QUERIES.

QUERIES ON OUTLINE.

The boundary between a surface represented and its background received two different treatments in the hands of artists who have the highest claims on our respect. Some, following the older painters as they were followed by Raphael and Albert Durer, bring the surface of the figure abruptly against its background. Others, like Murillo and Titian, melt the one into the other, so that no pencil could trace the absolute limit of either. Curiously enough, though for very obvious reasons, the Daguerreotype seems to favour one method, the Calotype the other. Yet, two Calotypes, in which the outlines are quite undefined, coalesce in the Stereoscope, giving a sharp outline; and as soon as the mind has been thus taught to expect a relievo, either eye will see it.

But if you look at your face in the glass, you cannot at once (say at three feet distance) see the outlines of the eye and cheek. They disappear every where, except in the focus common to both eyes. Then nothing is seen absolutely at rest. The act of breathing imparts perpetual motion to the artist and the model. The aspen leaf is trembling in the stillest air. Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to Turner's use or abuse of his great faculties, no one will doubt that he has never been excelled in the art of giving space and relative distance to all parts of his canvas. Certainly no one ever carried confusion of outline in every part not supposed to be in the focus of the eye so far.

On the other hand, every portion of a large picture, however severe its execution, acquires this morbid outline wherever the eye quits one detail for another. Is, then, the law governing small and large surface different? Do these instances imply that a definite boundary, a modern German style, is indefensible? or only indefensible in miniature? Or, is such a picture as the Van Eyh in the National Gallery a vindication of the practice in small works?

I can answer that it is not; and this last question I merely ask to avoid all answers on the score of authority. No doubt that strange work is one of the most realising pictures ever painted,—more so than any neighbouring Rembrandt,—whose masses of light and shade were used as a "creative power." I want to know whether there is a right and wrong in the case, apart from every thing men call taste. Whether, whenever a work of art passes from suggestion to imitation, some liberty must not be given at the lines whence the rays are supposed to diverge to the two eyes from two different surfaces. Every advance in art and science removes something from the realms of opinion, and this appears to be a question on which science must some day legislate for art.

J.O.W.H.

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL—OLD SONGS ONCE POPULAR THERE

Amongst the numerous correspondents and readers of your very interesting little work, there may yet be living some who were scholars in the above institution during the last ten or fifteen years of the last century, coevals, or nearly so, with Richards, afterwards of Oriel College, author of a prize poem, Aboriginal Britons, and one of the Bampton Lecturers; Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta; Trollope, afterwards Master of the Grammar School; Barnes, afterwards connected with the Times; Stevens, Scott (poor Scott!), Coleridge, Lamb, Allen, White, Leigh Hunt, the two brothers Le G. Favell, Thompson, Franklin, &c., pupils of old James Boyer, of flogging celebrity.

If so, can any of them furnish me with the words of an old song, then current in the school, relating to the execution of the Earl of Derwentwater in the rebellion of 1715, of which the four following lines are all that I remember:

Of another song, equally popular, less pathetic, but of more spirit-stirring character, can any one supply the remainder?

NEMO.

WATCHING THE SEPULCHRE—DOMINUS FACTOTUM—ROBERT PASSELLEW.

Allow me to offer a query or two respecting which I shall be glad of any information your numerous correspondents may be able to furnish.

1. In Fuller's History of Waltham Abbey, pp. 269. 274., Nichol's edition, 1840, we have the following entries from the churchwarden's accounts:

"Anno 1542, the thirty-fourth of Henry viii. Imprimis. For watching the sepulchre, a groat."

"Item, for watching the sepulchre, eight pence."

The last entry occurs in "Anno 1554, Mariæ primo," but Fuller adds, "though what meant thereby, I know not." Can any satisfactory information be furnished which will explain the custom here alluded to?

2. In the same work, page 278., a passage occurs, which not only explains the meaning of the term factotum, but furnishes matter for another query. The passage is this; speaking of "eminent persons buried" at Waltham Abbey, he says: "we spoil all, if we forget Robert Passellew, who was dominus fac totum in the middle—and fac nihil towards the end—of the reign of Henry III." Some parasites extolled him by allusion to his name, pass-le-eau, (that is "passing the pure water,") the wits of those days thus descanting upon him:

The learned Dr. Whitaker, in his History of Whalley, says, that "the word Paslew was of Norman origin (Pass-le-eau), and afforded a subject for some rhyming monkish verses, not devoid of ingenuity, which the curious reader may find in Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 645;" and a question now arises whether the Passellew mentioned by Fuller belongs to the same family as the "Paslews of Wiswall," alluded to by Dr. Whitaker, one of whom, "John, Abbot of Whalley" was executed for the part he took in the "Pilgrimage of Grace." when it is stated that the Paslews of Wiswall bore "Argent a fess between three mullets Sable pierced of the field, a crescent for difference," probably some of your readers will be able to give some particulars respecting "Robert Passelew," and also identify the families if possible.

T.W.

Burnley, Lancashire, Feb. 23, 1850.