the learned author, we may mention that he is having engraved, in facsimiles from the scarce plates of Israel Sylvestre (1630— 1660), views of all the ancient chateaux of any importance throughout France. We must again repeat our conviction that a work of this kind would never have found either a publisher or a numerous list of subscribers in our own country; in France it is disposed of with the greatest facility, and will, as it ought to do, yield its author a handsome return for his labours, the result of thirty years' collectious and studies.

There is a peculiar division of the styles of architecture of the middle ages in France, wherein they differ more than in any other from those of England; we mean that which is technically called the style of the Renaissance des Arts. The Decorated, or, as it is sometimes called, the Florid style, which became extinct in England soon after the year 1400, is essentially the same as the early Flamboyant of France, which, however, did not come into vogue in that country so soon as it did in our own islands. The reason was, the desolating wars which the third Edward either himself caused in the heart of France, or else stirred up amongst the powerful vassals of the French crown, and which made the fourteenth century one of the most lamentable periods of the history of that country; whereas in England, the arts, and not the arms, of France and the Continent were imported, and our national architecture was imprinted with the stamp of skill and luxury. In the succeeding century the tables were turned; peace and prosperity being restored to France by the expulsion of the English, arts, and especially architecture, received a sudden and immense impulse; while the civil wars of Henry VI. and his immediate successors mainly contributed, no doubt, to that decline of English-pointed architecture which may be certainly traced from this period. Two great authorities on such subjects, Messrs. Whewell and Willis, give a decided preference to the Perpendicular of the fifteenth century, over the Flamboyant of the same date. As to beauty of form and disposition of parts, we believe that this depends almost entirely upon the eye and the expectations, as to what should constitute a perfect style, of each individual observer. We most willingly coincide with them, and with all French and British authorities of weight, on such matters, in looking on the latest period of the Early-pointed style, (wrongly termed, we would humbly suggest, as the Decorated,)—the style, that is to say, of St. Ouen, of Amiens, and of Lincoln, as the perfection of Pointed architecture; but we cannot help considering the Flamboyant of France as indicating much greater powers of imagination and execution than the Perpendicular of our own country. The comparison, however, is not very easy to place upon

perfectly fair grounds: the grand type of the later Perpendicular (the early period of that style we do not think can come into the question), King's College Chapel, Cambridge, being a far more splendid edifice than any that can be adduced of the Flamboyant period in France. But taking smaller buildings, Beauvais, for example, or St. Maclou of Rouen, we see greater powers of ornamentation, and if we may so term it, greater freedom of idea, than in our English churches of the same date. The epoch of the Renaissance, however, does not strictly include either of these edifices; it refers rather to buildings such as St. Eustache at Paris, the Lady Chapel of the Church of St. Pierre at Caen, part of the Palais de Justice, and the Hôtel de la Bourgtherould at Rouen, and should be compared with works commenced in England subsequent to A.D. 1500. We hold that in this peculiar style we have little to compare with the magnificence displayed in French edifices of that era, and that the grandeur of the style of Francis I. is far above that of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. This style, in which the traditions of the pointed epoch are preserved, although many of the forms of Roman art are employed, is wonderfully well suited to all purposes of domestic use. It is not so well adapted to sacred buildings, nor was it ever much employed for churches; but for the Chateau, for the Hôtel de Ville, for the civic mansion, nothing can be more appropriate or easy of application, nor more likely to harmonize with the revived Palladian of the present day. It has been beautifully compared by M. Didron, in one of his lectures, to a palimpsest in which, like a monkish legend written over a half-effaced work of Cicero, pointed traditions and arrangements are strangely combined with traces of classical ideas: and it is this style, more particularly than any other, which has been seized on and utilized by the younger architects of Paris at the present time. They have been very successful in applying it to some of the great works lately undertaken or now in progress in the capital and elsewhere, such as the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the reparations at Fontainebleau, &c.; and from its admitting almost an indefinite variety of Roman forms, we would strongly recommend it to the notice of our own architects and antiquarians. It is not so severe as our Elizabethan, nor so heavy as the early efforts of Wren; it gives full scope to the imagination and taste of the designer, and allows the architect to produce not only those grand effects of light and shade, without which no good building ever yet existed, but also to make those arrangements of internal domestic comfort which are so essential to the inhabitants of northern climates. Instead of the miserable bastard Gothic of the villas and most of the new district churches that surround London, we might have had some

thing far better and more suited to the purpose, had the Elizabethan or Franciscan styles been adopted. It is true that in Lancashire, in the Preston district, the best and purest specimens of the Romanesque have lately come from the hands of young and original architects, and in one instance also near the metropolis, at Hadley, beyond Barnet. The happiest effects upon British art may be expected from this innovation; but still we would call on young English architects to consult the continental styles a little more than they have hitherto done, and especially to profit by the example of their brethren of France, who are now turning the traditions of the middle ages to profit, in the embellishment of the capital.

