member of a book-club, he knew nothing of the matter till it came to his turn. "You have seen John Kemble of course?" said the little orange-peeler, turning to Sir Mark Medium. "Only in his decline," answered he of the tight waist. "I don't know what you call his decline," exclaimed the inexorable Mullens, "but I perfectly remember when you and I went to see him in Rover in his own alteration of Mrs. Behn's play of that name. He called it Love in many Masks:-he was dressed in blue velvet, and Jack Bannister played John Blunt, an Essex squire: it was in the year 1790: you and I came from Pembroke on purpose. At that period Kemble had a strange fancy to be the fine gentleman: he took to Charles Surface and Don Felix, of which latter personation George Colman said, it possessed too much of the Don, and too little of the Felix. Only in his decline indeed! why he had not been on the London boards more than four years." All this our Visigoth would not hear. He had pertinaciously entered into the merits and demerits of the French actors in Tottenham-street. He descanted upon the want of ease in Pelissie, and upon the possession of it by La Porte. He lamented that Délia grew so thin, and St. Ange so fat: he even eulogized the Vaudeville singing, to the grievous horror of Colonel Nightingale, who thought the back wall of his own house, like that of the King's Theatre, would tumble down at such a profane assertion. In short, Sir Mark Medium was absolutely engulfed in the French Theatre, and seemed to breathe freely in that unventilated and dismal emporium of fashion, which a toad would not exchange for his block of marble, when the relentless Mullens again drew him forty years back, by reminding him of Le Texier's Readings. Colonel Nightingale's knocker now began to beat double-quick time. "What's all this about?" inquired Mr. Thomas Willoughby, helping himself to a glass of water as a symptom of retreat upwards. "Nothing but my wife's evening visitors," answered the Colonel. "I flatter myself there is not a more industrious knocker than mine in the whole parish of St. James's. It is never idle from nine to twelve o'clock. At first it struck rather discordantly upon my ear, (which by the way is become more nice since my acquaintance with Madame Pasta.) But I have now so well drilled the footmen of all my acquaintance, (or, more properly speaking, my wife's) that they keep excellent time with the grand piano above. We tried them last night with Der Freischutz; and I can assure you, their rat, tat-a-tat, tat-a-tat, chimed in with "hark, follow hark, follow hark" quite harmoniously." Mr. Willoughby now passed through the parlour door-way into the hall, and took advantage of a momentary cessation of silk rustling, to skip up stairs, cautiously avoiding contact with the balustres, that he might not damage the pile of shawls that overhung them. "I'll tell you a good story about Willoughby," said Sir Mark Medium, thinking it highly expedient that somebody besides himself should be made ridiculous. "Willoughby's wife is evangelic; they have been married seven years, and have no family. Women, in that case, always take to old china, geology, charity, poodle dogs, or evangelism. Mrs. Willoughby has selected the last. Willoughby would not take to the collar for a long time; but wives are always victorious in the end. Tom Straitway mended his manners: cautiously abstained from rapping out an oath; did not go to one of Catalani's concerts; ('Poor fellow! ejaculated Colonel Nightingale,) and deposed Swift's Tale of a Tub from his book-shelf, that Cunningham's Velvet Cushion might reign in its stead. Well, affairs were in this state, when, happening to be walking very disconsolately in the Green Park, with his hands in his breeches pockets, and whistling I sigh and lament me in vain!' he popped upon Jack Hammersley-by no means one of The Elect'— so far from it, quite the re-werse, as Mat the Fulham coachman expresses himself. Well, Hammersley seizes him by the elbow, and exclaims, Damme Tom, how d'ye do?' Upon which, Tom Willoughby, quite forgetting the new part he had to play, answered, Thank ye -that's comfortable - - that's the first oath I've heard these six months." - What happened up-stairs-how our semi-centenarian tried it on at the piano, and found that it would not fit; and how, disdaining to join the old people at whist, he hung suspended in the door-way of communication between the two drawing-rooms, must be the subject of a future epistle. THE HOSPITAL, HOME of the homeless! blest retreat, Each needful help to proffer; Where poverty on wealth may lean That there are such, our native clime Of Charity's endowment. For the best things abused, become Of underlings and nurses. Misers may give their gold-do ye And claim a higher merit; Your time, your cares, your presence give, O soothe the wounded spirit. INFLUENCE OF THE FINE ARTS. Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros ?. NOTWITHSTANDING all that has been written and said on the subject, the question is still agitated, whether the fine arts should be ranked among the causes favourable, or unfavourable to human happiness; whether they should be considered as taming the animal into social habits, or as corrupting his affections and enfeebling his will. If credit may be given to the boastings of professors, and the claims which they lay to consideration and respect be admitted, mankind have been painted and sung into all that distinguishes the civilized gentleman and the philosopher from the savage. The fable of Orpheus is indeed but a poor and cold type of such pretensions; and Horace's proud enumeration of the services of poetry in his epistle to Augustus is modesty itself when compared with the exaggerated self-importance of more than one contemporary painter; not to speak of the great geniuses of Italy, who gave to that country a new claim to the admiration of mankind. That such lofty notions of the dignity and importance of art should have generally passed current, is not very surprising; for without dwelling upon the fascination, which even the coldest travellers experience in passing through the great galleries of Italy, it is sufficient to advert to the fact, that the rich and the powerful alone can indulge in the purchase of pictures and statues. The greatest sovereigns have not thought it derogatory to their dignity to make themselves a character by the patronage of art; and have even sought, by surrounding themselves with its products, to captivate that benevolence which might better have been won by good government; as if, when they had devastated the country committed to their sway, and harassed its population by their bigotry, their ambition, and the caprice and extravagance of their royal mistresses, their misrule could be redeemed by pensioning the painters who clothe them in the attributes of every Pagan deity, and by corrupting the wits who falsify history, and degrade the Muses by their fulsome panegyrics: as if the decoration of the palace could compensate for the ruin of the cottage; or the splendours of Versailles blot out the smoking ruins of the Palatinate. The adscititious consideration thus given to the arts, was little likely to be detected. Those who could influence public opinion, were constitutionally admirers of the productions of the pencil and the chisel, while they were but seldom much alive to the sufferings of the people; being either of the master castes themselves, or the hungry dependants and flatterers of those that were; and it was by no means inconvenient to such persons to find in the character of their master some traits which they could eulogise without being laughed at or stoned for their obvious falsehood. From Pisistratus to Augustus, and from Augustus to Louis the Fourteenth, a taste for poetry and the arts has been the one redeeming virtue of every despot; and national vanity has very generally accepted it as a full compensation for national degradation. The miserable fallacy of this sophism was not, however, qualified for withstanding the scrutiny of that philosophy, which in modern times has given a new turn to human affairs; and the deplorable effects it has produced, have of late years raised suspicions against the arts themselves, on account of their unfortunate alliance. There is not wanting a respectable corps of unmalleable republicans, who see nothing in a statue but an object of servile adoration; and who cannot pass a colour-shop without execrations on the unworked elements it contains of despotism, superstition, and Asiatic effeminacy. According to the views of these persons, which are pretty much perhaps those of Cato the Censor, there is something in the cultivation of the arts directly hostile to civil liberty, -something enervating and unmanly; so that while they imply, in the mere fact of their existence, great inequality of fortunes, and consequently of powers, their practice is fitted only for the sensualist and the slave. Directly opposed to this class in every other opinion, but equally inclined to depress the arts, stand the religious fanatics, whose melancholy and forbidding ideas of the great God of nature lead them to reject as fatal, whatever tends to flatter the senses, or seduce to pleasure. The tendency towards imitation, which gives birth to works of art, and occasions the pleasure we receive in their contemplation, is a common principle in our nature; and is indeed one of the most active causes of social improvement. For the first developements of the arts, therefore, little more is required beyond a moderate supply of food and leisure. But before painting and sculpture can arrive at any thing like excellence, they must have become a trade; that is to say, there must be a regular and steady demand for their products. The progress of the arts is therefore necessarily subordinate to the progress of civilization; and it is to this connexion that the various opinions concerning their influence may be attributed. For as the advance of civilization developes either the good or the evil qualities of the species, as it produces social combinations favourable or unfavourable to public and pri vate happiness, the concomitant progress of the arts may very readily be mistaken for the cause of such