5 DECEMBER 1835, Page 19

PICTORIAL PERIODICALS.

TIIE beautiful republication of the Poetical Works of Rogers is now completed, by the appearance of the Tenth Part. We cannot take leave of this, the flower of our picture-books, without a parting word of eulogium. Part X. is composed chiefly of notes ; and has only one of TURNER'S splendid moonlights, and an old blind harper and his boy by SvornAan,—an "only " enough to furnish forth any other less pro- digally-embellished book. We have but to turn to Part IX., however, to see with what rarities of art these pages are enriched. There we have the classic beauty of Tivoli, with its temple a id cascade; a wilder waterfall under the Devil's Bridge ; an Italian landscape, with the dark pine and some Roman ruins in the foreground, bound in by Alps ; the temples of nestum on their barren isle ; and the bay of Naples, steeped in sunlight, a cloudless sky above and the bright blue waves beneath, over which the felucca skims like a great sea-bird with its white wings outspread. There are also a charming group of STOTHARD'S airy elegant creatures, looking as serenely at the ceremony that is to immure their friend and sister in a convent, as if she were but going on a journey ; a nymph-like figure giving a boy water to drink front an antique fountain ; and a WArreae.like party seated al fresco while one girl dancing with the tambourine receives the homage of her lover. The grace and poetry of these designs redeems their defects and man..

nerism ; but there is one that needs no allowance—it is a group of children gathering shells on the sea-shore. The innocent faces and child-like grace of the urchins are delightful; and the unconscious

beauty and simplicity of look and action of the girl and infant are Raphaelesque : this group is perfectly lovely—it deserves to be per- petuated in marble.

The Byron Beauties have, we rejoice to say, run their race. Parts XII. and XIII. being the last, we are disposed to be particularly civil to them : so we will only mention the one we can admire—the (mis- called) Zoe of W. ROSTOCK : the face and head are beautiful, and there is character and meaning in the expression.

The engraving, by HOLL, from REYNOLDS'S fine portrait of Lord Mansfield, in No. XL 111. of the Gallery of Portraits, is one of the

many remarkable specimens this work affords of the success with which

the living character of the original, the substance of the various parts of the dress, and almost the colours of the painting, may be imitated

in a print. With such examples as these before them, the pedantic preference by some engravers of one particular mode (that by lines) to the exclusion of all others, merely because it is the most difficult, shows that they put the means for the end.

The specimens of Ancient Furniture include a great variety of quaint and elegant articles, curious in themselves, and picturesque accessories for painters. Part XI. contains a gorgeous casket of copper, gilt and enamelled all over with armorial bearings in lozenge-shaped compart- ments—about the time of EDWARD the First ; a ponderous sideboard, carved in grotesque but superb fashion, of the age of ELIZABETH; an elegant Gothic table, resembling a pierced fire-screen with a slab at the top : the chair of the Abbots of Glastonbury, of primitive construc- tion, but elegant as well as simple; and two elaborately-carved bed- steads from Goodrich Court.

The specimens of the Details of Elizabethan Architecture display the over-laboured excess of decoration that characterized this style ; which

is not the less barbarous for the vivid colours of its ornaments. The examples in No. V. are from the dining-room at Weston Hall, Warwick- shire, and the drawing-room at Boughton Malherbe, Kent.

The Menaorials of Ozylard are not yet completel, though they have arrived at No. XXX \ I.; and we care not kw long they continue, for every number contains some venerable structure which awakens old recollections of the monastic quiet of this classic and rural city.

The Napoleon Gallery, besides being a pictorial history of Bosta-

P.InTE'S career, is a record of the talent and skill of the French artists, and the fertility of their illustrations of contemporary incidents. When will the events of English history be painted by her native ar- tists? The outlines are neatly engraved, but they give only a faint idea of the originals : the faces are unpardonably defective now and then ; especially those of Napoleon, in Part VII.

The continual repetition of the peculiar mannerism of WESTALL and MARTIN, ill their Illustrations of the New Testament, has a painful effect. To those who can scarcely tolerate the style of either, they seem like the symptoms of monomania in design.

HORLSTONE'S portrait of Lady Caroline Capel, engraved by COCHRAN, in the last number of the Court Magazine, is in the best style of modern portraiture, and equal to the plates in the Annuals ; and the coloured plates of the Fashions are not much inferior to a certain class of prints that pretend to be something beyond whole-length sketches of cloaks and gowns. The fashions in the New Monthly Belle Assemblie are evidently French : but to think of giving all the ladies red hair !—This publication has wood-cuts in addition, and is amazingly cheap.