Punch (12.1847)

218

PUNCH'S REVIEW.
The Post Office .Directory for 1847.

These is a good deal of pleasant light reading in the pages of this
extensively circulated periodical. There can he no doubt that each
annual volume furnishes a vast addition to our stock of modern letters.
There are several works on the same principle as the Post Office
Directory, but we do Dot know of one that combines, in so convenient a
degree, the delightful peculiarities of business and playfulness. The
mixture of fun and fact is quite extraordinary, and in every page we
find a series of puzzles, which render the work a sort of compre-
hensive collection of " Nuts to Crack," for the library, the office, and
the counting-house.

As a Christmas book, we know of nothing that we should recommend
so earnestly as we should the Post Office Directory. A Twelfth-night
party might amuse themselves for hours over the riddles contained in
the entertaining volume. Even in its earliest pages the fun begins, for
we find opposite to the name of Adnam the ingenious piece of per-
plexing hieroglyphic comprehended in the following syllables, " Who.
spiced, old Swan la. Upper Thames St." Surely there is an hour's
amusement at least to be derived from the attempted solution of this
strange enigma. Who would ever imagine that these fragmentary
exclamations, or whatever else they may be called, are intended to
signify "Wholesale Spice Dealers, Old Swan Lane, Upper Thames
Street."

In a portion of the work a little further on, we are struck with the
interesting announcement of " Who. Button Wa.," which causes us to
inquire wfco does what ? and how can buttons have any thing to do
with it ? An hour or two's industry will, however, reveal the fact,
that "Who. Button Wa." means nothing more nor less than Wholesale
Button Warehouse.

It will be seen from the specimens we have given, that endless
amusement may be derived from the Post-Office London Directory.
There cannot be the slightest doubt in the world, that any one who
reads it regularly through will rise from the perusal, if not a wiser and
a sadder, at least a puzzleder and mithereder man.

THE QUEEN'S PLATE.

A Print-publisher, whose shop is in an open umbrella in Tottenham
Court Road, writes to say, that it is rather unfair that Alderman
Moon should have the exclusive privilege of soliciting subscriptions
for his engravings in the Royal palaces. A picture of the Royal
Family is exhibited at Buckingham Palace, and the admiring visitor
is gently pulled aside by a gentleman who informs him, very politely,
that "a proof is only £10 10s.—shall he have the pleasure of putting
your name down ?" That attentive gentleman is an agent of Alderman
Moon, and his object is to coax a subscription out of everybody who
enters the palace. The Print-publisher above contends, that if the
i palace is turned into a print-selling establishment, it ought to be
| thrown open equally, and without favour, to the entire profession, and
not limited exclusively to one enterprising member. He says he should
like to attend with his umbrella, and he knows several publishers in
the New Cut who would be rejoiced to establish agents in the Royal
drawing-rooms, for the disposal of their al fresco stock, consisting of
pictorial alphabets, "price only one penny," and a rich assortment of
illuminated chimney-sweeps. We must say our correspondent writes
as if he were a little jealous of Alderman Moon.

A CHANCE FOR HIGH ART.

" Sir,

" Everybody complains that High Art is at a discount in this
countryI am a living proof of the fact. I find it quite impossible to
live by ideal creations, and am at this moment (with a heart entirely
devoted to the Umbrian School, and a hand which I am convinced only
wants the fostering aid of a Leo, or a Chigi, to equal Fra Bartolomeo)
obtaining a precarious support from a portrait club, held at the ' Goose
and Gridiron,' Clare Market.

" Sir, I need not say there is something wrong here. Government
patronage will not set it right, The new House of Lords offers a fine
field ; but look at Ma. Dyce's fresco. Between ourselves, we must, with
whatever reluctance, confess that it is muffish to the last degree. Now,
sir, I have deeply meditated on this subject. I have read Vasari (in a
translation), Bwrnet on E/ect, Mr. Ruskin's Modern Painters, Lempriere's
-Dictionary, GoU-smith's History of England, ditto Greece and Rome, The
Vicar of Wakefield, Gil Bias, and Sir Joshua Reynold's Discourses. These
studies, aided by an examination of the finest pictures, have, I think,

led me to a discovery which contains the true secret why the old
masters were what they were, and why we remain so far below them.

" The old masters looked at their subjects as realities. Now
realities, t. e. men and women, wear clothes. Accordingly the old
masters painted their personages in the costumes they saw around
them. Guido puts Swiss guards at the funeral pile of Dido, and
Rembrandt (I believe) paints Abraham as about to dispatch Isaac
with a blunderbuss. The young men in Rafael's Marriage of tht
Virgin wear Italian dresses of the fifteenth century.

" They thus actualised the ideal, if I may be allowed the expres-
sion, (which a party at the ' Goose and Gridiron,' on Tuesday last,
declared to he ' stuff a' nonsense'—and this was one of my critics !)
because they felt the subject as a reality ; and the impress of this
feeling is upon their works. Why should not our painters do the same ?
If we can't paint a life-like Cesar in a toga and paludamentum, (see
Adams's Anti^iittes,) we may still succeed with one in a tail-coat or
paletot. This is a sketch which I made at our weekly meeting in
illustration of my principle. It was much relished. The subject is the
assassination of Julius Cesar, (see Goldsmith's History of Rome).

" Again, look at the Judgment of Paris, by Rubens, in our National
Gallery. The ladies are his two wives and a third party, who seems
to have been a common model; and the Paris is obviously a young
Flemish gent of the seventeenth Century. I would treat the subject
thus :—

where the realities of the nineteenth century (in which we live)
bring out the notion much more strongly than it could be developed