He

deep tones and vivid flesh tints. put his name to the pictures on which he rested his reputation. It was old Palma who finished the picture left unfinished by Titian, and he put his name to it recording the fact. No. 129. "Heads." Titian.-A very fine study, especially the profile. No. 170. "The Virgin and Child with Joseph, in a landscape." Carlo Maratti" O si sic omnia." It is a very sweet picture, good in colour and composition; the attitudes are easy and unaffected; it is full of grace. The child is lovely. The landscape, which is very good, is, perhaps, a little too weak for the sky.

No. 171. "A Cottage Girl going with her Pitcher to the Brook." Gainsborough. The cottage girl has a dog under her arm, most admirably painted; it is quite life; so is the girl-that is, the face. How very superior is Gainsborough here to Murillo; but the background is vile, weak, and washy, and disagreeable in colour, and slovenly in execution. Gainsborough was not a landscape painter; see his book of studies; was there ever any thing so poor?-utterly unimaginative, and the vilest selections from common nature. He was a portrait painter. And yet what a sum of money was given for that abominable thing the "Market Cart," that disgraces the walls of our National Gallery!! Who will venture to agree with us in our heterodox opinion?

No. 172. "Head of a Female." Giorgeone.-Richly brown-a good

head.

No. 173. The Madonna." Sasso Ferrato. Beautifully painted-very poor in expression; it is in imitation of Correggio in style and colouring.

No. 174. "Landscape and Figures, with a Fall of Water." Ruysdael. How admirably Ruysdael manages his bursts of light in his skies they are always in the right place!this is very fine, the sky on the horizon is not quite clear,

No. 175. "Sea-shore, with Figures." Gainsborough-is not very pleasing; it is violent in weak lights and splashy browns-is very sketchy, perhaps unfinished.

No. 176. "Portraits of John Bellenden Ker and his brother Henry Gawler" certainly not in Sir Joshua's good manner.

No. 177. "Live Fowls." Hen

cape.' not pleasing.

No. 179. "Landscape, with a Fall of Water." Ruysdael.-This is more like Everdingen; it wants the charm of colouring, and fresh clearness of Ruysdael.

No. 180. "The Last Supper." Sasso Ferrato.--This is beyond the usual size of this painter's pictures. It is very good-very superior to his higher-finished Madonnas; it is good in colour. The principal figure is rather poor-here we should expect to see a failure. It is an imitationpossibly a copy throughout, and apparently from a fresco.

No. 181," Interior of a Dutch Church"-Cuyp-is very fine, the green curtain is rich, and wonderfully illuminated.·

No. 182. "Landscape, with the Fisherman presenting to Polycrates, the Tyrant of Samos, a Fish, inside of which was afterwards found the Ring he had cast into the Sea." Salvator Rosa.- Freely painted, very good composition, landscape and figures well agree. It is not so dark as his pictures usually are; and has a peculiarity, as if red colour had been scumbled over the whole, and left in the grain. The rolling clouds and mountains hold communion with each other; the aerial distance is well preserved. It shows how much can be done with little labour, when a vigorous mind directs the hand.

No. 183. "The Virgin presenting the Infant Saviour to a Female Saint." Paul Veronese.-This is one of the most beautiful of the masterly works of Paul Veronese. In some respects it is out of his manner. It is a subject of quiet, of a holy repose. Amidst all its richness, almost glitter, an under glitter, of dress and jewellery, it is the quietest of pictures-modesty, sweetness, purity. Excellent in composition, and most tender in expression. It is very simple in compositionthe Virgin on the right, sitting, presents the child to the Female Saint on the left, who kneels and bends the head downwards; above and between the figures is an angel in the sky-so light and floating-and how beautiful is the sky! It is not, in the common

acceptation, a natural, an every-day sky-angels do not come into them; it is of the colour of precious stonerather green than blue, yet how aerial, and setting off the flesh tints with a wonderful grace of art. A lion's paw is on the saint's drapery-why may it not be St Catherine? There is not a picture in this Exhibition to which we so often returned, and always with renewed pleasure. It is all beauty.

No. 184. St Francis with the Infant Christ." Murillo.-There is nothing divine here, nor even sanctity, and the colouring is any thing but agreeable.

No. 185. "Landscape, with the Story of the Cruel Death of Polycrates." Salvator Rosa. - A wild scene, very fine-a companion to No. 182, and in the same manner.

