that which it is the prerogative of genius only to do-making equals, and not imitators. It was not long after the commencement of the reign of George II., that Sir James Thornhill, on rising one morning, found on his breakfast-table some etchings of so remarkable a character, that when he learnt they were by his poor son-in-law, who had offended him by marrying his child without his consent, he at once forgave them both. The etchings were some of the as yet unpublished engravings of the Harlot's Progress;' the poor son-in-law was Hogarth. In the same street where this scene took place-St. Martin's Lane-a few years after, a young painter from Devonshire had established himself after having visited Rome, and older artists talked of the absurd heresies he was practically broaching. Hudson, before mentioned, who was his old master, went to see him, and after looking for some time on the picture of a boy in a turban, exclaimed, with an oath, “ Reynolds, you don't paint so well as when you left England." Another eminent portraitpainter, who had studied under Kneller, also came to the studio and expressed his opinions" Ah! Reynolds, this will never answer; why, you don't paint in the least like Sir Godfrey!" The young artist, by no means overwhelmed, answered with quiet confidence, and explained his reasons (which of course embodied all his novel views in art), with great ability, till at last Ellis cried out, "Shakspere in poetry, and Kneller in painting, de!" and marched out of the room. Not many years had to elapse before that heretical student was acknowledged the master of a genuine and lofty English school of painting, and posterity has confirmed the opinion of contemporaries. Lastly, about the same time, Gainsborough, yet a boy, was obtaining holidays from school by ingeniously forging notes of leave from his parent, for the purpose of making sketches in the beautiful woods which surrounded his native place in Suffolk; and Wilson, the English Claude, was being happily turned from portrait to landscape by an accident. Whilst studying at Rome, he waited one morning a long time anticipating the coming of the artist Zucarelli, and, to beguile the time, sketched the scene he beheld through the windows before him. Zucarelli, looking on it when he came, was astonished, and asked Wilson if he had studied landscape. The answer was in the negative. "Then I advise you to try, for you are sure

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of great success," was Zucarelli's immediate remark; and Vernet, an eminent French painter, spoke to the same effect. The picture of Niobe marked his return to England, and caused his immediate recognition as a painter of high genius. It is to these men that we chiefly owe the extraordinary advance in English art which has been made in the space of a single century. From the period of their advent we may date the rapid disappearance of the historical pictures of the La Guerre and Thornhill school, "the mobs of the old divinities-nymphs who represented cities-crowned beldames for nations-and figures, ready ticketed and labelled, answering to the names of Virtues ;"* and with them went the artists who were at first Reynolds's chief rivals, and whom he describes as having "a set of postures which they apply to all persons indiscriminately the consequence of which is, that all their pictures look like so many sign-post paintings; and if they have a history or a family piece to paint, the first thing they do is to look over their commonplace book, containing sketches which they have stolen from various pictures; then they search their prints over, and pilfer one figure from one print, and another from a second; but never take the trouble of thinking for themselves." In place of all these different kinds of inanities, Hogarth now set the town considering the stern realities of life, and instilled into them his wholesome morality; Reynolds showed a truer divinity, hedging in the shapes of humanity itself, than Verrio had ever fetched down from Olympus; and Wilson and Gainsborough revealed the natural beauties of the every-day world to thousands who had at least practically forgotten them. It was during the height of the reputation of these men that the Royal Academy started into existence, and chiefly in consequence of their exertions.

It appears from Hogarth's memoirs of himself that the first attempt to form a kind of artists' academy was made about the beginning of the eighteenth century" by some gentlemen-painters of the first rank, who in their general forms imitated the plan of that in France, but conducted their business with far less fuss and solemnity; yet the little that there was, in a very short time became an object of ridicule." The single object then desired was a school for drawing from the living model; and it is curious, and an unanswerable evidence of the low state of the arts, that in so important a matter nothing should have been done previously, or more effectively when undertaken. But the public had an idea that some of these meetings were for immoral purposes, and the artists had not a little difficulty to overcome on that score. The Duke of Richmond had the credit, later in the century, of establishing the first school in this country for the study of the antique, having fitted up a gallery with a number of casts, busts, and bas-reliefs, "moulded from the most select antique and modern figures at that time in Rome and Florence. Cipriani was one of the teachers here for a few months. Other associations, of the kind before referred to, sprang into existence from time to time. Vertue in 1711 was drawing in one, of which Kneller was at the head. Sir James Thornhill also founded one at the back of his house in St. Martin's Lane, which, Hogarth says, sunk into insignificance; and after his death, Hogarth, becoming possessed of the apparatus, himself caused the establishment of another, ultimately known as the Society of Incor

* Allan Cunningham's British Painters,' vol. i., p. 51.