ENGRAVED PORTRAITS.
MESSRS. FINDEN have commenced a series of Portraits of the Feu!. Aristocracy of the Court of Queen Victoria, at a propitious time; when the public, sick of the namby-pumby nonentities with romantic names, only fit to embellish Laura-Matilda novels, are desiring some real portraiture by way of change. They have aimed at the weak point of popular taste, and hit the mark too: what Bvaoa said of Mooae, applies especially to John Bull—" Johnny loves a lord ;" and the face of a pretty woman, always attractive, becomes irresistible when the brow is adormed with a coronet. Tuft-bunting is as thoroughly a passion with the English as fox-hunting. Kin CHARLES'S paw-paw ladies have been engraved over and over again, not for their beauty and modesty, but because they were royal favourites. It was only a German Sovereign who entertained the vulgar idea of making a collection of plebeian beauties : though we dare say the simple charms of these rustic graces have more of our mother Eve's loveliness than the long-eyed languishing ones of LELY. It would be injustice, however, to the aristocracy of the present reign, to deny that among them may be found faces as sweet and forms as graceful as ever adorned a cottage or tripped across the village green; and as unspoiled by affectation. Where femunne nature comes pure
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out of the ordeal of fashionable society, it shows like refined gold. Intellectual culture and inborn gentility—the true nobility of soul, not the bastard one of blood—give the heightening touches to nature's handiwork ; and, combined with sensibility and pudency, make up that appropriately beads the long train of patrician beauties. This is a resemblance to the Royal Family is stronger in this than in any new one by LANE, and by far the most like of those he has made: the
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perfection of a woman the true English lady. A. . portrait of the Queen other, but cold a id statue-like.
The two other portraits in the First Number, are Lady LouisaCaven. dish, by CHALON,—done in the broad, chaste style that he can adopt upon occasion, and that befits the graceful simplicity and intelligence of the fair original ; and the Countess of Hillsborough, one of JOHN HAYTER'S nicest sketches,—though the stringy flimsiness of his drapery is objectionable. The engravings are extremely delicate; and the style of the artist as well as the likeness is preserved.
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