combinations. As long as the efforts of society are turned to the equable diffusion of wealth and knowledge, and a nation is making advances in genuine civilization, the de velopement of the arts keeping pace with improving morals and increasing comfort, will appear to be the cause of every step with which they coexist. But when civilization is confined to a circumscribed and privileged caste, when refinement does not extend beyond the inordi nately rich and the exclusively powerful, that refinement is but too apt to degenerate into luxury and depravity; and the arts, from administer ing to the pleasures of the corrupt and the vicious, are stigmatised as nurturing the degeneration of which they are the victim. The higher departments of art cannot be manifested without space; and palaces and public edifices alone afford a theatre for those masterpieces which make a reputation. These have too frequently been in the possession of despotism, a circumstance which has much assisted in the delusion. On the other hand, the possession of valuable and perishable objects by the subject, is apt to fetter his will, and to palsy those public efforts for liberty, which are necessary to the maintenance of national independence. This has been made a frequent ground of complaint against the arts; but if there were any validity in such an objection, it militates equally against every other refinement, and is available against civilization itself, which tends directly to the multipli cation of property. The truth is, that the arts have never flourished in epochs of great despotism, without having partaken of its debilitating and degrading influence. The pure age of Greek statuary was the age of liberty; and the finest products of Italian art were created amidst the turbulent freedom of the republics. So hostile indeed is genius of an high order to the trammels of slavery, that where great poets and painters have unfortunately appeared among a degenerated people, and have been unable to assert the native dignity of their character, the force of their temperament has often broken out in irregular and capricious wilfulness, in insubordination, and in licence. The personal character of artists has accordingly been adduced as evidence of the evil tendency of the arts. The fault, however, is obviously in the institutions, and not in the men; and it must not be forgotten, that if some great geniuses have been wayward and vicious in their dispositions, by far the most eminent sculptors and painters have been men remarkable for personal dignity, and propriety of conduct. It may be taken as an incontrovertible axiom, that when mankind accumulate wealth, they will enjoy; and if circumstances do not favour the indulgence in refined pleasures, the rich and the great will procure for themselves those of a coarser and more sensual character. Considered, therefore, as administering to sensation, the arts cannot of necessity lead to evil. And if, under particular influences, they have been urged to the repetition of voluptuous and enervating imagery, this occasional abuse has proceeded from the commands of purchasers, who would in an equal degree abuse any other power they might possess, to gratify their corrupt and perverted natures. Generally speaking, the self-directed labours of the artist are expended in representing whatever is most elevated and select in nature and in the human heart; and even in the atrocious martyrdoms of Catholic painters, there is some trait of heroism, some sacrifice of natural feeling to an imaginary principle, which is calculated to inspire a love of virtue. Painters and sculptors, however, like meaner artists, must follow the demands of the market for which they labour; and whether their subject be a saint or a Flemish boor, a living Venus or a dead haddock, its character is derived from the taste of the purchaser, and not of the artist who paints that which he can the most readily sell. Considered in their operations on the intellect, the imitative arts cannot but be regarded as exciting. They bring all parts of the world into a single chamber; they exhibit objects of natural history, the phenomena of distant regions, the monuments of remote nations. To the dissemination of useful knowledge, therefore, they powerfully contribute; and if knowledge be not always virtue, the defect is rather owing to its imperfection, than to its own intrinsic nature. In one point of view the arts are manifestly serviceable to human nature. They cannot subsist in any perfection without calling forth much enthusiasm; and without enthusiasm nothing great, nothing noble can exist ; although, therefore, a virtuoso and a dilettante of great acquired tact may be deficient in every moral excellence, a nation in which an enthusiasm for the arts prevails, will afford better materials for greatness in the truest sense of the word, than a nation whose imagination has never been so called upon. Thus much, however, is certain, that, be the effects of art what they may, art will always exist. The principle of imitation is too intimately part and parcel of humanity for even a nation of Quakers to reject for |