Perhaps we ought not to mention an idea we sometimes entertain--that
our readers may imagine we are partial to Mr. Haydon, and that we pay
an undue share of attention to his works. The truth, however, is that
his pictures always work upon us with greater intensity than those of
any other living artist. Further, we know Mr. Haydon but by his works.
We are acquainted with the original of Pharaoh, in his great picture
of _the Plague_, but this association has nothing to do with our
admiration of Mr. Haydon's genius. One of the specimens--_Eucles_--will
not soon be absent from our mind's eye; and for days after we first saw
it, the sorrowful mother, and the ghastly, falling figure of the warrior,
haunted our imagination at every turn.
* * * * *
THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS_.
* * * * *
THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS.
This is another volume of the delightful Zoological series of the
_Library of Entertaining Knowledge_. We have already a volume and a
half of Quadrupeds from the Menageries, a volume of the
Transformations of Insects, and another of their Architectural
Labours. The present, in well-chosen continuity of a novel plan of
illustrating the Animal economy, is devoted to "an examination of
Birds in the exercise of their mechanical arts of constructing Nests."
"This work," observes the ingenious Editor, "is the _business_ of
their lives--the duty which calls forth that wonderful ingenuity,
which no experience can teach, and which no human skill can rival.
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