In this respect we have an advantage in England that France cannot yet enjoy: we have the nobles of the land untouched in their honours and their wealth, and using their influence and their riches in patronizing art and artists of every kind. This in France is left to the slender means of the old noblesse, now gradually recovering themselves, or to the uncertain demand of public bodies and opulent burgesses. But on the other hand,-what we never have done, and probably never shall do,-France makes the patronage of the fine arts an affair of state, and extends to this branch of national genius that constant and fostering care without which greatness is seldom achieved. The fine arts, if they are really to flourish, if they are really to confer the honour and the advantages of their civilizing influence on a nation, require perpetual, steady, and powerful patronage; they may indeed shine by individual examples, as they do in England under the enlightened and generous protection of her nobles, but if dependent only on private support, they will never take firm root in the country. It is true we have a Landseer, a Wilkie, a Chantrey, a Gibson, names which France cannot at the present moment equal,—we have a whole host of great names in architecture,and the consequence is, that the collections of our noble mansions, and the residences themselves of our great families, are such as are not to be surpassed or scarcely equalled in France; but when it comes to a question of decorating the capital, it appears that we have no grander idea of a triumphal arch than the toy at the top of Constitution Hill. Do we want a gallery for our national collection of paintings, our ne plus ultra is the thing in Trafalgar Square, and undoubtedly there is no going beyond it. Is it required by a public-spirited body of subscribers to erect an equestrian statue to a beloved monarch, the sculptural taste of all England is put in requisition, and we get the good old pigtail in Pall Mall East. What are these productions compared to the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, at the summit of the hill beyond

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the Champs Elysées, or the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, or the bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV. at Versailles, and the equestrian figure of Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, by Marochetti? In individual efforts we certainly surpass our Gallic friends, but in public monuments we fall far beneath them.

ART. II.-Malkolm, eine Norwegische Novelle (Malcolm, a Norwegian Novel), by Henrich Steffens. 8vo. 2 vols. Breslau. 1831. In spite of the 4to volume entitled "Great and Good Deeds of the Danes and Norwegians," which, like all other good deeds, are little known and less thought of by the world at large, the north-western portion of Europe has hitherto excited but little interest among our travelling countrymen. With the exception of Mr. Barrow's slight but excellent volume, and the express work of Laing, we have nothing of recent times on the subject but the very amusing travels of Mr. Frank Hall Standish ;* and what he has there stated of the country and its inhabitants has had the very natural effect of turning public curiosity to these points. A country described by Mr. Standish as affording so much of interest for sportsmen, even the boldest; so much of the picturesque for artists and admirers of nature; so much of wild, lovely, and fantastic scenery for lovers of the sentimental and romantic, with schnaps, smoked-salmon, and beds of straw in the interior for those who delight in the varieties of travel: offering too to strangers so warm a welcome and such continuous and boundless hospitality in the capital and chief towns, with so much of frankness, simplicity, and good faith in the character of the inhabitants, must, we should imagine, require only to be mentioned in order to become an object of attraction to the venturous, at this our sporting season of the year; and facing, as it does the Scottish coast, the passage in a steam-boat can only add to the inducements: amongst these may reckoned that of visiting the lobster on his native coasts, those wonderfully clear and precipitous submarine steeps, that mock the gazing eye, as with a living landscape.

In lands so little trodden by southern European travellers the great features of the human character seem, like the forms of nature herself, to retain what is usually termed their pristine simplicity; that is to say, just enough of civilization to redeem man from the animal, and kindle the warmth of social life without introducing those vices of his race which unfortunately attend a higher degree of refinement. With such feelings we take the work before us to open its pages to our readers, but stop at the

Notices on the Northern Capitals of Europe. By F. H. Standish, Esq. London. Black and Armstrong. 1838.

threshold of the volume, for the treatment is even more novel than the subject.

To begin in the very middle of the series of events, the relation of which is designed to elicit the reader's sympathy, was one of the first rules laid down by the poetic legislator for the guidance of the epic poet. Nor is it limited to his sole use. The prose novelist, the humblest species of the genus Calliope, who had then no existence even in bardic vaticination, has since often, and most beneficially conformed to a precept equally applicable to his easier and almost equally delightful art. But in spite of all the vagaries into which genius loves to lead her ever-wandering children, never until now have we heard of a writer who esteemed the catastrophe, or end, the best and most appropriate commencement of a narrative. This may not perhaps be an objection to the student of Hebrew, nor to that learned monk who discovered "a book that begins at the end;" but to us, as lineal descendants of Aristarchus, it is an offence of grave magnitude and affording a desirable opportunity for laying on the rod; an opportunity of which we are the more tempted to avail ourselves, since it does not always offer to our critical capacity.

The first effect of this unwonted course of the author appears upon the title-page; where, although Malkolm himself is a Swede, and his scene of action, till within a very short period prior to the aforesaid catastrophe, is Sweden, the author, by beginning at the close of that period, is enabled to call his novel Norwegian. We observe that it is not unusual with Steffens to catch at insufficient grounds for laying the scene of his tales in countries least trodden by novelists: thus his Vier Norweger, which the reader naturally opens with the expectation of finding himself transported to Norway, presents him with little more than four pictures of the state of Germany at four different periods of her subjection and resistance to revolutionary France, as witnessed and participated in by the Four Norwegians. We therefore pass it.

A greater effect is undoubtedly produced in the first instance by introducing so striking a scene as the catastrophe of his Malkolm so early in the novel. But in proportion as this more forcibly impresses the mind, and excites an expectation of growing interest, the reader cannot but be irksomely disappointed when the story merely turns back to the incidents in which that catastrophe originated. So great was our disappointment as we read on, that we had proceeded but a little way in the second volume, when we snatched up the pen to indite the following questions. Have the Germans lost all idea of the nature and spirit of novel and romance? Do they, who for so many years could irresistibly captivate our feelings and sympathies, even in spite of good taste