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coral formation," on a large scale. "Coral obviously forms the fathomable ground-work; the soil is quite superficial, and underneath is coral rock and salt or brackish water. One of the Haabai Islands is said to rock frightfully during heavy gales, which tends to prove its incomplete solidity under water; and some others exhibit various indications of hollowness." All of them are extremely subject to earthquakes and destructive gales. The soil, however, is fertile, producing abundance of tropical vegetation, and the climate fine, there being no season which can be properly called rainy, as in Tahiti, where "several months of the year are rendered almost unavailable by incessant rains."

The end of the year 1836 finds the Wheelers at New Zealand, the inhabitants of which are among the rudest and most warlike of the Islanders of the Pacific, resembling, we are told, the North American Indians to a degree that would be scarcely credited, "in appearance, habits, and Jewish customs." A belief in a future state, and in superhuman agency, is universal among them. The following illustration by a New Zealander, of his idea of the Supreme Being, indicates a refinement of thought which we should not have attributed to an "untutored savage.' When asked what their god was - what he was like, the warrior placed his hand so as to produce a shadow on the trunk of a huge tree that stood near, and told his interrogator to look at that. There,' said he, 'is our god;

he exists, but you cannot touch him or injure him; he is before your eyes, yet you can discern no substance in the form you see and know to exist.'

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The visit among the Islands of the Pacific ended, Daniel Wheeler returns to England by way of Cape Horn, and arrives in London the first of June, 1838. At the end of three months, he is off again to Russia, and in a little less than two months more, back to London, returning through Finland and Stockholm. After remaining in England about a month, he sails for America, for the purpose of visiting the Societies of Friends on this side of the Atlantic. He attends the yearly meetings in Philadelphia, Virginia, New York, and New England, visits Nova Scotia and Canada, returns to Philadelphia, and goes to Ohio, thence back again to New York, where he embarks for England the first of November, 1839. Having determined on a

second visit to this country, he takes ship for New York, the last of March, 1840, becomes ill on the passage, and survives a little short of two months after landing.

Such rapidity of motion would seem to indicate somewhat of a restless disposition, from which we think Wheeler was not wholly free, which early, indeed, manifested itself, but which grew upon him with time, till repose seems to have become absolutely painful to him. That this, however, was united with great warmth of Christian benevolence, none can doubt. The journal of his wanderings often forces us to reflect on the power of Christian love, which ever animated him, enabled him to bear up under every discouragement, and cheerfully to undergo labor and fatigue, and make many pecuniary sacrifices. There is much in such a character which excites our admiration and inspires reverence. The narrative, it is true, contains few stirring incidents, and many of the details of the volume possess no special interest for the public; but there is much in it that is valuable, and we might very easily have extended our extracts. Wheeler had no great affluence of intellect, and seldom, if ever, indulges in any original trains of thought; his mind was entirely practical, and his reflections are often commonplace enough; his addresses too have great sameness, and many will think them occasionally wearisome. Yet we cannot help sympathizing with his downright Quaker simplicity and benevolence, and we close the volume with a hearty disposition to pronounce a blessing on his memory, and with the wish that the world more abounded in men of so much moral purity and worth.

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ART. V.-BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST.

THE public is at length permitted, and we doubt not many will be eager to avail themselves of a privilege which they have long coveted, to look upon the grand historical picture of Belshazzar's Feast, painted by Allston, and now exhibited at the Corinthian Gallery in this city. The subject is taken from the fifth chapter of the Book of the Prophet Daniel. According to the account given in that VOL. XXXVII. 4TH S. VOL. II. NO. I.

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portion of the sacred narrative, Belshazzar, the Babylonian king, "made a great feast to a thousand of his lords." Being elevated with wine, he commanded the sacred vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, to be brought, “and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them." In the midst of the banquet a man's hand appeared to the king, and wrote certain mysterious characters upon the wall. The terrified monarch called for the astrologers and soothsayers, who came in, but were unable to read and interpret the writing. He then sent for Daniel, who had been carried into captivity with his countrymen the Jews, and who had been highly esteemed and honored for his wisdom, by Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel appears before the king, interprets the writing, and, to the dismay of his hearers, predicts the speedy overthrow of the Chaldean monarchy. Such is the subject which the painter has treated in a masterly style.

