PICTORIAL PERIODICALS.
Tnn Gallery if Paintings by Benjamin West, engraved in outline by HENRY Aloss, should have appeared twenty years ago. WEST'S fame was then at its zenith : it has scarcely outlived the man ; and cheap and well-executed as is this work, we fear it will not be popular. WEST'S style was the beau ideal of commonplace ; it attained respecta- bility by the aid of the conventionalities of art, and attracted by virtue of its mediocrity. The three designs in the present Number exem- plify his mode of treating heroic, scriptural, and poetical subjects. " Thetis bringing the armour to Achilles," has all the pedantry of French classicality. DAVID might have been proud of it. It is a group of statues, with a display of costume and decoration, that gives one a surfeit of Greek °mammas.
" Christ blessing little Children "—goodness, sweetness, and inno- cence, are here represented by smugness, insipidity, and imbecility the sentiment is diluted into utter mawkishness.
" The Captive," from STERNE, is a petfect specimen of maudlin, mock heroic pathos. An old man, a sort of gamit Hercules, redines in affected attitude, looking over his shoulder, holding a notched stick with the air and look of a demented flute-player ; his hair all a-blaze, his nails grown to claws, a profnse garniture of fetters, and a collection of tallies that would have sufficed Methusalem to keep the score of his years : to crown all, SrEarse is looking in at the grating, as if seeing " the iron enter into his soul." WEsr, having a defective imagination, literalized the scenes he depicted, to suit the most matter-of-fact understanding.
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