THE CREATION.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."* In illustrating this sublime subject, the artist has endeavoured to realize the divine agency in producing the world. Already are the luminous portions of the chaotic mass separated from the darkness, and brought into beautiful combination. The passive elements are stirred into activity by the impulse of an Almighty will, and the process of creation is rapidly proceeding. Disorder is visibly giving place to proportion, confusion to symmetry. The fluid particles of the chaos are seen above the more solid, which, put into motion by that mysterious Power by whose omnipotent influence they were no longer to remain without form, and obeying the primitive law of gravitation, have sunk beneath the more buoyant element and become compacted into earth. The spirit of God is represented, under the shadowy resemblance of a human form, floating or brooding, as the original term expresses it, upon the face of the deep. The great principle of light is exhibited in the different vehicles by which it is conveyed to us. The moon, a comet, and the stars, appear behind the divine Energy, or Spirit, as just completed, and at the command of Omnipotence "Let there be light," the sun bursts, in the fulness of his glory, from that portion of inert matter which had not yet subsided into form, while a vivid flash of lightning at the same instant flickers over the still, dark waters; thus displaying at one view the principal modifications under which the God of nature exhibits an element at once the source of light and of fecundity.

CREATION.

THE TEMPTATION.

IN this interesting illustration, Adam appears in the foreground leaning against a bank, as if he had been absorbed in admiration of those magnificent works of his Creator by which he is surrounded. Eve approaches him with the interdicted fruit, the abstaining from which constituted the special stipulation of the first covenant. There is a shrinking timidity in her approach, indicating an awakening consciousness of which she has not yet felt the full force, that strikingly contrasts with the unembarrassed deportment of the yet innocent father of mankind. In Eve we distinguish the first symptom of guilt. In her right hand she holds the fatal object of temptation, which she had just plucked, and in her left a branch of the tree of knowledge. With this she partly covers herself, as if already conscious of her nakedness, and presents the fruit to Adam. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." The landscape is intended to convey an idea of the earthly paradise which, in the perfection of its beauty, was no doubt a type of the heavenly. Lofty hills are seen in the distance blending in most agreeable harmony with the minuter features of the scene; exhibiting at once the magnificence and variety of the primitive creation. Nearer, more gentle declivities appear sloping down into fertile valleys laved by crystal streams, that fertilize and adorn the plain. The cedar tree, which after became so celebrated as the cedar of Libanus, here stands conspicuous, towering "in pride of place" above all the other trees by which it is surrounded.