Imágenes de páginas
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ENGRAVER.

E. Finden.

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F. Stone.

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J. Holmes.

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G. Brown.

H. T. Ryall.

W. H. Mote.

W. Boxall..

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G. Brown.

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W. Boxall..

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D. M'Clise.

W. Boxall. .

J. W. Wright.

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W. H. Mote.

Hollis.

H. T. Ryall.

H. T. Ryall.

W. H. Mote.

Eagleton.

H. T. Ryall.

Charles Lewis.

G. Adcock.

ADDRESS.

THE poetry of Art is rapidly advancing in its influence over the mind of England; and amongst the embellishments, not only of the library, but also of the drawing-room and boudoir, none are more eagerly sought after, or more extensively cultivated, than the productions of the burin. It is to these two propositions that the present work owes its origin, and makes its appeal. It is the child of an age of that best of refinements, in which the selection of the merely ornamental is made with a reference to the intellectual,-and the sense of the beautiful is perceived through the medium, and governed by the sanctions, of the mind.

It is the design of the proprietors, in this work, to produce a series of sketches, exhibiting, individually, the various phases, and collectively, the spirit and morale of female beauty. The love of the Portrait has long been a prevailing character of English taste:-yet, it is observable that (out of the immediate circle of interests, of one kind or other, which give value to strict portraiture,—and in the eyes of all those to whom a portrait does not present either an object for the heart to hang its affections upon, or an image for the homage of the mind) its interest is increased, in proportion as it becomes idealised. It is an almost universal feeling of our nature which delights to clothe the features of truth in the veil of poetry. The imagination is gratified by the softening grace flung over the sternness of reality,—and the judgment propitiated by finding the beautiful employed as an agent and illustrator of the It is to this sentiment that the present work is intended to minister.

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ADDRESS.

The projectors purpose to select, amid those thousand homes into which the world looks not, and to arrest on the high-ways and bye-ways of life, from the forms "which pass us by in the world's crowd," the materials for their female kaleidoscope. Appealing, at once, to recollection and to fancy, they purpose to gather their illustrations of the beautiful, amid the haunts of every-day existence; and to demonstrate that female loveliness,-in all the forms in which poets have dreamt, or painters embodied it,-lies scattered about the thoroughfares and lonely places of society. To shew that the earth, like the sky, has myriad stars, seen only by the watchers; and to exhibit, as in an orrery, a selected constellation, by whose aid they may prove that the mystery and moral of earthly beauty, like that of the still and thoughtful planets, consists, mainly, in the charm of expression.

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To give effect to this plan, each of the sketches (which will be invariably taken from living originals,) will be made with reference to some familiar passage, in the works of distinguished writers;-and will present, in real forms, an illustration of the sentiment which such passage conveys. By this means, while the individual subjects will be, at all times, subordinate to the general design, — that design, itself, will derive an added interest from the familiar manner of its execution, and from the perpetual recurrence which those subjects will induce to each man's own experience amongst the picture-galleries of life.--Beauty is neither ideal, nor positive,-neither a dream of poetry, nor an uniform fact. Her bow is a more than "triple-coloured bow" her ensign with more than "three listed colours gay." Her garland has a hundred different hues; the spell of her fragrance is made up of myriad perfumes;—and the flowers which exhibit the one, and yield the other, are planted everywhere amid the gardens of the world. She is the true Proteus, filling a thousand shapes, and a prophet in them all.—If the poet be her minstrel, the sage is her minister; and the heart of man, before the mirror, of a thousand reflections, which Beauty holds up to its gaze, is-like the moon of old, before the magic glass of Pythagoras-compelled, by the spirit of philosophy itself, to receive and acknowledge the impression of all the characters which are written on her brow.

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