No. 186. "Job and his Friends." Salvator Rosa. Very powerfully painted, but we do not admire Salva tor Rosa's large figures.

No. 187. "An Exterior, with Figures Drinking." P. de Hooge.The title gives no idea of this picture. De Hooge's "figures drinking," are no drunken boors, no beasts-his i the tranquil sweetness and comfort of domestic life. It is of the detail of descriptive poetry, the colouring answering to the music of words. There is an air of sunny peace, almost of elegance, in whatever De Hooge touches. You look upon this little picture with undisturbed pleasure; it is of calm enjoyment, of easy circumstance, of little luxuries, rare enough to be prized. The figures drinking are men of trust and probity; the woman is modest and gentle who pours out the well-stored liquor. To make the home-happiness more perfect, a child is sitting apart, nursing a pet-dog. Then we must have a neigh. bourhood, for one of the drinkers is a guest, just stepped across the way; so you see through a doorway across the street: and there is a house, and one with a cherished tree before it, and there is some little show of superior respectability, yet not too proud, a gilt ornament over the door, as an armorial escutcheon. This is quite a lesson to those who paint familiar scenes they are stupid, without some such purpose as this; the mind is here gratified

through the eye, and that should ever be the painter's aim. This picture is exquisitely painted, and with an illumination of colour throughout.

No. 188. "Landscape, with Figures." Wynants.-This master was evidently a favourite with Gainsborough, who yet never painted such bits of landscape; they are too often backgrounds to dock leaves, elaborately painted. We have seen better specimens than this.

No. 189. "The Taking Down from the Cross, a Vision," a pasticcioTeniers-is one of this master's clever vagaries. In these subjects he mostly had Rembrandt in his eye.

Ru

No. 190. "A Boar Hunt." bens. There is great energy in the figures; the whole is thinly painted. This is not very unlike a pasticcio of D. Teniers.

No. 191." Diogenes." Salvator Rosa.-Were Diogenes painted to the life, we should not like the cynic. Nor do we here.

No. 192. "View in the Environs of Dresden." Canaletto-as No. 142, by Canaletto, the brother-coarse, and not pleasing in any way.

The

No. 193. "Dead Christ, supported by the Virgin, with Joseph of Arimathea." Pietro Perugino.-This is a curious picture by the master of Raffaele, and not without much of the beauty which characterized the pupil. The figure of the Christ is indeed hard and quaint-what we should term Gothic. In some parts the colouring is better than that of Raffaele. heads are full of tenderness, of painful sorrow, not undignified-sanctified. The figure on the left, holding Christ, is extremely beautiful, and how very finely coloured!-no unmixed, crude colours; it is difficult to give them names, and therefore are they the more impressive. It is very curious that all the flesh has little minute cracks over it, as if done by some method on purpose; they are where else. If the whole were but equal to some of the parts, the master would not have been outdone by his great pupil.

no

We have here noted all the pictures, and have already trespassed too much on the pages of Maga to make further remarks,

WE undertake a bold task, to bring within the compass of a pamphlet, a new view of that modern and reformed Political Economy which has now been before the public for a period of twenty-five years. Exactly two years later than Waterloo, and therefore exactly twenty-five years earlier than this current summer of 1842, David Ricardo made the first and the last effort that ever can be made to revolutionize that science which, for nations, professes to lay bare the grounds of their prosperity and for individuals, as distributed by nature into three great orders of proprietors, the grounds of their expectations. These three orders are

1. That vast majority whose property lies in their natural endowments, whether intellectual powers, or physical powers, or mixed accomplishments between skill and strength: all these people, under some name or other salary,' 6

' appointments,'

' fees,' or however the phrase may be courteously varied to suit the liberal quality of the service-receive WAGES. 2. Owners of capital, which (whether fixed or circulating) means any accumulated fund or materials whatever applied to reproduction and not to consumption: these people, if they are themselves the direct employers of the industry put in motion, receive PROFITS: but, if they act by proxysimply advancing funds to others who employ them, they receive INTEREST, which must always sympathize with PROFITS, as being unavoidably an integral part of the same fund.

3.

