INDEX. EMBELLISHMENTS. 4. PORTRAIT OF VICTOR EMMANUEL, KING OF SAR- Commons House of Parliament, Origin of the, 214 Eclectic Magazine OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. MAY, 1 8 5 9. From the North British Review. LITERATURE OF FRANCE-BATTLES-POETRY OF WAR IN ALGERIA.* ONE of the greatest musicians of this performer," was the reply-" fine touch, age was once applied to by a lady, whom strength, delicacy, precision, execution, it is no exaggeration to call a remarkably but "But what ?" persisted the fine piano-forte player, and was entreated friend, "why will you not help her with to give her some advice upon her execution your counsels ?" "Because," rejoined of the work of such masters as Beethoven, the great artist, "she and I would cease Mozart, Weber, etc. He politely but to comprehend each other at the first firmly refused. "Do not you think the word I should utter. I should have only lady has real talent?" inquired a friend. to say to her this: 'You execute in per"She has every requisite of a magnificent fection whatsoever you choose, but you feel falsely; if I am to enter into communication with you, and to explain to you what my convictions are, the beauties and the intentions of this or that divinity of my musical Olympus, I shall simply have to repeat to you, at every instant, Feel otherwise-be otherwise impressed, in a word, change your nature.' What earthly use do you fancy there could be in that? No, my dear sir, I could more * Souvenirs de la Vie Militaire en Afrique. By PIERRE DE CASTELLANE, 1 vol. in 18mo. Paris: Caracteres et Récits du temps Histoires Sentimentales et Militaires. By PAUL DE MOLENES. 2 vols. in 18mo. Paris: Michel Levy. Le Grand Désert-Les Chevaux du Sahara. By GENERAL DAUMAS. 2 vols. Paris: Michel Levy. Un Eté dans le Sahara, Une année dans le Sahel. By EUGENE FROMENTIN. 2 vols. in 18mo. Paris: Michel Levy. easily do good by my advice to a far in- | both are admirable. The Dante et Virgile ferior performer, but the vibrations of of Eugene Delacroix, or the Bataille des whose nature should respond truly to the Cimbres of Decamps, are as superior, as mighty harmonies of those who, to me, pictures, to the Fremmer d'Alger of the are the representatives of absolute beauty former, or the Ecole Turque of the latter, and truth, under the artistic form of as an original work is to a translation; music." These words may be applied in but, it is enough to look, for a moment, many other cases. There are things that at the intense blue of one of Delacroix's may be described, and there are things African skies, to see flapping in the wind that must be felt and felt rightly; that is, the blinding red of one of his Arab manfelt in such a way that their key-note, if tles, or to cast a glance at a batted white it may be so termed, shall strike upon and wall of Decamps, to have Algeria living awaken sympathetic vibrations, out of before you, flashed back pitilessly, upon which shall sound forth the perfect har- your aching eye-balls, by sky, and wall, mony of the perfect chord. Wherever and mantle. This perfect truth attained this harmony is heard, its perfection is to, comes from the simple fact of reflection acknowledged. Now, the "key-note," if only having been aimed at. Each of the word may be a second time recurred these illustrious artists has "felt rightly" to, of Algeria, is one that will admit of the genius of that portion of the East none save its own simplest, most natural called Algeria. He has copied what preharmonies. If you seek to marry it to sented itself to his eye, giving it, at the any thing "scientific," or complex, you same time, its own particular, individual are lost, and out of the pale of artistic meaning, and no other. truth. There is more than one way in which Algeria may impress you, and its truth has more than one aspect; but the sine quâ non is, that you should see its truth simply, and not through the medium of any secondary conventional pre-conceived truths of your own. Painting is, up to the present day, the art whereby the effect produced upon the French mind, by the various aspects of Algerian civilization, has been best chroni cled. Painting-the art itself has of course not gained by this; but, as our object is not, in these pages, to enter into a disquisition upon art in the abstract, we will not pause to point out how, when the subject portrayed becomes dominant, and "local coloring" grows to be a necessity, art must necessarily be all but extinct, we will merely, en passant, notice the use made of painting in the case under examination. Painting, we therefore repeat, has been until now the best medium through which the French mind has shown its apprehension of the various aspects of that strange land now called the African colony of France. Delacroix and Decamps have really seen Algeria as Algeria is, been struck by the tone we have above alluded to, and really responded to it by its own natural harmonies; they have, each of them, felt truly the aspects of the truth of the land before them, and have obeyed their impression. Neither have gained, as painters, in all this, but as the reflectors of what can not be described, It is curious to mark how, until now, the intrinsic poetry of Algeria has not been perceived. In France, hitherto, Algeria has had no poet; her nearest approach to poetry lay in war. But war, though furnishing an undeniable poetic element, furnished at the same time only a relative one, inasmuch as the poetry, if evoked, was the result of the contact of two adverse civilizations in the Desert, and was not exclusively inspired by the genius of the Desert itself. It can not be denied, however, that "Othello's occupation," in what we may without much extravagance conceive to have been his own land, is the source of so much poetry, that the best writers hitherto upon Algeria are military men, and those who are the most exclusively military are precisely thereby the most poetical. General Daumas, in his little volume upon Arab horses, their education, their qualities, their uses, and their position with regard to their riders, has, whilst aiming chiefly at the composition of a technical work, composed in reality a poetical one, for the reason that the poetry lay in the subject itself, and that the more immediately and simply this was reflected from the writer to the reader, the more necessarily the poetry inherent in what was reflected, made itself clear. It was impossible to register exactly the details of the horse's existence in Algeria, and of his juxtaposition to his master, without opening one of the prime springs of poetry, in the particular portion of the |
