kindness is in vain, I am wholly destitute, I cannot even purchase proper canvas and colours for these paintings." The young man gave him twenty pounds, then went home and said to himself, "When Wilson with all his genius starves, what will become of me?" He laid palette and pencils aside, pursued his studies at college, and rose high in the church.

The infirmities of old age were coming fast upon Wilson his sight failed, his skill of touch forsook him, he was sinking lower day by day, when a small estate became his by the death of a brother, and a profitable vein of lead had been discovered in the ground-it rescued him from a pauper's death -it relieved London from witnessing the melancholy close of his life. He took an affectionate farewell of Sir William Becchey, and set out for his native place. He arrived safely in Denbighshire, and took up his abode with a relation. There, amid verdant lawns, wide-stretching fields, old romantic woods -working little and walking much -the old man passed his few remaining days. One day he was absent longer than usual; a favourite dog which had accompanied him returned alone, howling and manifesting every sign of uneasiness, pulling at the clothes of the servants, and finally succeeded in bringing them to the aid of his master, who had sunk down and found himself unable to rise. He was carried home, but never fairly recovered from the shock. He complained of weariness

and pain, refused nourishment, and died in May, 1782, in the 69th year of his age.

The names of a few of Wilson's principal compositions will show the historical and poetical influence under which he wrought:-The Death of Niobe; Phaëton; Morning; View of Rome; Villa of Macænas, at Tivoli; Celadon and Amelia ; View on the river Po; Apollo and the Seasons; Meleager and Atalanta; Cicero at his Villa; Lake of Narni; View on the Coast of Baia; the Tiber near Rome; Temple of Bacchus; Adrian's Villa; Bridge of Rimini; Rosamond's Pond; Llangollen Bridge; Castle of Dinas Bran; Temple of Venus at Baiæ; Tomb of Horatii and Curatii; Broken Bridge of Narni, and Nymphs Bathing.

Of the style of Wilson it may be sufficient to observe, that it formed an epoch in English landscape painting, being equalled by none before, and perhaps not surpassed by any who have followed in the same line. Fuseli says: "Wilson's taste was so exquisite, and his eye so chaste, that whatever came from his easel bore the stamp of elegance and truth. The subjects he chose were such as did credit to his judgment; they were the selections of taste; and whether of the simple, the elegant, or the sublime, they were treated with an equal felicity. Indeed, he possessed that versatility of power, as to be one minute an eagle sweeping the heavens, and the next a wren twittering a simple note on the humble thorn."

Ir, a century after the conquest of Mexico and Peru, any archæologists had been found to take as lively an interest in American antiquities as Boturini Benaduci did; and if any virtuosi, forgetting, for a moment, the chefs-d'œuvre of Rome and Athens, had devoted themselves, as did the Italian traveller, to the study of the somewhat barbarous arts, it is true, of the Aztecas, there might have been collected, even a hundred and fifty years ago, a number of statues, of paintings, and relics of innumerable idols, or even of symbolical books, which the great zeal of the pious Zummaraga, the first, bishop of Mexico, had done all he could to destroy. Had such been the case, the small body of learned men who direct their attention in the nineteenth century to the antiquities of Anahuac and of Tihuanco, would not be compelled to remain satisfied with mere conjectures, as they are at present; it is, therefore, very praiseworthy of the directors of the museum at the Louvre to have prepared an asylum for those remains, often much dilapidated, and those fragments, often very roughly formed, which constitute the new collection. It must be owned, however, that the assemblage of these things, though it confers a real benefit on science, does not give us any very clear notions of the barbarous, yet often grand, art which struck the companions of Pizarro and Cortes with astonishment. Even the conqueror of Mexico, though well versed in the relics of antiquity, could not help participating in the admiration which this art still gave rise to in the sixteenth century.

* Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci was born of an old family in Milan, and went, in 1733, to New Spain. It was the Countess of Santillane, a descendant of Montezuma, who sent him to Mexico, to look after her affairs there. While engaged in the discharge of his duties, the Italian archæologist made the most incredible researches, in order to collect Azteck antiquities, learned the language of the Indians, and did not return to Europe before he had spent eight years in his scientific labours. It would take too much time to relate here how Boturini's collections were despoiled, how he himself was thrown into prison, and how he, at last, obtained complete redress, without, however, obtaining re-possession of his treasures. Being appointed histiographer-general of the Indies, he spent the rest of his life at Madrid, where he finished the first volume of his General History of North America, which has never been published. He died about 1749. His book entitled Idea de una neuva historia general de la America sep. tentrional, is much sought after. It is a valuable catalogue of the antiquities he had succeeded in collecting together.

There were three distinct centres of civilisation in the New World: that is, three regions where the rudimentary art of sculpture was held in great veneration. Peru, Mexico, and the table-land of Cundinamarca are worthy, in this respect, of being examined successively. In consequence of their theocratical government and of their isolated position with respect to one another, each of these countries possessed an art that was peculiarly its own. Unfortunately, the new museum, which occupies one of the smallest chambers in the Louvre, does not contain any of the valuable antiquities of New Granada, but of which Monsieur Jomard, one of the stars of science, has succeeded in collecting some of the finest specimens. The directors, who have already made such praiseworthy exertions, will, doubtless, soon take measures to supply this want. As for ourselves, passing over, for the present, the art of the Muiscas and that of the Peruvians, we will begin at once with that of the Mexicans, as being the most curious and perhaps the most varied.

Art among the Azteck nations was, above all, hieratic, that is, it assumed its fantastic and often monstrous forms under the direction of priests practising a barbarous kind of worship. It would, however, be an error to imagine that the statuaries of Tezcuco and Tenotchitlan confined themselves to the reproduction of the truly hideous idols which the symbolism of Mexican theogony imposed on the statuaries employed in the temples. We learn from the best authority, that Mexican art, devoting itself in a more direct manner to the study of nature, perpetuated by sculpture the likenesses of the sovereigns and great men of the country. Statues representing Netzahuatooyotl, the Solomon of Anahuac, had been executed over and over again, and the chronicles tell us that the statue of Montezuma ornamented the beginning of the famous aqueduct which emptied its limpid water into the gardens of the imperial palace, which were themselves ornamented by the hand of the sculptor. The architects of Netzahualpilzintli executed a colossal head of this sovereign on a gigantic body of amixtli or of cougard, and every one hastened to admire this wonderful work, which was placed on the side of a mountain covered with large gardens. When Ixtlilochitl, one of the last independent chiefs of Mexico, accompanied Cortes in his memorable voyage towards the Pacific Ocean, he was followed by innumerable Indians, and foreseeing, perhaps, the melancholy fate reserved

for him by the ruthless conqueror, he was desirous of having his memory immortalised in a country ruled over by a sovereign who had been his ally: he, therefore, implored Apochpalan to order his sculptors to cut his statue in a very lofty block of rock which stood at a little distance from the road. "Apochpalan complied with his request," says a valuable memoir of the sixteenth century, "and his sculptors cut his statue in the rock as large as life, and represented him with the same arms he had been accustomed to wear. It is said

since 1552; and it is worthy of remark that, in 1525, more than twenty thousand of these hieratic statues were destroyed. Cortes gave the signal, by ordering the two large statues of the immense temple of Mexico to be thrown down before his eyes. We, therefore, ought not to be astonished that the Louvre does not contain a single figure of importance enough to have assigned to it the name of any one of the more important gods of Anahuac. With the exception of the spiral serpent, which, doubtless, represents Quetzalcoatl, the

that this statue can still be seen, an assertion corroborated by the national songs. Ixtlilochitl went to see it with Apochpalan, and, on beholding it, melted into tears. If the poets are to be believed, Apochpalan also wept, and all their attendants consoled them."+

It would be useful to make a collection of several specimens of this kind, but both Europe and America hardly possess any of these monuments, which are the productions of an art freed from religious symbolism, and which iconography would have

god of air, the divinities collected in Paris, and which are of pretty considerable dimensions, are all, most probably, but secondary ones, unless we choose to see Tezcatlipuca in Coyotl, which is near the symbolical reptile, one of the figures of which we give a drawing. Tezcatlipuca (brilliant mirror), the supreme god and soul of the world, generally represented with the features of a young man, 66 was fond," says Bernadino de Sahagun, "of assuming the appearance of the animal abovenamed, and, under this terrible form, held, among a people of

willingly reproduced, had such a thing been possible. Even the hideous statues which the priests of the blood-thirsty religion of Huitzilipuchtli and Tezcatlipuca had had sculptured with such care and minuteness, have gradually disappeared

These numbers are the ones by which the antiquities are designated in the catalogue of the Louvre.

