Regent desired the ladies to wait in the ante-room, and then unceremoniously entered the drawing-room in which was the Princess.

To her surprise and dismay, he briefly informed her that her late attendants were dismissed; their substitutes were in the adjoining room; and she herself must instantly prepare to accompany them to Cranbourne Lodge.

With wonderful self-command, she only begged that she might leave the room for a few minutes to take leave of her attendants and prepare for her journey. The Prince consented; and, as soon as she was gone, returned to Carlton House to dress for dinner.

No sooner was he gone than the Princess-who had hastily equipped herself-stole out of the house, hastened to Cockspurstreet, called a hackney-coach, and desired the hackney-coachman to drive her instantly to the Princess of Wales.

This man, who happened to be brother to my grandfather's coachman, said afterwards, he should never have suspected who she was, but for her putting into his hand a guinea. That made him think she must either be somebody who did not know the value of money, or who had some very particular reason for running away. He was confirmed in his suspicion on reaching Connaught House, by the servant's answer to the inquiry whether the Princess of Wales were at home, "No, your Royal Highness."

The Princess Charlotte immediately desired that a messenger might be dispatched to recal her from Blackheath. The Princess of Wales was in her carriage when the messenger came up with her; and, with presence of mind, drove first to the House of Commons, in search of Mr. Whitbread, who was not there, and then to the House of Lords for Lord Grey, who was likewise absent. She then sent her servants in quest of Lord (then Mr.) Brougham, and for Miss Maria Elphinstone, a young friend of the Princess Charlotte's, whom she thought likely to influence her. For the Princess of Wales, frivolous as she was, had common sense enough to know that the heiress-presumptive to the Crown had placed herself in a very awkward situation; and she was obliged to provide for her extrication from it before she indulged herself in folding her to her heart. Mr. Brougham arrived first, speedily followed by Miss Elphinstone and the Princess of Wales. They found the Princess Charlotte's fixed resolution was, to quit her father's protection and live with her mother; but Mr. Brougham explained to her that it was now settled by the law of the land that "the King, or Regent, had absolute power to dispose of the persons of all the Royal Family while under age." The Princess was greatly excited; but her mother, though much affected, entreated her to yield to circumstances neither of them were able to resist; and her pleadings were enforced by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Eldon, and the Duke of York, each of whom repaired to the spot in a hackneycoach. Lord Eldon, indeed, resorted to threats of shutting up; and after resisting all that could be said to her for many hours, the Princess at length consented, between four and five o'clock in the

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morning, to return to Warwick House, accompanied by the Duke of York and her governess.

She could expect nothing, after this, better than to be sent to Cranbourne Lodge, where she bore her seclusion better than might have been expected. The Duke of Sussex desired to know, in Parliament, whether his niece were "in durance," or permitted to see her friends; to which no satisfactory answer was given. The Princess of Wales offered to resign the Rangership of Greenwich Park to her daughter, and give up Montague House to her; but the Regent replied that he would see to the Rangership being properly filled up, and could not permit his daughter to reside in a house which had ever been inhabited by the Princess of Wales! Her comment was, "End well, all well;" which was not verified in the case of any of the three. She hastened her preparations for going to travel on the Continent; and, on the 9th of August, sailed from England, never to return to it during her daughter's life.

(To be continued.)

VII.

SOME PICTURES IN AND OUT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION.

THE word which, all things considered, we should select to characterise the Royal Academy Exhibition for 1860, is the word "health." Few, if any, of the pictures on the walls can be called great; few, if any, display the grandeur and power of creative imagination. But the work is, in general, sincere. The commonplace man has not said to himself, Go to, I will build a tower of High Art reaching unto Heaven. The light that never was on sea or shore has not been parodied by the light of sickly studio-dreaming. In the vast majority of instances there has been a reality in the painter's eye when he executed his work; and he has executed it without straining after effect, but without slovenliness, with a frank and loving energy which has almost always brought something of nature's truth, life, and brightness, upon his canvas. The influence, therefore, of the exhibition is pleasant, bracing, healthful; the "sunlight of picture" falls with fresh and gladdening effect, like a kindly reminiscence of the sunlight of nature.

