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    thank the artist , although his name is not recorded , not for the Orpheus , who certainly has no ¦ ' music breathing in his face , ' no poetry of motion in his body , whatever he might have in his

    soul , but for the Mercury and Eurydice , which are divine power and feminine grace personified . Orpheus is standing on the brink of a precipice : the idea is good ; he has pursued her and is suddenly stopped from further progress ; he stretches out his arms in despair , and utters a cry of agony in the consciousness that she

    is lost to him for ever . The realization is bad : he looks nothing more nor less than an embodied halloo , though it is so far good as to give full effect to the shadowy beauty of the rest of the picture . At the foot of the precipice , which is black and dim , there is a lurid glow , as if sent from a sea of flame beneath ,

    spreading itself upward , intermingled with vapour , and giving a portentous aspect to all around . Unseen by Orpheus , is Mercury with Eurydice in his arms , as if he had just raised her , and was preparing for a downward flight . There is divinity stamped on his form , divine power and divine love . His arms are circled ,

    with tender care , around the fainting form , which he wills to descend , rather than bears , with him : his face is turned towards Orpheus , and filled with an expression of earnest pity . There is the image of God created in man ! There is the ' living soul' of love that has been * breathed' into every human being . How strange that Atheists should deny the existence of that good spirit whose breath stirs within them every good impulse ! how

    strange that others should regard him as something apart , something remote , something dwelling away and afar from us ! It is in the divine spirit of love , dwelling in our own hearts , that we must seek and find our God ; 'he is a God at hand , and not a God afar off . ' Opposite to the picture last mentioned , is one by Scheffer , of Charlotte Corday , taken at the moment after her return from the assassination of Marat : she has just been rescued by the civil

    guard from the hands of the uncivil populace . She is in the centre of a group of being s under savage excitement , the brutal eagerness of their faces rendered still more disgusting by their begrimed flesh and dirty garments . They are like wild beasts , eager for their prey . She is pale , very pale ; her dark hair escaping from the small white cap , ( the fashion of the time , ) and floating softly on her shoulders , her hands listless in the grasp of

    her enemies , as she had gone through severe trial and were exhausted with the effort . There is yet a majestic simplicity in her whole person , and her eyes are upturned with a lofty expression of self-devotedness . The artist has given to her the

    spirit of a martyr , and however mistaken were the means she used to work out the intended good of her country , she knowingly risked her own life to achieve it , and she was a martyr . Tnere is a ' Lenora , ' by Cottran , the subject taken from the

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    The Luxembourg . 69

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 59, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/61/