+ See La Collection des Monuments inédits, publiés par M. Henri Ternaux.

61

America, a place similar to that held nowadays by a man-wolf in the minds of the vulgar." The best-informed writer, perhaps, who has written on Mexican antiquities, thus expresses himself, while speaking of the divine Coyotl, on this fantastic myth:-"He placed himself in the public places, right in front of the passers-by, as if to bar their passage," The sculptor's fancy has placed the wolf-god (No. 40) near the gigantic toad (No. 57), which, according to the catalogue of the museum, is the symbol of the tribe of Tamozolan; on its left,

is a bust sculptured in the form of an ellipsoidal cone (No. 2), representing the face of a man, whose two hands clasp a vase in which are two ears of Indian wheat. We will mention, on the authority of the catalogue, and of the great work of Aglio, "that the stalk of Indian wheat is the hieroglyphical sign of the tribes of Ohuapa and Quauxilotitlan." But the name of the god does not, for all this, remain any the less known; the armadillo with a human head, which comes directly afterwards, helps to throw no further light on the symbolical system of the Aztecas. Perhaps, like several other fantastic reptiles

As it

and 40, which are of silver and bronze, sufficiently prove that, though these people might not possess any superabundant knowledge on this point, they were certainly not ignorant of any of the caster's secrets, or even of the chaser's art. is fully ascertained that the use of iron was entirely unknown to the Mexicans, the Peruvians, and the other inhabitants of New Granada, and that they were obliged to substitute brass, formerly erroneously designated by the name of tempered copper, in its place, it is somewhat difficult to imagine by what process the Aztecas cut through basalt and granite,

which are seen in the museum at the Louvre, it represents one of the inhabitants of the Mictlan, that central hell, reigned over by the god Mictlantuctli, where the souls of the departed assumed the forms of various animals.

These rude remains of Azteck art, together with many other fragments which the Louvre contains, suffice to prove that the Mexican sculptors knew how to employ the hardest and most durable materials, in order to represent the various symbols of their blood-thirsty religion. Statues, much ante

and how they managed to polish idols which greatly exceeded in height the ordinary stature of a man. Instruments of ixtli, or obsidranus lapis, with points made exceedingly hard by dint of patience and rubbing, supplied the place of the steel chisel used by us. The large figures contained in the American Museum, though doubtless much smaller than those which have been destroyed, bespeak, in this respect, what great difficulties the sculptor must have had to surmount. Such, among others, is the head numbered 13

rior to the sixteenth century, are to be met with; they are made of teotetl, or divine stone, which appears to be a black jasper, of grey, black, and rose-coloured granite, of serpentine stone, of green jasper, of basalt, of jade of different tints, and, what is less extraordinary, of lava of several colours. Metals were also frequently employed to ornament idols, or even to represent the idols themselves. It is known for certain, that the formidable statue of the god of war, which ornamented the great temple of Mexico, was furnished with a gold head; and the little figures placed in the Louvre, under the numbers 39

which the catalogue states as representing To-cozintli, the goddess of abundance, and which, though it is only made of brown lava, does not require any the less patience from the sculptor, if we take into consideration the numerous details that compose its various attributes. Such is also the serpent with a human head (No. 61), which the catalogue designates, according to the great work of Lord Kingsborough and Aglio, as the symbol of Acamapitchtli, king of Mexico, but which we would rather acknowledge as the Mexican Cybele, Totonantzin (our mother), who was called, according to Ber

nardino de Sahagun, Cihuacohuatl, the woman-serpent. The capital with an abacus, an astragal, and a torus, which is surmounted by a rough statue, and observed on entering the museum, beneath No. 66, is also made of brown lava; but figure 1, which represents the insignia of royalty, is made of grey granite, and must have caused the sculptor many difficulties in its execution.

These various statues, worn away at present by frequent moving and time, were formerly polychromatic, and the different colours with which they were painted formed an essential part in the religious symbolism of these people. We know, for instance, from Torquemada, that Quetzaalcotl, when he was represented under a human form, was painted entirely black, with bundles of feathers to represent flames of fire. We are also aware that Matlalcuaje, the sister of Haloc, god of the waters, while she, herself, was goddess of the tempest, wore a blue tunic. Iacateuctli (the lord who guides us), the god of commerce, wore, according to Clavigero, an azure cloak; but his face was spotted with black and white, while his ears were gold. Macuilxochitl, the divinity who presided over flowers, was represented, says Sahagun, with the features of a flayed man, or rather of one painted red. We will not give any more of these curious details, or these barbarous names, which have, perhaps, already frightened more than one of our readers; we will merely add that, while the Mexicans were acquainted with the art of cutting the hardest stone, they also knew how to form secondary figures of burnt clay as well as by the means of moulding. It was, doubtless, by the latter process that was manufactured, on certain solemn occasions, the gigantic idol of the god Huitzilopuchtli, which was formed of different vegetable grains, stuck together by Indian-wheat paste impregnated with human blood. Some historians maintain that this idol was piled up, bit by bit, on wooden bars, but the first opinion seems to us the most likely one. This figure was broken annually during a grand religious ceremony, so that its fragments, distributed among the tribes, might be used for the administration of a horrible sacrament-less horrible than the one partaken of by the priests, who glutted themselves on the hearts of the victims.

*

Several of the little figures we have engraved have been produced by casts. No. 175, for instance, which representst . Yrcuina, holding a child in his arms, is the production of a cast contained in the American Museum. The god Topiltzin, who has a little human figure in one of his arms, was, doubtless, produced in the same manner, as were also the Nos. 168, 179, and 246, It was by the means of these various kinds of baked clay, that the more important divinities of Mexican theogony, if we are to believe the conjectures of the catalogue, were represented. No. 120, for instance, represents a very strange-looking head of Quetzalcoatl, the god of air, while No. 63 is intended to represent no humbler personage than Tezcatlipoca, the god-creator, dressed in the spoils of a bird; but in spite of the manuscript of the Vatican appealed to here, we must own that we can find in this little statue none of the attributes of a superior being. We do not know whether any more certainty is attached to No. 120, which presents us with the dreaded head of Totec, the military disciple of the god of air. As to Huitzilopochtli (No. 121), the god so formidable in war, and to whom so many human beings were sacrificed that the number of the victims is said to have amounted to sixty thousand in a few years, we admit his authenticity more readily, because his name really is to be met with in valuable Codex of Letellièr. For ourselves, we are at a loss to imagine what god No. 126 is intended to represent, unless, like the figures which surround it, it belongs to a very rudimentary state of art. Though we are not able to claim for the Mexicans a very high position in the hieratic statuary of primitive nations, it would be very unjust to judge them by such specimens as the ones we have seen. We must not forget that thousands of the innumerable household gods,

* With respect to this subject, the learned little work entitled, Essai sur la Theogonee Mexicaine, par M. Ternaux-Compans, Paris, 1840, in Svo, may be consulted

known by the name of Mitlou, and which were constantly renewed in every dwelling, were daily manufactured by the members of a popular calling. The large idols executed by the renowned sculptors whom King Achuetzotzni assembled together in 1487, when he finished the temple of Mexico, were, as we have already said, all broken in 1525. On the first day of that year, says Torquemada, the last temples were burnt down, at the same hour, so to say, in Mexico, in Tlascala, and in Huetzingo, and it was thus that the last traces of Mexican art were destroyed.

DREAMLAND.

CHARLES LAMB regarded bed as a very regal domain, where a man might toss and tumble at his pleasure, and with his bedcurtains drawn close around, be monarch of all he surveyed. And Tom Hood, in his "Lay of Killmansegg," addresses bed most lovingly :

"Oh, bed, bed! delicious bed!

A heaven on earth to the weary head."

