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work; but these, like nearly all the works of these three painters in the gallery, are of earlier date, and lent by the present owners. But Mr. Watts contributes a recent painting of great power, and which alone, perhaps, of all the works exhibited here, can merit the title of a great picture. A greatness of style is perceptible, as was observed, in two of the larger figures of Mr. Burne Jones; but in Mr. Watts's Love and Death there is a grand and impressive idea, appealing to our imaginative faculty as well as to our sense of form and colour, shadowing forth one of the profoundest enigmas of life, and embodied with a sombre grandeur worthy of the subject. There is something that sends a chill through us in the sight of this heavily-draped, slow-moving, portentous figure, which advances irresistibly towards the entrance, as we may say, of the House of Life, its back to the spectator, the terror of its countenance only to be guessed from the reflected agony of protest and repulse in the action of the rosy winged boy who is ready to sink under his doom. The figures are in one sense supernatural, but it is noticeable how Mr. Watts's supernatural differs from that of "opposite" at the further extremity of the room. Mr. Burne Jones's angels are supernatural in virtue of the elimination of every characteristic of human feeling or passion; Mr. Watts's figures represent moods of human feeling in its most intense and concentrated ideal expression. Before a picture like this we fe 1 that painting can still do something for us intellectually; can quicken our deepest sympathies, and stir our profoundest emotions, "comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” 1

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Mr. Richmond's Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon is also a work of high and imaginative aim, but one in regard to which we cannot help at once per

May it be suggested, though doubtfully and with deference, whether there is not an oversight in perspective, by which the left leg of the figure representing "Love" is made to ap

ceiving that it would never have been painted, had not the works of Mr. Leighton been in existence first; though, to say truth, the work does not come too near to its model. The artist may rest with more confidence on his portraits, which, however, are not painted for the occasion. That of Mrs. Freshfield, though unquestionably open to a charge of mannerism, is very unusual and very charming in its semiidealised treatment, its delicate harmonies of colour in the elegant decorative adjuncts, the fine drawing of the hands, and in a certain serene dignity of pose and manner imparted to

the whole.

Among those whose works are largely represented in the gallery is Mr. Legros, than whom no one exhibits a style more manly, sincere, and unpretending. His Le Chaudronnier is a painting which at once compels our respect by its simple truthfulness and straightforwardness of style. This and the other larger works of this artist are not, however, exhibited by himself; his own contributions comprise a landscape and four studies of heads painted before the Slade school class in the course of his duties as instructor, and which are full of spirit and character. In the larger works there is a certain deficiency, a dulness of tone and a too uniform quiescence in the figures, which cannot but be felt as a shortcoming; and it is in fact, so far, by this artist's studies and especially by his etchings, that we know how forcible he can be. Possibly he may transplant this force and vivacity in time into his larger works, which only require some such brightening up as that pear too long! If the line of the ankle down to the heel (partially hid by the right leg) be followed out by the eye, and compared with the perspective distance between the two feet of the figure on the pavement, it certainly appears that the lower part of this limb must be of disproportionate length. If it be so, it is a small blemish in a great work, easily corrected: if those more learned in technicalities of drawing decide that there is nothing wrong, so much the better.

would imply, to render them works of very high interest, as they are already of very solid and enduring merit. Then there is Mr. A. Moore, another painter with a marked individuality, whose principal contributions here represent his peculiar qualities, grace of form, very fine drawing, and most delicate comb'nations of colour in decorative drapery, -in perfection; a perfection, however, which has rather restricted aims, and moves within narrow bounds. Indeed, the artist has not apparently claimed in general to be more than a painter of the outward graces of elegant figure, and subtle tones of colour; he generally gives his beautiful little works some merely conventional distinctive title, "pansies," "beads," and so on. In the present case one figure holds a book closed in the hand, and is entitled The End of the Story: a title which rather unfortunately forces upon our attention the limits of his art. Such a title naturally excites our interest; we expect to see in the expression of the figure something that may suggest to our imagination the nature of the story and of its effect on the reader. But Mr. Moore gives us nothing of this. His figure is a graceful woman, charmingly draped, and she holds a book; but that is all that he tells us. The larger figure, Sapphires, is evidently finished con amore, and is so perfect in its delicate physical charm of contour and colour as to tempt us for the moment to forget that we may tire of an art, however lovely, which makes little appeal to the intellect and none to the emotions.

