greater. As it never was alleged that the cantonments were meant for the
overawing of Cabool, and in effect they were totally inefficient as
regarded that city--it is clear that the one great advantage by which
the Affghans accomplished our destruction, was coolly prepared for them
by ourselves, without the shadow of any momentary benefit for our own
interests. Even for provisions, the event showed that we had never
looked to Cabool. And there reveals itself the last feature of our
perfect madness.




ETCHED THOUGHTS BY THE ETCHING CLUB.


In the Number of _Maga_ of January 1842, we reviewed one of the labours
of the Etching Club--_The Deserted Village_. We congratulated the lovers
of art upon the resumption of the needle, and showed the advantages
which, in some important respects, it has over the graver. Etching, as
it is less mechanical, is more expressive. We have from it the immediate
impress of the painter's mind; that peculiar autographic character which
marks every turn and shade of thought, even transition of thought and
feeling, in what may, at first view, seem vagaries of lines; which, we
know not how, (nor is the artist himself at the time conscious of the
operation,) discriminate innumerable niceties, each having its own
effect, and yet tending to one whole. We rarely come at once, _uno
ictu_, to a decision. The operation is progressive--from conception to
conception, from feeling to feeling, from many shades of uncertainty to
decision. The first fresh hand upon any work is obedient to the mind in
this process; and hence it is that we so value, so admire, the sketches