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manding spirits of landscape. One word, however, in justice to DOMENICHINO. His pictures are enriched with delightful groups and beautiful figures. I never remember his Mercury, driving the flocks of Admetus to water, and many other efforts of his genius, but with pleasure, allied to delight.

SALVATOR ROSA loved rather to stand, as it were, upon the ruins of Nature, than to wander even among her most beautiful combinations: hence his imagination became bold and creative; and his pencil elevated and sublime and hence over all his works

He throws

A savage grandeur, and sublime repose.

Residing, in the early period of his life, with a band of robbers, the rocks, caves, dens, and mountains, which they inhabited, gave a decided impulse to his taste. In the delineation of savage grandeur, in magnificence of outline, and in the details of the wild and the terrible, he stands without a rival; his storms and tempests being the finest efforts of pictorial art. We behold with astonishment, with awe, with admiration: he was the SCHILLER of painting; as DANTE and SCHILLER were the Rosas of poetry.

CLAUDE LE LORRAIN, -the greatest of all landscape painters, if we except Titian,--studied in the fields. Every variation of shade, formed by the different hours of the day, and at different seasons of the year, by the refraction of light, and the morning and evening vapours, he minutely observed. His distances are admirably preserved; and his designs broken into a variety of parts:—and yet though thus divided, every group and every compartment form a whole, on which the fancy loves to pause, and the judgment to linger. “An air of loveliness and content," says Gessner, "pervades all the scenes which Lorrain's pencil has created. They excite in us that rapture, and those tranquil emotions, with which we contemplate the beauties of Nature. They are rich, without wildness and confusion; and though diversified, they every

where breathe mildness and tranquillity. His landscapes are views of a happy land, that lavishes abundance on its inhabitants, under a sky, beneath which every thing flourishes in healthy luxuriance a "

Claude was an ideal painter, as Praxiteles was an ideal statuary; his pieces being compositions, for the most part, formed of detached scenes, which he had observed in Italy, uniting into one picture. We never see them but with enjoyment; we never think of them but with delight; and we never fail to turn to them with new pleasure, even after dwelling upon scenes in Nature's loveliest attitudes. Every piece tells a history ;—he selects with grace and with judgment ;— and, being all poetry himself, he seems as if he were born to make poets, for a time, of all his beholders.

Dr. Beattie says of Corelli, that the harmonies of his Pastorale are so ravishingly sweet, that it is impossible not to think of heaven, when we hear them. A female servant, belonging to the Earl of Radnor, in the same manner, told a learned friend of mine, that she never looked at the pictures of Morning and Evening, in his lordship's collection, but she thought of Paradise! A compliment even more grateful to the genius of Claude, than the celebrated exclamation of the old vicar, when he beheld Grotius.

POUSSIN formed his taste among the landscapes of Tivoli; CLAUDE among the Apennines, between Rome and Naples; SALVATOR ROSA among the rocks, ruins, forests, and excavations of Calabria. Poussin strikes the imagination; Salvator rushes upon it; Claude attracts, rivets, and fascinates it. Uniting the rich glow of Ariosto with the purity and chastity of Tasso, his pictures are now invaluable. Speaking to the

a Claude has been accused of not having been able to draw figures. It has, therefore, been asserted, that those, which adorn his landscapes, were by another hand. This assertion is astonishing, when we consider, that in this very metropolis (at the British Museum), there are not less than one hundred and eighty drawings by Claude, in which the figures are expressly by the same hand, that sketched the landscapes.

heart and to the fancy with equal eloquence, every design indicates the richest taste, and the most luxuriant imagination. The fancy of the spectator riots; and, while his heart is the abode of contemplative tranquillity (il riposo di Claudio), he feels almost tempted to make a pilgrimage to the palace of Colonna at Rome, where so many of this great master's pieces are still to be seen. Recalling to our imagination images of innocence and simplicity, we compare them with passages of the wise and admirable Fenelon; whose descriptions of the island of Calypso, of Betica, of Egypt, of Cyprus, of Crete, and of the Elysian Fields, are in the first style of excellence.