Owners of land, mines, quarries, fisheries, turbaries, of which the peculiar privilege is to yield two separate funds; and these funds are pretty generally vested in two separate classes. The case is-that not one of these great engines, as we may call them, can be worked without capital. The mine, for instance, the land, the fishery, are all alike useless, in the same sense as artillery is useless without ammunition, unless so far as they are combined with the money requisite for paying wages, and the apparatus,

whether in preparations or mechanic power, which gives effect to labour: that is, unless so far as they are endowed with capital both circulating and fixed. But hence arises a twofold fund; one upon the capital, another upon the mine, or whatever else may be the original subject to which the capital is applied. These two funds are in the most rigorous sense divided from each other; and the test of that division is, that they obey different laws-one tending slowly to increase, the other slowly to decline. The fund arising on the capital, is Profit: the fund arising on the mine itself, is RENT. The latter is always in correspondence to a scale of differences arising upon the several mines worked in co-existence with each other; the former obeys no such scale, for there are no differences: on the contrary, after allowing for a few cases of extra profits under special circumstances of hazard, or other repulsive accidents, it is pretty evident that profits must always be gravitating towards a general uniformity; because the first notorious inequality of profits raises a public temptation to that transfer of capital which immediately redresses it.

These, then, are the functions,' to adopt a philosophic term, of all property. There can be no other. All men who breathe, allowing for the mixed case of mendicants, depend upon one or other of these three funds :-upon 1. wages; upon 2. profits; or 3. upon rent. For annuitants, public or private, fall under No. 2, since the receivers of interest and of profit are but joint dividers of the same fund.

Such being the case, is it not a marvellous thing, that, according to the allegation of the new economy, No. 3 had not been so much as discovered twenty-eight years ago? We need not add, secondly, that its laws could not have been ascertained, whilst the elementary idea had not been developed. But, thirdly, it may be necessary to add, that even No. 1 and No 2, radiating in fact from

a central principle, common to all the three modes of income, are challenged peremptorily by the new economy as falsely expounded in every preceding theory. Thus, whilst some persons conceit that the conflict between the two systems is not capital or essential, the answer is, that it is only upon the first question, the midst, and the last.

Is this a trifle? Waiving the scandal intellectually, that a schism so gross should exist upon any science, can we think it for the public welfare that a conflict (or more properly an anarchy) of opinions should, upon every third day, reduce us to a mere impotence, an utter dog or resourceless imbecility, as to the very direction of our public counsels? Upon a case of life and death, whenever such a case does revolve, or is thought to revolve, upon us in some great national perplexity, we can neither decide with consistency, nor act with effect-we are powerless for good. And the ignorance domineering at this moment, amongst men otherwise the most enlightened, is actually grosser than it was two centuries ago. Can that be a trifle? And to show how little need there is for any curious research, in order to find public blunders more outrageous than existed before the birth of political economy, this very day, July the 8th, 1842, on looking casually into the journal which happens at the moment to lie on our table-no obscure journal, but, within its own class, perhaps the first in Europe-and conducted with the powerful talent corresponding to that great distinction, we find the editor theorising upon the supposed present distress of Great Britain after the following fashion:-He asserts that the speculative solution of the case (to which, of course, he would adapt his practical solution) lies in the acts, voluntary acts, of the master manufacturers. What have they done? They have, it seems, as one result of a competition pushed to excess, lowered wages, so as in that way to account sufficiently for much more of distress than has ever been proved to exist. But why? With what purpose? For the sake of depressing prices, we are told, down to a saleable point. Now, let the reader pause, were it but for the two moments required to throw back his memory upon the case which we are going to

cite. A body of country gentlemen in one of the south-eastern counties, had (say fifty-five years ago) passed a set of resolutions, presuming in an act of Parliament the power to control wages; upon which, what was the comment of Edmund Burke ? Rarely did that great man descend to sneering for an understanding, so opulent in serious arguments upon every theme alike, sneering was too cheap a resource; yet, in this instance, he sneered. "The gentlemen had dined," was his suggestion; so monstrous in his eyes was the notion that wages could depend upon acts of the will, in any quarter, or under any circumstances. Surely, if the manufacturers had possessed the imputed power, they must have been more of saints in forbearing for a century to use this power, than any of the parties to the cotton interest are reputed by the extra-gossipian world. However, they depressed wages. That is the theory. But next, in what view? With what final purpose? To force sales by lowering prices. But the lowering of wages would have no tendency to lower prices. We shall not anticipate; there is no call upon us to rehearse prelusively. Those who are interested enough in the question may look for the arguments in their proper place. It is sufficient for the present that price is independent of wages. "Oh, but we do not profess this thorny system of modern economy: we are no partisans of Ricardo!" Be it so; but people, in arguing economic questions, are bound to have some theory. If they have no grounds for opinions, they can offer no guarantees for results. Having no basis for their principles, they can have none for their replies. Where all doctrines rest upon hazard, all inferences will rest upon conjecture; and, even as regards Ricardo, whatever is hitherto unanswered may be assumed for true provisionally. It is so for as long a space of time as in fact it is not answered; so long it cannot be evaded or slighted. But at all events a public man (and an able editor of a potent journal is amongst the weightiest of public men) is bound to be aware of a great outstanding protest against his own notions: he is bound to notice it; and he is bound to answer it-if he can. Diminished wages cannot produce