Reader, it is of some importance to have a clear and firm conception of what the terms healthfulness and sickliness, applied to Art, legiti mately mean. The Art of this year's Exhibition is, we have said, healthful on the whole, but this qualification implies exception. Had the very worst picture of that sad time when Byron, oppressed with the ghastly hypocrisies of so-called High Art, sighed for the redeeming

freshness of "one green field" been preserved to us-which by the kind decree of oblivion it has not been-we could not have contrasted more boldly the false and morbid with the true and healthful in Art, than by comparing the High-Art pictures on these walls by the great Academician and Professor of Painting, Solomon Alexander Hart, with the other productions of the year. There is evidently some wild witty fairy haunting the Councils of the Royal Academy, some sly and clever Puck, rejoicing in things "that befal preposterously," and clapping his hands in wicked glee when he gets an ass-headed Bottom placed, in delicious unconsciousness, side by side with a young and beaming Titania. Only on this supposition can we account for the fact that two of the sublime Professor's most sublime works are placed left and right of J. C. Hook's "Stand Clear!" Right is "Sacred Music." Three female idealities, one bearing a banjo, in dim yellowish and reddish robes, with faces tending upwards, faintly sanctimonious, but, on the whole, with no meaning in particular, constitute the said sphereharmony. Right is a portrait of the respected Mr. Fogie, harmless and innocent-looking, unless it is a crime to be preternaturally dull, attended by Master Peter Fogie, an indescribably sleepish youth. The catalogue-the printer's imp having, no doubt, been in close league with the mischievous fairy we have imagined-bears that the said Fogies, senior and junior, are "From the Lay of the Last Minstrel," and after an effort we realize that Mr. Fogie and Master Peter are Academic idealizations of the minstrel and the orphan boy of Scott's poem. Look, now, between these High-Art sublimities. "Stand clear!" sings out the fisherman's boy on the right bow of the boat, as he sends the painter dancing into the air, and the last green wave lifts her lovingly home. There is music in that clear cry, Professor, to the full as sacred as the notes of the insipid lady's banjo. In the boat the father furls the sail, while his other two sons are on her left bow, ready to spring ashore. Bronzed with sun and sea-wind, but content with their lot-glowing with that health which sweetens the worker's fare, and makes his sleep light and dreamless-showing the ray of mercy which gilds the curse of labour honestly and bravely borne-this fisherman and his sons, with the green, bounding sea below, and the bright Heaven above, make up one of those pictures of nature which are indeed worthy to be reflected in the mirror of Art. There is a touch even of genuine composition, invaluable when really imaginative and not manufactured, in this work of Mr. Hook's. The wave, gathering itself up as breakers do for a determined charge upon the shore, tilts the boat buoyantly to the left, throwing all her lines into new freedom and grace of curvature, and telling us how the ocean-bird can ride the waves far out to sea yonder. We are prepared to say that in mere technical power of composition, this fresh and unpretentious picture is incomparably superior to the works of the Academician. The pictures of Mr. Hart-we speak advisedly-are worth less than nothing. Instead of bearing the beholder, as true imagination does, above the loftiest pinnacles of nature, such painting lowers him irresistibly to the

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region of paste-board and footlights. Let the reader look at these pictures beside Mr. Hook's, turning also for a moment to No. 74, where a parcel of strutting play-actors stand for idealizations of Barons of England, and he will not only perceive what we mean by the terms healthful and sickly in application to Art, but may learn to appreciate in some degree, spite of Academical reviewers, and innumerable croakers of less degree, what Mr. Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites have done to purify and invigorate the Art of Great Britain. The leprosy of false idealism has been almost cast out. English Art, having washed in the river of nature, has the freshness and ruddy vigour of health on the cheek, and if the full power of manhood is still to be attained, displays, at least, the simple beauty and the blooming promise of the child.