If the imperfections of the Madonnas of Carlo Maratto are only to be observed, by comparing them with those of Raphael, as we are taught to believe, the defects of Claude are only to be discovered by comparing his groups and his dispositions, with the groups and dispositions of the matchless TITIAN;-the Sovereign of Landscape; as Raphael was the Sovereign of Graceful Attitudes. Studying Nature in detail, he exemplified the truth of that axiom, which teaches, that simplicity is the offspring of judgment and genius. Like the rose-tree of Jericho 2, which neither withers nor decays,and, therefore, the best escutcheon for a painter's monument, -the pictures of Titian still continue to blush with all their golden tints; and are as beautiful, as first they were, when newly painted. In the union of force and softness of tint; in lightness of touch; in felicity of combination, and in harmony of colouring, he was unrivalled. He was the Virgil of landscape and the back-ground to his picture of the Martyrdom of St. Peter is said to be the finest landscape, ever issuing from a mortal's hand!

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a Anastatica hierochuntica.

b Aureo Titiani radio, qui per totam tabulam gliscens eam vere suam denunciat.

In the Lawrence Gallery are several studies for this picture, all showing the

THE SUPERIORITY OF NATURE OVER ART.

BUT however beautiful the works of the most celebrated masters may be, when we would compare them with the productions of Nature, how comparatively feeble do their efforts appear! Insipid are the outlines of Salvator Rosa, the aerial tints of Claude, and the romantic groups of Ruysdael and Poussin. No wonder! since language itself has comparative poverty, when it would presume to describe the variety which is observable in almost every prospect that the eye beholds. Fields, vales, glens, rivers, and mountains, even when described by the most powerful pen, do but glide before the imagination in mysterious confusion: if, therefore, one scene cannot be represented with precision, how shall we attempt to give even a faint idea of its numerous combinations? And how numerous those combinations are, may be, in some measure, conceived from the knowledge, we possess, of the almost infinite combinations of sound.

Winkelmann's antagonist was, assuredly, wrong, when he asserted, for the honour of the arts, that the mallows of Veerendel, and a rose of Van Huysum, bewitch us more than the best favourites of the botanists; and that a landscape of Dietrich is more agreeable to the fancy than even the Thessalian Tempe. To the works of art we can give length, breadth, and thickness; we can also colour them with appropriate shades; but who can measure the productions of Nature? Who sketch with such enchanting skill? The painter may select individual objects,-an ivied bridge, a hanging tower, an embattled castle, and the larger creations care with which he studied and varied his compositions before he committed them to canvass. It has been beautifully observed, that there are few more interesting subjects of contemplation, than the first hints of a magnificent conception, the virgin scenery of the mind, the slight and rapid indications of that which is afterwards, with much study and toil, to be wrought into a perfect work. Guido has a small picture on the same subject. That of Titian has every essential of magnificence; that of Guido, delicate, graceful, and exquisitely finished.

of landscape;—these he may, by a judicious disposition of his materials, form into an entire whole but the effort is one, and the effect is one: it changes not with the seasons; it knows none of the vicissitudes of winter; and, therefore, never glows with the renovation of spring.

NOVELTY, WITH ITS FINAL CAUSE.

THIS exhaustless variety produces in the mind a continual thirst after novelty. For were there but few combinations, and still fewer objects, the mind would recoil upon itself, and its powers be confined, as it were, in a prison. But as the variations of natural objects are unlimited, its faculties are proportionately enlarged; and, in consequence, bearing an analogy with magnetical induction, the more it receives, the more capable is it of the powers of receiving. Thus, man's appetite for novelty is nothing but the general result of Nature's unbounded power of gratifying his thirst.

If the final cause of sublimity be to exalt the soul to a more intimate alliance with its Creator; and that of beauty to enable the mind to distinguish perfection and truth :—the love of novelty may, not unreasonably, be supposed to be planted in our nature, in order to stimulate the mental powers to that degree of activity, which enables them continually to feel the effects of beauty and sublimity.

The lover of landscape, therefore, is ever on the watch for new combinations. