FINE ARTS.
ROBERTS'S SKETCHES OF EGYPT AND THE HOLY LAND.
DAVID ROBERTS has retur.ned from the East, after an absence of twenty months ; with invigorated health and a portfolio of sketches that will furnish ample materials for pictures to enrich the exhibitions for years to come : meanwhile, the sketches themselves will be the talk of the world of art, and the grand attraction of the conversazioni for the next season. By the kindness of Mr. Roamers, we have been favoured with a sight of them—and a very high gratification it was ; astonish- ment at the wondrous scenes themselves was divided with admiration
of the artist's skill. Never till now has the magnitude of the stu- pendous remains of Egyptian art been made evident to the senses : the scale of all pictorial delineations hitherto has fallen far short of the idea conveyed by measurements and descriptions. The plates in Dinsox are toy-like in comparison. Indeed, the sight of tine realities themselves could hardly more impress the mind than do these sketches. They are most beatitifidly drawn in pencil on neutral tinted paper, with the neat- ness and precision of outline of an architectural draughtsman, and co- loured sufficiently to give local truth of detail and indicate the peculiar effects of the landscape and climate. The style is pure, simple, and elegant ; and the effects are broad, chaste, and harmonious.
The most remarkable subjects are Cairo, with its narrow streets re- sembling fissures in some huge pile, composed of superb mosques of red-striped stucco with richly-carved minarets and domes, blending the Saracenie and Byzantine architecture ; the Temples of Dendera and Carnac, showing the gorgeous colouring that covers their walls, co- lumns, and architraves ; the Temple of Ebsambul, with its colossal statues half buried in sand; the Pyramids of Ghizeh ; the bust of the Sphynx, looking like the head of sonic subterranean giant thrust up to gaze on the pigmy race on its surface ; the two statues of Memnon, seated eternally with placid, benignant faces, like images designed per- petually to admonish mortals of their littleness and transitory date; the desert city of Petra, its rocky pinnacles towering to the sky, and the thee of the perpendicular cliffs perforated with holes leading to the dwellings of men ; the wilderness of Sinai with its awful mount ; Sidon, wearing an aspect of Italian elegance ; Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Joppa,
and other spots of hallowed ground,
. . . . ' trod by those Caned feet That eighteen hondrol r e:as :co were milled, For our ronott,tien to 01., bowl. cro,s.- Often as this route has been fidlowed by travellers, and numerous as have been the pictures of these places, they have never before been re- presented with grandeur adequate to their sublimity. Every one must have felt how insufficient have been the pictorial notions given of them; and Ito higher praise cats be awarded to DAVID Roamers than this, that he satisfies the demands of the imagination. Words can convey no distinct idea of the gorgeous details, the massive parts, and the elegant ensendde of the Egyptian temples : the grandeur and harmony of their proportions are commensurate with their stupendous altitude and vast extent ; so that the whole, when taken in by the eye at a distant view, has an air of classic beauty, glowing with colour. Let the reader fancy the effect of a hall supported by rows of columns nearly the height of the York Column, but of larger girth, and covered with paint- ings of the most brilliant hues—colours so intense that they beggared the art fist's palette—and he may have an idea of the scale and splendour of these temples. Fragments of the architraves are scattered about as big as a whole row of houses in one of our pigmy streets; and the effect of the fallen columns may be cempared to a row of millstones resting against each other, supported by a huge crag for the capital, How they over fell is the wonder : no power less than an earthquake could overthrow such ponderous heaps of stone, that seem as if they formed part of' the foundations of the earth. Men dwindle down to insect size beneath their towering height ; and their lateral dimensions are pro- portionably greater than their altitude.
It will not be wondered that these sketches should give such new and grand ideas of the remains of Egyptian greatness, when we bear in
mind that RoueuTs is the first painter who has depicted them. The architectural draughtsmen who accompanied DtenoN have given mi- niature delineations of them, and amateurs have sketched them ; but no
artist possessed of skill and power to convey a pictorial idea of their enormous magnitude had hitherto essayed the difficult task.
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