Punch (10.1846)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

are quite sure that a Cemetery devoted to defunct Railway schemes
- would be visited by many sincere mourners, in the shape of attorneys,
engineers, scrip-holders, and provisional committee-men. As to the
lawyers, they might write eulogistic inscriptions in a truly parental
style of affectionate regret; for the attorneys are, in many instances,
the parents of the lines—which were looked upon in many cases, as
the medium of consolation and support in old age for the lawyers who
brought the schemes into existence. We give our readers a pair of
very elegant designs for monuments to be erected in the Railway
Cemetery which we have suggested.

(.Being a Utter from Peter Pertjgino Flatts, 110, Berners Street, to his
friend, Michael Angelo McGuilp, 24, Strada Balbi, Rome.)

" You remember, dear friend, our last dinner at the Lepra, when
you paid the bill, amounting to four paoli and two baiocchi, to Giacomo,
the waiter, on condition that I sent you a critique on the exhibition of
the Royal Academy in this wretchedly inartistic city. I proceed to
fulfil my promise.

" In two words, the whole affair is disgusting. Art! my dear fellow, the
artists here don't understand the meaning of the word ; so what can be
expected of the critics ? You know my early Christian Madonna col
Bambino, which, I remember, you thought equal to Giotto, an din which
I flattered myself I had caught a smack of the Byzantine inspiration ?
WelL the miserable ignoramuses here, who are paid so much per line
for criticising, (heaven save the mark !) call it flat, wooden, tea-boardy,
dead-alive, pseudo-German, everything but what it really is—a grand,
severe, and inspired work ! This for a sample. To judge by their
works, the daubers in England don't seem to be aware of the existence
of a school before Raphael. Instead of following the sublime exam-
ple of Germany, and plunging into the renovating bath of ancient
inspiration, they go to Nature ! Nature ! my dear Michael Ahgelo ;
as if ours was not emphatically an art, and so bound to reject
Nature altogether.

" I give you my word, except my own Madonna col Bambino, which
I is packed into a choking little closet (called the Dust-hole), there is
only one work with which a man educated to high art can sympathise ;
I another Madonna col Bambino, by one Dtce, a fine, hard, and grandly -
j felt work, in the style of the Umbrian School of the fourteenth century,
I in which Nature, as they call it, is boldly and entirely departed from.
I One of two soi-disant critics to whom I was introduced had the impu-
i dence to take me to a wretched little daub, ' A Mother and Child,' by

• one Leslie, and to tell me that was ' his' Madonna col Bambino.

• Don't be misled by the title. It wasn't a Madonna at all, but a com-
monplace English mother, kissing a nasty little half-naked brat of a
bantling—a bit of the commonest life. They might be Mrs. P. P.
Flatts and our first-born. If I painted her, it should be as a St. Cecilia
at least.

" I thought better of English art some years since. It seemed to be
| following the true track, in the wake of the glorious Germans, and
l'/ight now have reached the sublime symbolic idealism of the thirteenth
cer.f.iry. But it has allowed itself to be turned aside, and is completely
ruined by a vicious study of Nature.

"As for the landscapes, instead of the seven brown trees and sweetly

regular hills we have so often admired in the beautiful backgrounds of
Perugino, I find literal things by Lee and Creswick, real green woods
and lanes and river-sides, such as one may see any day in Sussex
and Devonshire. It is enough to drive a classically-minded man to
despair.

" In fact, English art is sinking rapidly into the slough of common
life in everything. Her painters seem to have no higher aim than to
paint what lies before them.

" It seems clear that no prize-holder in the Art-Union will buy my
Madonna col, &c. Would you advise me to paint out the glory, and
turn it into a Countrywoman and Baby ?

" Send me your advice, and believe me ever, your brother in art.

" P. P. "Flatts.

" N. B. I have painted out the glory. A friend of mine has got an
£80 prize in the A. U."

DRESS FOR DELINQUENTS.

The newspapers have lately published the decision of a Court-Martial
holden lately at Dublin, on gunner and driver James Grat, No. 370,
of the Royal Artillery, who was arraigned on the following charges .—

" 1. For having been drunk on patrolling picquet on or about the evening of the
15th of March, 1816, at Portobello Barracks. Dublin.

" 2. For having, at Portobello Barracks, Dublin, on or about the evening of the 15th
of March, 1816, struck, and afterwards kicked, Company-Sergeant William Hawkins,
of the Royal Artillery, his superior officer, when in the execution of his duty."

On both these charges the man wras found guilty ; whereon the Court

Martial adjudged—

" That the prisoner, gunner and driver James Gray, No: 370, of the Royal Artillery,
be transported as a felon for seven years."

Discipline, of course, must be maintained ; still, could we procure
for this poor fellow a somewhat milder doom than transportation, we
should be glad. Had we been his counsel, we should have suggested an
expedient to him which might, possibly, have answered that purpose.
We would have advised him to appear before his judges in a suit of
sable, instead of in his uniform, and in a white cravat in place of- his
stock, to which, we think, we would have added bands, and perhaps a
cassock. An offender looks so differently in a black coat from what he
does in a blue or a red one ! The cloth makes such a difference to the
culprit !

Lately, in several interesting instances, delinquents differing only
from James Gray in respect of the above-mentioned externals, except that
some of them were more guilty, and all had less excuse than the Artil-
lery-man, have been merely suspended from their offices for some three
months. Grat might, perhaps, have escaped the punishment of a felon,
could he only have claimed the benefit of Clergy.

THE KNELL OF PROTECTION.

Full fathom five Protection lies ;

On her bones are carols made ;
Those are cut that were her ties :

Nothing of her that doth fade
But doth "suffer a peel-change,
Into Commerce free to range.
Landlords hourly ring her knell:
Hark ! now I hear them—ding-dong, bell.
{Burden—on the land.)—Ding-dong, bell.

" Nosce Telpsum."

In the course of the debate on the Roman Catholic Pains and Pen-
alties, (which, to the disgrace of Parliament, the dismay of Plumptre,
the disgust of the British Lion, and the speedy destruction of the
Empire, are about to be abolished,) the Bishop of Exeter described
the Law as " the most unaccountable and contradictory thing with
which he had any acquaintance." Has the Bishop, then, no acquaint-
ance with himself ? If so, we congratulate him sincerely, despite the
musty proverb above quoted.

RATHER stiff-necked.

There is an individual in the Strand who advertises " Cravats for
the Prince and the People." Surely this association of Prince and
People in the same Cravat is enough to raise His Royal Highness's
choler. We can scarcely see how this unity of Cravat is to be attained.
It reminds us of the sworn friends who had one heart, one purse, and
one hat. The latter circumstance induces the supposition that the
friends were Castor and Pollux.

A Pessimist Joke.—Madame Tossaud has sent a card to Smith
O'Brien, inscribed :—" Martyrs wax-inatcd on the shortest notice,"