And somebody has told us that balmy sleep is kind nature's sweet restorer, and our great dramatist has taught us that gentle sleep is nature's soft nurse that comes to weigh the eyelids down and steep the senses in forgetfulness. Sleep is a common blessing, none the worse for being common; for when the solemn night comes on, birds roost in the trees, fishes sleep in the brooks, cattle rest in the pastures, and man forgetting, and willingly forgetting, the noise and strife and struggle of his life of perpendicularity and motion, lies down on beds or truckle beds to horizontal sleep

"To sleep, perchance to dream."

What a wonderful place is Dreamland! It is more mysterious than all the wonders of the thousand and one nights. Time and space are there annihilated; the mind may wander whithersoever it will, and all through that fairy domain where Queen Mab reigns and there her varied agency employs;-the thinking faculty, released from common drudgery, goes onward, onward, onward, knowing no barrier, and never halting in its course.

We lie down. Everything is very silent. We hear the ceaseless ticking of the clock, and wonder when we shall go off. We hear the church clock strike, we listen and count the hour. Another clock catches up the sound, and tolls the hour; we hearken to hear if yet a lazy clock still lags behind its fellows; no. We grow restless, we become confused, we still hear the ticking of the clock, but the vibrations are becoming more and more indistinct. We are going off. We become more and more confused. We forget where we are. We are off. Where are we?

In a room that we knew many years ago, that we had not been thinking about, that we had almost forgotten; but there it is, clear and plain before us. There is the window with the blind half down as we saw it last, the same frayed tassel, the same red and black carpet, the same steel fender, the same old picture bought in Drury-lane, the same library table, with the leather cut and rubbed and sorely damaged, everything just as we left it. More than that, there is the same proprietor, Old Leighton as we called him, with his silver hair hanging on the collar of his coat, and his silver spectacles thrust high upon his wrinkled forehead, talking is he earnestly, eloquently, and to us. We know that he has been dead these ten years, we are sure of that, and the feeling is anything but pleasant. We are afraid to say so, afraid to ask him anything about his sojourn in the unseen world; it seems that we should be taking a liberty to put any such queries, and we answer as well as we are able. But the matter becomes alarming; for as we turn slightly toward the door, that door is opened, and another man, whose funeral we attended but a week ago, comes in with a pleasant smile. Then a frightful thought comes into our mind that both of those men died unfairly, that both were slain by cruel hands, and that we did it, that we are guilty, that our soul is stained with blood. How shall we escape? We dissemble ease and gaiety, and laugh as of old, but we shake in every limb.

He who entered last is looking out into the crowded street, our old friend in the spectacles has turned to the mantel-piece; we are determined to fly, we must, we will. Away we go down the steep stairs at a bound, out into the busy street, away, away, now up against the houses, now out amid the whirling carriages, now almost down, now roughly handled, but onward still, for as we live they are in pursuit, and our hair rises and our blood creeps. We have left the busy town behind us, and are out on the dusty country road. It is night; the stars keep watch, and far away we hear the sound of feet, onward, onward, as if we were the fabled Jew who never stops to rest. There is a deep, thick, shadowy wood, where giant trees stretch out their arms, and stems and branches twist together in a strange mysterious fashion, and there is silence; we rush forward, away, away, down dim mysterious aisles, and solemn dells; but hark! they are still behind, and we gnash our teeth, and strive to cry aloud, but there is a stifling sensation in our throat, and we cannot shout, and, flinging ourselves upon the ground, we press our face to the sod, and refuse to look up. But gradually, confusededly begin to know that the clock is ticking, and that we are still the same guiltless Jones that we were an hour before.

Who has not at one period or another felt these or similar sensations? A poet makes Eugene Aram tell to one of his scholars the fearful story of his crime, and tell it as a dream. In Dreamland we do not know where we are going to, our mental ship has no pilot and no chart, our mind is governed by no rules; and though all the day long it has been as quiet a jade as ever worked in harness, becomes at night Pegasus for then once, and scampers where it will, or upwards flies to brighter scenes in the world above, or carries us away, like another Mazeppa, into strange and dismal forests which make the heart grow cold. We lose our present self, and play fantastic tricks until the morning. No story of witchcraft and of aged dames riding on broomsticks 1hrough the air could be more wonderful than this. We are at the gold diggings, playing the old game of Tom Tidler's ground, and picking up gold and silver, but we came over in no emigrant ship. We are in the East, amid dark faces and picturesque turbans, and dear old memories, but we did not come by the Oriental Steam-Packet Company. We are in the frigid regions of the north, huge ice islands are about us drifting triumphantly on the deep, deep sea; but we came there by no regular method, we flew there like a bird. We are in mines such as were disclosed to the man in the northern legend-trees effulgent with diamond fruits, pillars of gold and precious stones, fountains with water of a million hues,

and over all a floating and delicious music instead of air. Well, we did not descend any shaft, we sank through the ground like a trick in a pantomime.