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dress of our countrywomen; he portrays a certain type of girl, the style of the figure, the sit of the dress, to perfection: but why this type of girl always? That there are young women to be found, even among those who rank socially as "ladies," so dressy," so inanely handsome, so pert and essentially vulgar in expression, we unfortunately know; that an artist desirous of painting "society" in England should perversely select this disagreeable type for illustration is not altogether creditable either to his taste as an artist or his truthfulness as an illustrator. It would be hardly courteous to quit the Grosvenor Gallery without a word for the fine portrait by Sir Coutts Lindsay himself, of Lady Lindsay; a full-length figure holding a violin; a work combining considerable individuality in expression with a rich, though not obtrusive, decorative effect. The portrait of the same lady by Mr. Watts, apparently at a considerably earlier date, also appears; a portrait full of life and energy, and very fine in colour. Sculpture is but scantily represented. Mr. Maclean's Ione (presumably the heroine of The Last Days of Pompeii) has fine qualities, and is in a pure and sculpturesque style: and we cannot but contrast the advantageous circumstances under which such a figure is seen here, in the midst of a large and handsomely furnished room, with the conditions under which sculpture is exhibited at the Academy rooms. The little sculpture gallery at the Grosvenor rooms is unfortunately too narrow, but here also the conditions of sculptural effect, in regard to lighting and accessories, have been kept in view.

The comparative absence of landscape from the collection is a deficiency to be regretted. The paintings of this class are few in number, and no one of them can be said to be really important. But landscape is so peculiarly the modern form of the art, that in which the greatest things have been accomplished almost within the present generation, that no exhi

bition of contemporary painting can be thought at all complete which does not adequately represent what is being aimed at and accomplished in landscape painting.

If the Grosvenor Gallery can be made to realise the object which has been professed, of providing an annual exhibition of high-class pictures only, arranged effectively and without crowding, it will be an inestimable boon. We have far too many promiscuous exhibitions for real enjoyment, and the sense gets absolutely wearied with ranging over the waste of commonplaces among which the good things at Burlington House are disposed. It cannot be said that commonplace, and even worse, is unrepresented in the first exhibition at the Grosvenor

Gallery. Dire things are to be found there; but the principal gallery is kept fairly clear of them; and even the eccentricities which figure there have some aim beyond that of painting the first thing that comes to hand, "because they find it so, and like it somehow," which has been said to be specially characteristic of English artists. But it is impossible to overlook the presence of an element of eccentricity, the prominence given to types of painting which form the special cultus of small groups of worshippers who offer up a blind admiration, each to their own special high priest. There is far too much at present of this private clique spir't in connection with painting in England. An artist declines public notice, and shows his productions only as a special favour to a special circle, who kiss the hem of his garment and see nothing but perfection in his work; and if we inquire, why this mystery and pri

vacy we are gravely rebuked, and asked on what principle an artist is bound to make public his work at all. To which the simple answer is that all genuine and robust human genius seeks the light of day; craves, in obedience to what in lofty irony has been defined for all time as "that last infirmity of noble minds," for the suffrage of mankind, for the "applause and universal shout" which stir the blood and confirm the hopes of him

"Who thinks he hath done well in people's eyes."

From one point of view, therefore, it is a step in the right direction, that some of these specialists in painting have in this case come out of their concealment and appealed to a more public verdict and it is much to be regretted, in the real interests of art, that one remarkable painter whose praise is loud on the lips of those who are admitted to familiarity with his works, should not have availed himself of the same opportunity: for most assuredly it is only in the great air of life that a great and healthy art can grow and flourish. Only let it be urged that this very end would be defeated if the new exhibition were to be made a field for the especial display of artistic eccentricities, however brilliant; and that if the Grosvenor Gallery is to hold the position and exercise the healthy influence on contemporary painting which has been professed and hoped for, it must be by promoting the art which app als to the widest sympathies and culture of the educated world, rather than by enabling certain limited circles of dilettanti to indulge each in its favourite flavour of caviare.

H. HEATHCOTE STATHAM,

COLONIA CAMULODUNUM. '

THE history of the town in which we are now met, as far as it concerns the general history of the island, belongs mainly to three distinct periods; and, in two of these, Colchester, placed as it is in the extreme east end of the island, has a singular historical connexion with events which went on at the same time in the western parts of the island. In strictly English history, the time when Colchester plays its really most important part is in the tenth and eleventh centuries. But on the surface of history, as history is commonly written, the name of Colchester stands out in greater prominence at an earlier and at a later date, in the first century of our æra and in the seventeeth. To most minds Colchester will be the town which was overthrown by Boadicea, and which was taken by Fairfax. The events of the intermediate age have had more direct bearings on the real destinies of the English kingdom and nation; but it is the earlier and later dates which have most firmly fixed themselves in popular memory. And, both at the earlier and at the later date, there is a singular historical connexion between Colchester and the land in which it stands, and a widely distant part of Britain. It seems a wide step indeed from the land of the Silures to the land of the Trinobantes, from Morganwg to Essex, from British Cardiff to Saxon Colchester. And yet there are points of connexion between the two lards and the two spots. Colchester has in its earlier days a privilege

1 Read at the opening of the Historical Section of the Archæological Institute at Colchester, August 1st, 1876. Some of the purely personal and local references have been cut short.

