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never irritate his nerves, nor destroy his slumbers. Some insignificant bills--some unimportant appeals--some stray fragments that fall from the tables of sturdier politicians, are his daily diet; and he dozes away the remainder of life, happy and contented in the simple and beautiful delusion that he is legislating and ruling--just as warrantable the while, as his compeer of Chelsea, in deeming his mock parades the forced marches of the Peninsula, and his Sunday guards the dispositions for a Toulouse or a Waterloo. A NUT FOR THE ART UNION. The battle between the "big and little-endians" in Gulliver, was nothing to the fight between the Destructives and Conservatives of the Irish Art Union. A few months since the former party deciding that the engraved plate of Mr. Burton's picture should be broken up; the latter protesting against the Vandalism of destroying a first-rate work of art, and preventing the full triumph of the artist's genius, in the circulation of a print so creditable to himself and to his country. The great argument of the Destructives was this:--We are the devoted friends of art--we love it--we glory in it--we cherish it: yea, we even give a guinea a-year a-piece for the encouragement of a society established for its protection and promotion;--this society pledging themselves that we shall have in return--what think ye?--the immortal honour of raising a school of painting in our native country?--the conscientious sense of a high-souled patriotism?--the prospect of future estimation at the hands of a posterity who are to benefit by our labours? Not at all: nothing of all this. We are far too great materialists for such shadowy pleasures; we are to receive a plate, whose value is in the direct ratio of its rarity, "which shall certainly be of more than the amount of our subscription," and, maybe, of five times that sum. The fewer the copies issued, the rarer (_i. e._, the dearer) each impression. We are the friends of art--therefore, we say, smash the copper-plate, destroy every vestige of the graver's art, we are supplied, and heaven knows to what price these engravings may not subsequently rise! [Illustration: "This is a Rembrandt."] Now, I like these people. There is something bold, something masterly, something decided, in their coming forward and fighting the battle on its true grounds. There is no absurd affectation about the circulation of a clever picture disseminating in remote
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