diminished prices: prices depend on other forces than wages. And, if they could, it is no more in the power of those who own one fund (the fund of profits) arbitrarily to operate upon a counter fund, (the fund of wages,) than reciprocally for wages to depress profits. Both depend upon eternal laws-liable to no caprices, far less to the capital self-interest of individuals. And, when such individuals most fancy themselves in the exercise of private discretion, most of all they are executing the mandates of public necessity. Finding it his interest to reduce his work-people numerically, or to reduce their wages, and finding at the same time that he is able to do so, a manufacturing capitalist fulfils his immediate pleasure; and in so doing he seems to exercise an act of choice: but neither that power, nor that interest, was created by himself. His agency has been purely ministerial.

Generally, therefore, in this anar. chy of opinions, (as we must continue to call it,) when that doctrine is put forward deliberately, which already fifty years ago Burke had deemed colourably tenable only under the excuse of having drunk too much wine- there is justification enough for attempting to abstract within a short compass the outline of the new economy. This economy is bold, is steady, is determinate, whatever else it is. Nobody can complain that it is wavering and indecisive, or not self-consistent. You see at a glance where to answer it-in what point to apply your logic of refutation. And, on the other side, you are not suffered to doubt whether you have got an answer or not. It is a great point of logic for a disputant to know when he is answered. And it is a corresponding merit in a theory, that it does not leave a man in doubt on the organs of strength, on the points to be assailed, or on the exact measure of success in the assault.

As to the "short compass" of our attempt, we may plead that it resembles in that respect those efforts in caligraphy where a whole body of scriptural documents are written on the face of a shilling. We bring 589 (equal to 196 of our own) withits of a pamphlet. But we supporting interest chiefly To pleas :

the scandal of a total schism

between the two received economies. There is not one economy prevailing, but there are two economies; aud in mutual hostility. And the excess of this hostility we have shown by the fact, that on the three vital questions of wages, profits, rent, they are in absolute and irreconcilable contradiction.

2dly, We rely on the interest at this time in various universities connected with Ricardo: on this interest sustained (as it really is) and heightened by the reputed obscurity of manner in Ricardo's exposition. As to which obscurity we wish to tender an explanation.

Ricardo is brief, but brevity is not always the parent of obscurity. The obscurity, where any exists in Ricardo, is rather permitted than caused by his style of exposition; in part it adheres to the subject, and in part it grows out of the lax colloquial application which most men have allowed to the words value, labour, and rent; so that, when they find these words used with. a stern fidelity to one sole definition, they are confounded. Pulled up sharply by the curb-chain of Ricardo, they begin to fret, plunge, and grow irritated. But the true account, and it is also the true justification, of Ricardo's brevity--both where it docs and where it does not involve any slight obscurity-lies in the separate nature of his duties; in the peculiar relation of that service which he offered to Political Economy, as compared with the service previously offered by Adam Smith. What was the difference? It was the system, the aggregate of doctrines, which Smith undertook to develope. He did not so much propose to innovate in separate parts of the science as to organize the whole. What he said was, "given the many parts already accumulated, I propose to exhibit their relations, to unfold their connexions." But did Ricardo promise a system in the same sense? Not at all: whatever seemed to him correct, that he adopted sileutly; there was no need to say any thing, for he had nothing to amend. But upon the great basis which supported the whole, there it was only that he disturbed the old settlements. The phenomena had been truly stated: generally their relations had been truly exposed. It was in the grounds, the causes, the conditions, of these phe