Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844 by Various
page 61 of 310 (19%)
page 61 of 310 (19%)
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"Moonlight" is not quite clear enough--there are too many sparkling
lights. The "Shady Seat" is prettily designed; the lady looks rather too alarmed, and, for the subject, perhaps there is not enough of shadow-- certainly not "enough for two." We at once recognize Stonhouse in the "Evening effects of Solitude," and his "Neath Abbey." The former he thus describes:-- "There, woods impervious to the breeze, Thick phalanx of embodied trees-- Here, stillness, height, and solemn shade Invite, and contemplation aid." We are sure that Neath Abbey is from nature, for it has the sooty and smoked character of that manufacture-ruined ruin. But we must not pass by his "Dorothea" from Don Quixote. Nothing can be more happily expressed than the deep shady retirement of the wood; there are nice gradations of shades, which is the very character of retirement, and Dorothea is herself in it, not a bright figure in a black mass--and good is the figure too, but the feet are unfinished. Mr Creswick is a large contributor, and least fortunate in his first: it is not the scene so well given in verse by his friend Townsend; for it is too pretty, too tight. It wants the "lane;" it is the road-side. "THE WAYSIDE. "A lane, retired from noisy haunts of men, Whose ruts the solitary lime cart tracks, Whose hedge-sides, propp'd by many a mossy stone, |
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