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Untitled Article
Selira is not yet in disguise , —has not yet put on the garb of the Galiongee , —why arm him with so suspicious-looking a weapon , to alarm the vigilance of old Giaffir . Then the architecture is not Turkish ; it does not c illustrate ' the subject . The scene was a lattice-grated chamber , with pictured roof and marble floor ; not a carpeted open porch . And where is the vase of rose-water , and the lute , and the ottoman of silk , and the Indian vases , and the
thousand and one other prettinesses of a Mahometan apartment ? The mountain in the background shows well ; but what is that unsightly deformity projecting from the full trowser of Selim ? Can that be meant for a human foot ? What a clubbed deformity ! It looks like the very hoof of ' auld Clootie , ' disguised in a sandal . Had Byron been in life , his jealous pride would have deemed that it meant personality . The botany seems rather of an uncertain
kind ; but there is a curious effect produced , probably without design . The tops of the flowers against the pillars to the left , resemble the head of a fiend , or goul , or afrit , scowling upon the lovers from amid the leafy shelter , as if in omen of the catastrophe . The Corporal Violet of the French presented not a more perfect profile .
There is another little exquisite print , still more minute , called * A Street in Athens . ' To the identity of this we feel ready to swear . The houses without chimneys ; the church with its square white tower , and lofty belfry , and hipped roof ; the lean-to against the side wall , which serves as a robing-roorn for the priest and a temporary deposit for dead bodies ; the loophole-looking window above it near the roof : I can hear the chaunt of the service even
now issuing from it . The low-domed buildings , the houses and hovels intermingled with green trees and vines and tall cypresses ; the lofty pharos , and the lowly sheds , with the distant hills for a background , indistinctly seen in the summer haze ; the group of merry-makers seated carelessly on the earth , and the imagination of the bright eyes cautiously peeping from the distant lattices
in mysterious security , —all vividly impress us with the feeling that it is really Athens we behold . Rarely before has so much subject been so distinctly and beautifully represented in so small a space . While such things as these are done , and so cheaply , in vain shall we be preached to of the decline of the arts in England . May they increase till they cease to be numbered , and not a poor man ' s cottage or chamber be devoid of them ! They are amongst the silent workers of civilization , and will , in due time , bring forth
good fruit . We can afford to let the higher walks of painting lie in abeyance , till these admirable instructors shall have prepared a public to appreciate them . Junius Redivivus .
Untitled Article
On the State of the fine Arts in England . 13
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/13/
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