And it is not only space that is destroyed, but time is overleaped at a bound. We live in all ages as well as in all countries; backwards or forwards, this way or that way, it is all the same to us. And not only so, but the manner in which we compress in our dreams is the most marvellous of all. A few seconds make up a lifetime. A sound suggests a train of thought, and ere the sound has died away the train is all complete.

Strange old stories there are of dreams that have come true, that have been fulfilled to the very letter. Some, indeed, interpret dreams in a variety of ways, in which every object is rendered typical, and the whole thing resembles the picturepage of an hieroglyphic almanack; and Lover tells us that "Dreams always go by contraries, my dear."

However it may be, and without hazarding a word about it, we must all admit that dreams are very mysterious; that the mind, at liberty to wander where it will, plays wondrous tricks with us all. Strange it is when regal Mab rides forth, drawn with a team of little atomies across men's noses as they lie asleep, galloping through lovers' brains, and over courtiers' knees, and lawyers' fingers, and soldiers' necks, and ladies' lips; strange how she rides :

"Her waggon spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover of the wings of grasshopper;
The traces of the smallest spider's web;
The collars of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;
Her whip of cricket bone; the lash of film."

Some dreams there are which we would not willingly forget; some, indeed, that we would willingly make reality if we could. A beautiful thought of this kind is given by Coleridge in his "Ancient Mariner," when, as the ship of death comes near the shore, and one familiar object after another is seen, the wretched man cries out:

"Oh, dream of joy, is this indeed
The lighthouse top I see?

Is this the hill? is this the kirk ?
Is this mine own country?

"We glided over the harbour bar,
And I with sobs did pray,
'Oh, let me be awake, my God,
Or let me sleep away.'

ROME is still full of the remains of departed greatness. At every corner of the city, and in every mile of the Romagna, we meet with the monuments of the wealth, power, and science of the empire. Two of these we have selected for illustration, but they refer to very different periods of Roman history-the one to its infancy, and the other to its decline.

In the foreground of our first engraving may be seen an ancient fountain, called Meta Sudans, or the Sweating Fountain: near it, upon a height, the ruins of the Temple of Venus; and in the background, the arch of Titus, and the modern Capitol. The fountain, which was a jet d'eau, and is at present in ruins, was in existence under Nero. According to Cassiodorus, it was rebuilt in the reign of Domitian. Tradition states that the gladiators, on issuing from the Colosseum, which is but a few yards distant, came to wash their bloody hands in its clear basin. In the midst was one of those columns in the form of a cone, such as were used in the circus to regulate the course of the horses, and from the top a jet of water shot up into the air, and fell back in a shower into the basin.

Some antiquaries have supposed that this cone served also

to mark the spot where four of the districts, into which ancient Rome was divided, met, viz., the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 10th.

The Temple of Venus and Rome, the ruins of which hide from the spectator the church of Santa Francesca Romana, was built upon a plan sketched by the Emperor Adrian. Venus and Rome, considered as a goddess, were united, in consequence of the divine relationship established through the medium of Eneas. A portico, composed of a double row of granite columns, was raised upon an area of five hundred feet in length, and three hundred in breadth, the remains of which still exist. The columns were about a yard and a half in diameter. This portico was only an approach to the main body of the building, which was 340 feet in length, and 180 in breadth. In the two façades were ten columns of Parian marble, and at the sides twenty, all fluted, and of the Corinthian order of architecture. In the area, between the portico and the peristyle of the temple, properly so-called, were two great marble pillars standing alone, and each supporting a statue. The cella was divided into three parts, and was covered with Parian marble. The floor of the portico