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which is shared by no other city or borough of England. The first beginnings of its history are not to be found in British legend or in English annals; they are recorded by the pen of the greatest historian of Rome. is in the pages of Tacitus himself that we read of the foundation of that veteran colony which, swept away in its first childhood by the revolted Briton, rose again to life, first to be emphatically the Colony of Rome, and to become in after days the fortress which the men of the East-Saxon land wrested by their own swords from the grasp of the invading Dane. But, in the very page in which he records the beginnings of the Trinobantine colony, he brings that colony, into a strange, and at first sight puzzling, connexion with movements in the far Silurian land. Later on in his Annals, he has to record the overthrow of the new-born colony, the first of all the sieges of Colchester. His narrative of that stage of British affairs brings in in its first clause a name which, in legend at least if not in history, is held to be preserved in the name of the greatest fortress of Morganwg. Before Tacitus can tell us how much Suetonius did in the east of Britain, he has first to tell us how little Didius had done in the west. Now this same Didius is, at least by a legendary etymology, said to have given his name to Caerdydd, the fortress of Didius, as a more certain etymology sees, in the name of the town where we are met, the name of the fortress of the Colony. If then there be any truth in the popular etymology of Cardiff, the beginnings of Cardiff and of Colchester must be dated from nearly the same time. And, even without trusting too much to

so doubtful a legend, we at least find the land of the Silures and the land of the Trinobantes brought close together in our earliest glimpse of both. The foundation of a Roman colony in the east, is directly connected in the narrative of Tacitus with patriotic movements in the west. Alike in the days of Boadicea and in the days of Fairfax, warfare in the Silurian and in the Trinobantine land has to be recorded in the same page. In the royalist revolt of which the fall of Colchester was the last stage, no part of the island took a greater share than the land to check whose earliest revolt Colchester was first founded. When the royal standard was again unfurled at Colchester, it had but lately been hauled down at Chepstow; it was still floating over Pembroke. And one of the fortresses of the land of Morganwg, one of the lowlier castles which surround the proud mound and keep of Robert Fitzhamon, saw perhaps the last encounter in that last stage of the civil war which even local imagination can venture to dignify with the name of battle. The fight of St. Fagans does not rank in English history along with the fights of Marston and Naseby and the siege of Colchester, with all its deep interest, military, local, and personal, can hardly, in its real bearing on English history, be placed on 8 level with the siege of Bristol. Yet the siege of Colchester and the war in South Wales were parts of one last and hopeless struggle. The remembrance of its leaguers and skirmishes lives in local memory there as keenly as the last siege of Colchester lives in local memory here. And if the name of Fairfax may be bracketed in the East with the name of Suetonius Paullinus, in the West the name of Oliver Cromwell has left but small room for the memory of Aulus Didius.

Throughout the earliest stage of the history of the two districts their historical connexion is as clear as it is strange. I am not going here to give a complete history of Colchester or of Essex, or to dispute at large on any minute

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points of controversy. I presume however that I may at least assume that Camulodunum is Colchester and not any other place, in the kingdom of the East-Saxons or out of it. feel sure that, if I had any mind so to do, my East-Saxon hearers would not allow me to carry the Colony of the Veterans up to Malton in Yorkshire; and I certainly cannot find any safe or direct road to guide them thither. I trust too that there may be no civil war in the East-Saxon camp, that no one may seek to wile away the veteran band from the banks of Colne to the banks of Panta. Maldon has its own glories: its name lives for ever in the noblest of the battle-songs of England; but I at least can listen to no etymologies which strive to give a Roman origin to its purely English name. more minute philologers than I am explain the exact force of the first syllable alike in Northumbrian Malton and in East-Saxon Maldon. Both cannot be contractions of Camulodunum ; what one is the other must surely be; one is the town, the other the hill, of whatever the syllable common to both may be taken to be. I at least feel no doubt that it is the town in which we are now met which has the unique privilege of having its earliest days recorded by the hand of Tacitus.

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But if it is Tacitus who records the foundation of the colony, it is not in what is left to us of his pages that we find our first mention of the name of Camulodunum. That unlucky gap in his writings, which every scholar has to lament, sends us for the first surviving appearance of the name to the later, but far from contemptible, narrative of Dio. Claudius crossed into Britain, and went as far as Camulodunum, the royal dwelling-place of Cynobellinus. That royal dwellingplace he took, and, on the strength of that and of the other events of his short campaign in the island which men looked on as another world, he enlarged the pomarium of Rome and brought the Aventine within the sacred precinct.

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