Mr. Hook's other works of the year are not quite equal in excellence to that we have named, but all he exhibits is worth observation. We have seen the boat touching the shore; at No. 22, we have her out at sea. The fisherman and his son, "Whose bread is on the waters,” are on the deep, one or two mottled sea-birds their sole companions, with the shining levels of ocean around, and the net coming in to their haul over the side of the boat, gently heeling with its weight. The sky has a general tone of grey, with the faintest suffusion of warmer colour towards the horizon, and darker though by no means threatening films of rain-cloud above. One other subject has been furnished to Mr. Hook by the life of the Cornish fisherman, but in this third instance his power is unequal to the task he has attempted. He has chosen that stanza in Tennyson's marvellous lyric, Break, break, break," in which the sailor-lad is represented singing in his boat on the bay, and has attempted to set before us this incident, along with the general scene of the poem. He has succeeded as far as any painter is likely to succeed. The beetling cliffs of dark green guard the bay, veiled faintly by floating, equally diffused, impalpable haze, delicately suggesting the tender melancholy and the solemn grace of "a day that is dead." The spray rises thin and ghostly in one distant wreath, as the languid sea breaks, breaks, breaks" on its cold grey stones. The boy sits with his sister in the boat-his face, it must be said, not very songful or joyful-while the girl laves her arm in the water. The boat dips gently on the near-side, where the girl sits; and that strange, bright, translucent green-the crystal of the deep sea coloured by the piercing sunbeam-which all who love boating know, gleams underneath. The white-sailed ship is seen near the horizon, stealing on to "the haven under the hill." The haze of summer light and heat, with the sober grandeur which that aspect imparts to Nature, floods the whole prospect. Beautiful and felicitous! The green of the sea, under the boat, is proof of the keenest observation of Nature. Two incidents of the poem-the fisherman's boy shouting with his sister at play, and the sailor-lad singing in his boat on the baywhich could not have been separately represented by the painter without sacrifice of breadth, are happily conjoined by Mr. Hook; the sister being given to the sailor-lad, and placed beside him in the

boat. But if we are asked whether the painter has fully realized the conception of the poet, or even whether, working with his own materials, he has achieved an effect equal to that of Mr. Tennyson, we must answer in the negative. The suggestiveness of the poem is such as compels us to use the word "infinite;" it mingles lights of sadness and joy, of bridal robe and funeral pall, with subtle and aërial changefulness, such as the brush and the pencil can never attain. The language of painting-form and colour-is clear, definite, precise, and, therefore, limited; poetry-using the more plastic medium of words. -can, by a thousand nameless hints, evoke the imagination which stimulates, suggests, and weaves together webs of varied association. Tennyson's words have very often an exact expressiveness comparable to that of line and colour; but the lyric, "Break, break, break," is a magnificent illustration of the suggestive and stimulating energy of imagination.

Mr. Hook exhibits a single landscape, (301), entitled, "The Valley on the Moor." A moor is supposed to be naturally somewhat dreary and chill; and these qualities would, we dare say, be present in still greater degree in a valley on a moor. But surely there would have been some touch of bright colour, some golden furze, or wild-rose dashed with dew, or pool to which a stray sunbeam made its way through the clouds, to relieve its desolation. In Mr. Hook's valley, the chilly fields slope towards a chilly hollow, in which creeps a chilly stream, spanned by a rustic bridge. We shiver as we look upon the scene. A herd-boy sits on the bridge, contemplating a very small hill cow and her calf, lazily standing in the stream. Perhaps we ought to thank Mr. Hook, in these days of railways and factories, for setting before us a landscape so remote, silent, and primeval. Originality in choice of subject is always a high merit. But we confess that this moorland valley is too dank and downcast for our sensibilities; the herdboy, at least, might turn round, and give us a smile, instead of presenting to us his back, and devoting all his attention to the cattle. Mr. A. W. Hunt's "Flood and Wind at the Head of a Welsh Pass," (505), is one of the most imaginative and powerful landscapes of the year. The Academical authorities have put it on the floor in the north room, entailing on the beholder the painful necessity of stooping, and the no less painful sense of unseemliness and impossibility in looking down upon tops of mountains. Flood, we have here, and wind in all their grandeur; the cloudrack rending about the massy hills, and the sun seizing the opportunity of a rift in the shadowy curtain to fling a broad burst of red light on the brow and summit of one of the mountains. A sorry reward, gentlemen Academicians, for watching Nature at the heads of Welsh passes amid storms like this, and for bringing an effect seen perhaps once in a lifetime upon the canvas, to have your picture thrust out of sight in a But Mr. Hunt did not paint such a picture without having his reward. We venture to say that Mr. Creswick's picture on the line, A Relic of Old Times," (262), did not cost him so much effort as

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