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THE REGRET OF CÆSAR, WHEN READING THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDERS' EXPLOITS, AT NOT HAVING SIGNALIZED HIMSELF.

THOUGH this subject is necessarily devoid of the lively interest produced by those actions of the human figure and those emotions of the mind which call forth the peculiar graces and energies of each, it solicits regard as a pictorial record of the rising ambition of one of the most celebrated characters of antiquity. It exhibits the dawning of that eager desire of celebrity, which, obtaining its object at a profuse expense of human blood and happiness, is execrable to every justly reflecting mind, and forms an odious contrast to the laudable ambition which delights in conferring benefits on the human race, and consequently in obtaining the only truly valuable applause---the praise of the wise and good. That Julius Cæsar's love of distinction should have taken a direction so destructive of the rights and happiness of mankind is natural, when it is considered that in his youth he was "abandoned to every species of voluptuousness and libertinism, and on these accounts became the proverb of the day, and that Alexander had already by his achievements earned immortality at an age at which Cæsar was still wallowing in the grossest sensuality." Such a sensual abandonment naturally tends to destroy those truly liberal and humane feelings which counteract ambitious propensity in the consideration of the evils it brings on humanity; and therefore, as Cæsar was grossly sensual in his youth, so he was cruel and viciously ambitious at a maturer age. His intemperate devotion to the myrtle and the vine was exchanged for an equally ardent but more injurious attachment to the laurel. This emblem of Victory he wore on a prematurely bald head, probably made so, as it often is in many, by licentious excesses. "Vice and passion," says Plutarch, in speaking of the deaths of Alexander and Cæsar, "may be more or less tardy in their operations, but they never forego their claims on their votaries." Intemperance dispatched the one, and ambition the other; that ambition which, after making Cicero, Cato, and all the other good men of Rome his enemies; after having been associated with such an extreme of treachery and cruelty as to prompt him "to put to death many eminent officers whom he had taken at the battle of Thapsus; and violating a recent peace with the Germans, massacred in one bloody day, three hundred thousand men;" and, in fine, after having sacrificed above a million of his fellow creatures, consigned him over to the daggers of his countrymen, and, notwithstanding his great talents, to an infamous immortality.

R.

VENUS RISING FROM THE SEA.

In relation alone to form, this is one of the most difficult subjects in the whole range of pictorical execution; for it not only exhibits the entire female figure, but displays the very essence and concentration of female, loveliness, the presiding deity of Beauty itself. Every thing, therefore, short of perfection in so comprehensive a subject, disappoints the high expectation of the spectator, and daring is the hand that ventures on so arduous and perilous an undertaking. It must be the accomplished hand of a great master only, that here succeeds in gratifying a cultivated and tasteful imagination.

In other subjects, various causes conduce to conceal or palliate defect in form, especially where there is much drapery, and vehemence in action or passion. Here the action must be gentle, for it must be eminently graceful; and grace cannot eminently consist with violent action, with sudden and angular turns of the limbs. Ever varying, but gentle undulations of form, with nicest proportion in the whole and separate parts, are the elements of this grace. It is equally distant from monotony and strong contrast. "So stands the statue that enchants the world,"-the Medicean Venus, and such is the Venus, here depicted, "in flower of youth and beauty's pride." It may be conceived, perhaps, that a little too much of the latter predominates in the countenance; but the hour is that of triumph; and the Goddess is in her greatest and most royal character, the representative of creative and all-powerful impulse.

Just risen from the womb of the Sea, the Queen of Love and Beauty is attended by a pomp appropriate to her character. The Graces surround, and are actively engaged in decorating her. Her page, the little archer of the heart, is stringing and preparing a bow; doves, the emblems of innocent, ardent, and faithful love, precede her way; and a shell, her car, is drawn by swans whose stately forms shadow out the dignity inseparable from virtuous love.

R. H.

Painted by B.West P.RA.

VENUS RISING FROM THE SEA.

Drawn &Engraved by H.Moses.

London, Joseph Thomas, 1.Finch Lane.

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