Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 341, November 15, 1828», страница 2

ANECDOTES OF CHRISTINA, THE YOUNG QUEEN OF SWEDEN

(For the Mirror.)

Christina was the only child of the great Gustavus Adolphus, who succeeded to the throne of her father in 1632, when she was but five years of age. The young queen, at an early age, discovered but little taste for the society and occupations of her sex. When young, she was capable of reading the Greek historians. At the age of eighteen she assumed the reins of government. Several princes of Europe aspired to her hand; but she rejected them all. To prevent a renewal of applications on this subject, she solemnly appointed Gustavus her successor, but without the smallest participation in the rights of the crown during her own life. During her minority, Sweden enjoyed internal repose, but was involved in a long war with the German empire. She was crowned with great splendour in the year 1650. From this time she entertained a philosophical contempt for pomp and parade, and a kind of disgust for the affairs of state. She invited to her court men of the first reputation in various studies. She was a great collector of books, manuscripts, medals, paintings, &c. In 1654, when she was only in her 28th year, Christina abdicated the crown, in order that she might live a life of freedom. With her crown, she renounced the Lutheran and embraced the Catholic religion. In quitting the scene of her regal power, she proceeded to Rome, where she intended to fix her abode. Some disgust which she received at Rome, induced her, in the space of two years, to determine to visit France. Here she was treated with respect by Louis XIV., but the ladies were shocked with her masculine appearance and demeanour, and the unguarded freedom of her conversation. Apartments were assigned her at Fontainbleau, where she committed an action, which has indelibly stained her memory, and for which, in other countries, (says her biographer,) she would have paid the forfeit of her own life. This was the murder of an Italian, Monaldeschi, her master of the horse, who had betrayed some secret intrusted to him. He was summoned into a gallery in the palace; letters were then shown to him, at the sight of which he turned pale, and entreated for mercy; but he was instantly stabbed by two of her own domestics in an apartment adjoining that in which she herself was. The French court was justly offended at this atrocious deed; yet it met with vindicators, among whom was Leibnitz, whose name was disgraced by the cause which he attempted to justify. Christina was sensible that she was now regarded with horror in France, and would gladly have visited England, but she received no encouragement for that purpose from Cromwell. She returned to Rome, and resumed her amusements in the arts and sciences. In 1660, on the death of Charles Gustavus, she took a journey to Sweden to recover her crown; but her ancient subjects rejected her claims, and submitted to a second renunciation of the throne; after which she returned to Rome. Some differences with the pope made her resolve, in 1662, once more to return to Sweden; but the conditions annexed by the senate to her residence there were now so mortifying, that she proceeded no farther than Hamburgh. She went back to Rome, and cultivated a correspondence with the learned men there, and in other parts of Europe, and died in 1689, leaving behind her many letters, a "Collection of Miscellaneous Thoughts or Maxims," and "Reflections on the Life and Actions of Alexander the Great."

P.T.W.

METHOD OF ASCERTAINING THE STATE OF THE LUNGS

(For the Mirror.)

Persons desirous of ascertaining the true state of their lungs, are directed to draw in as much breath as they conveniently can; they are then to count as far as they are able, in a slow and audible voice, without drawing in more breath. The number of seconds they can continue counting must be carefully observed; in a consumption, the time does not exceed ten, and is frequently less than six seconds; in pleurisy and pneumonia, it ranges from nine to four seconds. When the lungs are in a sound condition, the time will range as high as from twenty to thirty-five seconds.

G.W.N.

THE COSMOPOLITE

ARTISTICAL ERRORS.
A SECOND CHAPTER OF BULLS

(For the Mirror.)

