breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at
Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the
consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the
Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and emperors dash by, like a
charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are
those sea-battle pieces of Garnery.
    The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things
seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of
their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's experience in the fishery,
and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they have nevertheless
furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all capable of
conveying the real spirit of the whale-hunt. For the most part, the English and
American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical
outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as
picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the
profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned right whaleman, after
giving us a stiff full-length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical
engravings of boat-hooks, chopping-knives, and grapnels; and with the
microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering
world ninety-six facsimiles of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no
disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in so
important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have procured for every
crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.
    In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other
French engravings worthy of note, by someone who subscribes himself H. Durand.
One of them, though not precisely adapted to our present purpose, nevertheless
deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of
the Pacific; a French whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking
water on board; the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms
in the background, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is
very fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen
under one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is quite
a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart of
the leviathanic life, with a right