his keys better than this custos with the “lidless eyes.”  He not only sees that none do intrude into that privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none but Hercules aut Diabolus by any manner of means can.  So far all is well.  We have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra the damsels are snug enough.  But here the artist’s courage seems to have failed him.  He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, according to the approved etiquette at a court of the nineteenth century; giving to the whole scene the air of a fete champetre, if we will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen.  This is well, and Watteauish.  But what is become of the solitary mystery—­the

  Daughters three,
  That sing around the golden tree?

This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this subject.

The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural designs, of a modern artist, have been urged as objections to the theory of our motto.  They are of a character, we confess, to stagger it.  His towered structures are of the highest order of the material sublime.  Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder workmanship—­Assyrian ruins old—­restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our most stretched and craving conceptions of the glories of the antique world.  It is a pity that they were ever peopled.  On that side, the imagination of the artist halts, and appears defective.  Let us examine the point of the story in the “Belshazzar’s Feast.”  We will introduce it by an apposite anecdote.

The court historians of the day record, that at the first dinner given by the late King (then Prince Regent) at the Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic was played off.  The guests were select and admiring; the banquet profuse and admirable; the lights lustrous and oriental; the eye was perfectly dazzled with the display of plate, among which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia in the Tower for this especial purpose, itself a tower! stood conspicuous for its magnitude.  And now the Rev. **** the then admired court Chaplain, was proceeding with the grace, when, at a signal given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered, in which glittered in golden letters—­

  “BRIGHTON-EARTHQUAKE-SWALLOW-UP-ALIVE!”

Imagine the confusion of the guests; the Georges and garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion!  The fans dropt, and picked up the next morning by the sly court pages!  Mrs. Fitz-what’s-her-name fainting, and the Countess of **** holding the smelling bottle, till the good-humoured Prince caused harmony to be restored by calling in fresh candles, and declaring that the whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden, from hints which his Royal Highness himself had furnished!  Then imagine the infinite applause that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that “they were not much frightened,” of the assembled galaxy.