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    painting admired , copied , engraved ; yet love and the soul are alike unconscious of any concern therein . Psyche is selfish , and Love seems half asleep ; so far it is consistent , for love is never thoroughly awake when selfishness is near him ; there is a numb * ing coldness in her presence that makes him drowsy . The subject is an exquisite one if spiritually dealt with : we should like to see a higher mind employed upon it . All the paintings here are of the modern French school . ' Heaven defend us , ' say some , —Heaven preserve it , say we , and at the same time teach its artists to improve their noble powers , giving them better direction or a better choice of subjects . Here , as in many other places , there are far too many who have chosen plague , pestilence , battle and murder , madness and misery , instead of others morfc adapted to the quickly progressin g state of the world . They paint backwards instead of forwards : plagues are mitigating ; the trade

    of war is beginning to be held in detestation , and we are tending rapidly towards universal sympathy . Pejhaps the French artists would teach the people a hatred to war as the Spartans taught their children to loathe drunkenness , by an exhibition of its disgusting consequences ; their teaching ( if it be so ) will make deeper impression , as the drunkenness with blood is more abhorrent than the drunkenness with wine . But the highest task of a painter is to create a love for moral and intellectual beautv bv

    X ml •/ depicting moral and intellectual beauty ; rather than the more > indirect way of creating a loathing for vice by painting it in all its deformity . Objectionable as are many of the subjects chosen , the power of realization displayed in their execution cannot be sufficiently admired . There is the battle of Aboukir , by Gros . It is like one of Scott ' s novels , in more respects than one ; in its lively action , and in that the hero is not the hero . Who would not rather be the fine old Pacha Mustapha , deserted as he is by

    his troops , wounded till he can fight no more , yet nearl y unhorsed by his last effort , seizing one of the flying cowards by his turban 3 trying to drag him on to the very bayonets of the enemy ; who would not ratner be this brave tiger , than the gay fop , Murat , who is in the centre gallantly equipped as a bridegroom for his bride , rather than a murderer for his victims : not a curl of his

    whiskers ruffled , not a fold of his sash displaced , leading on his thousands remorselessly to drive the retreating host into the flood ready to receive them , should they escape the sword of the pursuer . ' And the enemy would do likewise had they the power . ' Woe to the trade of war , that encourages the perversion of man ' s noble passions : although Sir Robert Peel thinks , or did think last year , ( there is no vouching for a statesman ' s opinions , ) when he spoke on the Irish Coercion Bill , that ' there was something animating in the idea of a battle / There is something animating in the idea of a battle ; it animates all ' those who have a holier warfare before them to go on steadily , bravely , in their

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    The Luxembourg 55

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  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 55, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/57/