I saw a picture not long since, in Edinburgh, copied from an engraving in Boydell's Shakspeare; subject,—"Lear (and suite) in the storm," but coloured according to the imagination and taste of the artist; its name ought assuredly to have been Redcap and the blue-devils, for the venerable and lamented monarch had fine streaming locks of the real carrot hue, whilst his very hideous companions showed blue faces, and blue armour; and with their strangely contorted bodies seemed meet representatives of some of the infernal court.—In a highly adorned prayer book, published in the reign of William III., the engravings of which are from silver-plates, one print illustrates our Lord's simile of the mote and beam, by a couple of men aiming at each other's visual organs, ineffectually enough, one having a great log of wood growing from his eye, and the other being blind in one eye from a cataract; at least, though I think I do not err in saying, a moat and castle, in it—I have seen an old edition of Jeremy Taylor's "Life and Death of Christ," illustrated with many remarkably good engravings. Of one of these the subject is, the Impotent Man at the Pool of Bethesda; the fore ground is occupied by our Saviour, the cripple, and other invalids; and in the distance appears a small pond palisaded by slender pilasters; over it hovers an angel, who, with a long pole, is, to the marvel of the beholders, dexterously "troubling the waters." In the same volume, some of the figures are clad in the garb of the time when drawn, and St. Jude is reading the New Testament in a pair of spectacles!—In Holyrood House, and in one of the rooms added in the days of Charles II., is a panel-painting of "the Infant Hercules strangling the serpents;" and leaping up in front of the cradle, appears one of those pretty and rare spaniels called King Charles's breed. In the same palace, and in one of the chambers, once occupied by the unfortunate Mary, is a very old painting, intended, as the guide assures visitors, to represent St. Peter's vision of the great sheet; it may be, but if so, one archangel in military sandals, holding in his hands a small towel, represents (by a figure in painting I presume,) St. Peter, the sheet, and its innumerable living contents. He must have taken a hint, from the artist who painted for the passage through the Red Sea nothing but ocean, assuring his employer, that the Israelites could not be seen, because they were all gone over, and the Egyptians were every one drowned!—"I once saw," writes a friend, "a full length portrait of Wordsworth, in a modern painting of 'Christ riding into Jerusalem;' it was amongst a group of Jews, and next to a likeness of Voltaire. I believe the painter intended to contrast the countenances of the Christian and infidel poets, and thus pay a handsome compliment to the former; but the taste that placed the ancients and moderns together, remind me of a fine old painting of the Flemish school; a 'David with Goliah's head,' in the fore-ground of which were a number of fat Dutchmen, dressed in blue coats and leather breeches, with pipes in their mouths."—"Raphael," says a little French work on painting, in my possession, speaking of unity of time, "A peché contre cette regle, dans son tableau d'Heliodore, ou il fait intervenir le Pape Jules 2 dans le Temple de Jerusalem porte sur les epaules, des Gonfalonniers." The same work notices a breach of the unity of design in Paul Veronese, "qui dans la partie droite d'un de ses tableaux, a represente Jesus Christ benissant l'eau, dont il va être baptise par St. Jean Baptiste; et dans la partie gauche notre Seigneur tente par le diable."—Upon the celebrated "Transfiguration" of Raphael, I heard an artist remark, "undoubtedly it is the first picture in the world, yet the painter has erred in these respects:—the upper portion of the picture is occupied by the subject, but the lower and fore-ground by the Healing of the Demoniac. Now that event did not happen until after the transfiguration, and we infringe upon our Saviour's ubiquity by supposing it to occur (contrary to the sacred story) at the same time. He may, indeed, as God be omnipresent, but as man, the New Testament no where asserts that the Incarnate Presence was in different places at the same moment." Instances of erroneous judgment are frequent in those who illustrate holy writ. Some have attempted to embody Him, "whom no man hath seen at any time." Some have filled their skies with beings as little aerial as possible, or apotheoses of the Virgin and sundry saints. Angels, as some represent them, even in whole lengths, are by anatomists regarded as monsters; but what then are the chubby winged heads without bodies, with which some artists etherealize their works. Some err by mingling on the same canvass the sacred and profane; scripture characters and the non-descripts of heathen mythology. Nor is poetry free from the latter error, as is exemplified in the major and minor epics, &c., of many Christian poets. The drawings of the monks, splendid in colouring and beautiful in finish, are mostly ludicrous in design, from glaring anachronisms, erroneous perspective, &c. I saw a print in Montfauçon, where fish were gamboling like porpusses on the surface of the sea, and one or two were visible through the paddles of a boat. In the same volume was a print of the apotheosis of St. Louis, from an illumination. The holy prince was represented dying in the fore-ground, but over head were a couple of angels flying away with his soul, (under the figure of a wretched infant, skinny and naked, save the glory that covered his head,) in a kind of sheet, or rather sack.

But to detail all the absurdities and indecencies of these revered artists, whether limners, or carvers in wood, were endless. Their anachronisms, however, have been of considerable service to the antiquary. Sculpture has its monstrosities, architecture its incongruities, though not so palpable as those of painting, because the art is less generally understood by the common observer, or rather pictorial errors are in general easily detected by the eye alone, and sometimes by the most commonly informed mind; but architectural defects are only recognisable by those who have studied the principles of this fine art. Poetry, I am sorry to say, is not exempt from bulls and blunders, of various kinds and degrees of enormity; many of which have been, from time to time, exposed in a very amusing manner. I shall therefore, in conclusion, crave the liberty of producing one which has lately come under my own cognizance. A modern poet, whose compositions are fraught with beauty and genius, sings:—

 
"Then swooped the winds, that hurl the giant oak
From Snowdon's altitude."
 

And another, in stanzas of extreme strength and eloquent description, describes a storm at night "among the mountains of Snowdon," with these expressions:—

 
——"The bird of night
Screams from her straw-built nest, as from the womb
Of infant death, and wheels her drowsy flight
Amid the pine-clad rocks, with wonder and afright."
 
 
——"The night-breeze dies
Faint, on the mountain-ash leaves that surround
Snowdon's dark peaks."
 

Now, a painful pilgrimage of eleven hours, up Snowdon and back again, enables me to declare that had oaks, pines, and service-trees adorned that appalling and volcanic chaos, five or six years since, some storm sufficient to have shattered the universe, must have swept them all away, ere I looked upon that dreary assemblage of rocks which seems like the ruins of a world. I ascended from the Capel Cerig side of the mountain, and therefore venture not to say what may be the aspect of the Llanberries; but the only verdure I beheld, was that of short, brown heathy grass, a few stunted furze-bushes, and patches of that vividly green moss, which is spongy and full of water. The only living inhabitants of these wilds were a few ruffian-like miners, two or three black slugs, and a scanty flock of straggling half-starved mountain sheep, with their brown, ropy coats. The guide told me, that even eagles, had for three centuries abandoned the desolate crags of Snowdon; and as for its being a haunt for owls, neither bird nor mouse could reside there to supply such with subsistence. Snowdon appeared to me too swampy to be drained for cultivation in many parts, and in most others its marble, granite and shingles, forbade the idea of spontaneous vegetation. I am sorry for the poets, having a sincere regard for the fraternity, but Snowdon is not adorned with pines, firs, larches, and service-trees, like parts of the Alps; it is not wooded like the romantic Pyrenees, nor luxuriantly fertile in fruits, flowers, and grain, like the terrible, but sylvan Etna.

M.L.B.