trast, some principle of art and nature darts into your brain, with a flash as if the lock of a gun had snapped in your head, and had produced an explosion!-you become rooted to your seat,trains of thought and principles of art crowd upon your imagination like lightning!-foggy days, foul air, and bad dinners, are unfelt-you sit deliciously abstracted in a world of your own, invincible to external circumstances, invincible to want, invincible to difficulties; your good genius seems to draw aside a curtain that obscured the vista of your future years, and shows you glory like a star shining at the end!-the greatest examples of the world begin to shine to your fancyyou look about your room with a sort of awe, and conceive you see the faces of the greatest beings, like the " diræque facies" of Virgil, glittering in the obscure part of your chamber!-then come trains of thought, which at other times are sought for in vain, and in one hour you do more than in less happy moments you can do in months; you sit, in a state of abstracted enthusiasm, with a contempt for your own timidity of mind, that for a moment could have made you compare the energy of a life of hope and ambition, and all its difficulties, with the dull, plodding, tame, insipid, though wholesome existence of your family in the country! Quite forgetful of your day's miseries, and full of your present delightful anticipations, you fall gently asleep upon your table, and never wake till the roaring of the watchman under your window makes you start up, and to your inexpressible pleasure you find, that while your good genius has been drawing aside the curtain that concealed the vista of your future years, and showing you glory like a star shining at the end of it, a thief has been wasting your candle for the last two hours, and has floated the wick out into the middle of the table, which it has scorched; and while you are endeavouring to light another candle the wick tips forward into the grease, goes out with a whiz, and leaves you in unutterable darkness!-remember-that you are in the middle of your painting room, in the middle of your easel, oil bottles, canvasses, and colours-remember-that the dirty water of your brushes stands somewhere-in your very first attempt you hit your shin against the projecting pin of your easel, which jerks your picture, that shakes the table, that topples down something, which, by the bumping crash, must be a favorite plaister head!-the whole events of the day now crowd again upon your mind, and you crawl to your bed with the consolation, that there has not one single thing happened during the whole day, from morning till night, that is either agreeable or satisfactory-you muse on life and its inexhaustible absurdities!-on death and its endless prospects!-on human schemes and human weaknesses!-and, after a short slumber, rise at six, resolving that "come what come may," you will not lose your temper again, if the day be foggy and your model not punctual-if you should not be able to distinguish between Indian red and Vandyke brown-or if you have large brushes to clean of a week's standing, even should they be full of PRUSSIAN BLUE! A. ART. VI. An Essay on Gesture. By MICHAEL WILLIAM SHARP, Esq. [Read at the Philosophical Society of Norwich.] PART II *. After the foregoing introductory remarks, I beg leave to arrange the various gestures incidental to man in the following classification: Gesture 1.-Supplication. THE stretching forth and clasping the hands when we importunately entreat, sue, beseech or ask mercy, is the gesture of supplication. Thus the Romans who sued in behalf of Coriolanus used this gesture, when Sicenius the tribune had pronounced sentence of death upon him, holding forth their hands to the people, beseeching them not to sacrifice this noble Roman. Thus Manlius and Fulvius came to Tiberius, with tears in their eyes, and holding up their hands, be *Part I. which is introductory to the following illustrations, is in Vol. IV. page 406. sought him to leave the Agrarian law unaltered. Plutarch, in the description of Emilius' triumph, relates that King Perses' children were led in, with their masters, officers and other servants, weeping and lamenting, holding out their hands, that they might appear to ask mercy and grace from the people, as they passed in the triumphal procession. The power of this expression has sometimes remained in the arm even when the hand has been lost. When the people of Athens were about to stone Eschylus the tragedian, for some impiety which he had brought on the stage, his brother, Amynias, who had lost his hand at the battle of Salamis, held up his arm, which reminding the judges of the services of Amynias, they immediately acquitted the poet. gesture may be often observed in children, when entreating forgiveness; and Raffaelle has adopted it with great success in the figure of our Saviour in the Transfiguration. Gesture 2.-Prayer &c. This To raise the hands, joined and hollowed in the middle, or spread out towards heaven, is the habit of devotion, and a natural and universal form of prayer. This is the language of contrition, submission, entreaty, and supplication*. Alexander, in his third battle with Darius, before charging the enemy, grasped his lance in his *The ancient brasses and monuments in our cathedrals expressed this gesture," Cœlo supinas si tuleris manus." left hand, and extending his right, besought the Gods to assist him, and to encourage the Grecians. The Heathens also, when they came forth to plough, laid one hand upon the stilt of the plough, and lifted the other up to Ceres; beginning their actions both of war and peace with the same gesture: "Sustulit excitas vinclis ad sydera palmas."-VIRGIL. The ancients are very copious in expressing these outward forms of devotion in the hands. They say the hands stretched out, expanded, and erected, all naturally imply this expression. With Tertullian, the hands thus affected are expanded; with Virgil holden abroad; as Nonnius interpreteth the action, they are the open and extended hands. Cresollius says, this deportment of our hands declares that we affectionately fly unto the protection of our Heavenly Father, as little children, when alarmed, with stretchedout hands, run into the lap of their parents, or as men, in the midst of shipwreck, stretch out their hands to some friendly saviour. In a medal of Gordian, there is a figure raising its expanded hands, with this inscription : " Pietas Augusta :" and, according to Eusebius, Constantine was represented in coins and paintings with his hands extended forth. The Romish church superabounds in the external expressions of devotion, some of which have been quaintly commented upon by the old writers; for instance, Huelamus, in his gloss upon the "oremus" in the Romish |