It is generally known that the picture was left unfinished by the artist. In the descriptive pamphlet, furnished to those who visit the exhibition, we are informed that "Mr. Allston began it in London, before his return to his native country, and had very nearly finished it here fifteen or twenty years ago. Various circumstances prevented his resuming the work until within a few years before his death. At one period it was considered by himself as requiring not many weeks' labor to complete it. In that state it was seen by some friends, to whom it appeared a finished picture. For some reason, however, the artist thought that the effect of the composition would be improved by a change in the perspective, and in connexion with this, an enlargement of the figures in the foreground." These changes had been commenced and were in progress, when the labors of the artist were arrested by his death.

If, according to the pamphlet from which we have already quoted, "for artists, the unfinished state of the picture hardly diminishes its value," we may say, with equal truth, that this circumstance hardly diminishes its interest to the beholder. It is sufficiently completed to present the general conception of the painter, and the alterations in progress have the effect to superadd to the pleasure derived from viewing a work of high art, the associated idea of him

whose last touches were here given only a short time before death robbed his hand of its cunning, and changed himself into an image stamped upon the memory of his friends. On our first visit to the exhibition, there was something bordering upon solemness in the impression produced. The feelings were akin to those with which one would enter the room, yet undisturbed in its minutest arrangements, where but recently had lived and moved, sat and studied, mused and conversed, a person loved for his worth, or honored and admired for his genius. And by a kind of delusion which would perpetually recur, we could not rid ourselves of the fancy that the artist would return, and take up again the brush and palette, and give the designed enlargement to that royal figure, gazing upon the mysterious "hand-writing upon the wall," — invisible, and meant to be invisible to the spectator, and finish the picture in detail, before it should be given up to the cherishing custody of the public taste. One moment we would imagine, that we were specially privileged by the artist in being permitted to look upon his work while it was still under his eye and hand; and the next moment we seemed to ourselves to be intruders, who had by stealth gained admittance into his private room, and we expected he would enter and find us examining his unwrought fancies.

We have not the presumption to attempt a criticism of this grand performance as a work of art. We are content to lack that æsthetic skill which would qualify us for such an office. He who knows enough of the mystery of any art to be competent to criticise, very likely knows too much to be deeply impressed and affected by what he analyzes so acutely. He whose attention is not distracted by a critical survey and scrutiny, can yield his whole mind and open his heart to the moral or sentiment conveyed through the representation.

And there is high and solemn teaching in this painting of the Babylonian monarch and his court, interrupted in the midst of their guilty banquet by the suggestions of conscience and by the message of God. On every one of those varied countenances a lesson is written which the beholder will do well to ponder.

We have, in this production of our gifted countryman, another added to the many proofs which the world pos

sessed before, that the religious sentiment is the source of all the most finished and most enduring achievements of art. The costliest and most richly ornamented, the largest and most majestic piles that architecture has ever reared, have been designed to give suitable expression to the sentiment of reverence in the soul of man, to be an outward symbol of the highest and best conceptions, which prevailed at the time, of the Deity. And the attempt to give fit outward form to such conceptions has done more than all else to rouse genius, to quicken the inventive faculty, to render prolific the imagination. It is true that many of the edifices, which have been admired by age after age as models of art, were devoted to false worship-to the worship of idols, or of the sun and other inanimate objects, or of divinities whose attributes were cruelty and ferocity or voluptuousness. They were erected, it may be, for the service of religions whose particular ideas and practices we abhor. Still they were the result of the highest and purest conceptions that existed when and where they arose. And probably they arose from ideas which never were popularized, ideas which belonged exclusively to a few, while common minds groaned under the superstition of which they were made the instruments.

Similar remarks might be made, with equal truth, of music, of literature, of eloquence, of painting. Religion has invariably been the prompter and the theme of the master-efforts in all these arts. From religion the highest inspiration has been drawn. What a complete refutation do such facts afford of the shallow argument of some infidel writers, who allege that religion is the invention of priests and politicians, to subserve their own selfish purposes. Religion has, doubtless, frequently been perverted and misdirected by priests and politicians, and has been made by them a terrible engine in subjugating, oppressing and enslaving their fellow-men. But they could not originate the principle itself. They did not constitute human nature; they had no part in mingling the elements which are combined in the soul of man. They took man as they found him, created by God a believing, hoping, aspiring, devotional, religious being. They discerned in him the instinct of religion, a susceptibility to religious impression, a continual inclination to and longing for what is "unseen,

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