REPORT OF MR. MILLETT.
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nature. O’Neil’s Eastward Ho! the farewells of wives and sweethearts to the departing soldiers on shipboard is noticeable for similar careful study of type and almost irreproachable treatment. Turning to a class of pictures more serious in their nature, the Last Sleep of the Duke of Argyll , by Ward, with its fine effect of light, conceived and handled with honest feeling, gains on a fresh acquaintance. John Phillips’ Dying Contrabcindista has less of the unpretending simplicity of the works above mentioned, for the situation is dramatic, though finely rendered, and the complication of resources is extremely well managed. A class of paintings not to be ranked with those already spoken of, but to a stranger representing the generality of the English productions, is marked by an uncertainty of touch, a hesitating manner of execution, just the reverse of the solid and hearty Dutch method. Pool’s Spirit Hunter , inspired from Decameron, is a good example of this class. The figures of a picnic party, terrified at the approach of the ghostly cavalier, a re quite as thin and unsubstantial as the spirit that frightens them, and the landscape has the same vaporous, unreal appearance. J. C. Hook, who enjoys a wide reputation as a painter of fishermen, exposed some good, honest work, but his pictures are so awkwardly composed that they are not altogether attractive. A part of a sail, a section of a fishing- hoat, and a fisher-boy trimming down the sheet, and this at an angle with the frame, neither deceives or pleases the eye. There is, however, much freshness in the water, and good, solid perspective of tone ; then besides having these qualities, the pictures are freely touched. Neither intimately sympathetic with the fisherman, or conversant with the most poetical phases of his life, Hook should be calle.d a painter of the sea rather than of fishermen, for the landscape is always the strongest part of his pictures, and his weakly-drawn figures are often completely subordinate to it.
Orchardson and Pettie have both found motives from Shakespeare, the former showing Falstaff and the latter Touchstone and Audrey. Remarkable more for delicate color than for force of execution, these pictures are charm- higly felt and the figures well in character. Elmore is quite Ihe contrary in his manner. His Leonore, with the galloping 26