BRITISH DIORAMA.
ROBERTS'S splendid architectural design of the Israelites' Departure from Egypt, has been copied on a magnificent scale, and is exhibiting as a dioramic picture at the Queen's Bazaar. The imposing character of the composition—and we may use that term in a double sense—ren- ders it well fitted for scenic display, whose object is to captivate the sense rather than to satisfy the judgment. It seems fastidious and hypercritical to cavil at a few such inconsistencies as a cluster of pyra- mids whose bases must intercept each other as well as the buildings around them—the existence of two scales of proportion for objects in one picture—and the improbability of a whole nation being mustered in a street, though a street of palaces, and approaching an outlet as narrow in proportion to the numbers as the pit entrance of a theatre. The aim and object of the work is to astound the sense—to produce a sensation : that being done, the artist has succeeded ; and we should not feel bound to subject a work of that class to the ordeal of reason, but that this having appeared as a picture, it is cognizable under the rules of pro- priety to which other works of art are subject ; and we hold it to be a duty to expose such glaring anomalies, especially when perpetrated deliberately and with malice aforethought. We pass by similar incongruities in the scenes of a Christmas pantomime ; but if Messrs. GRIEVE were to take it into their heads to pass off their scenic extravaganzas as pictures, and have them engraved as prints, we should take a very different view of their performances,—though the undiscriminating admirers of MAR- TIN'S enormities would only be deterred by jealousy of rivalry from swelling their praises to the very echo.
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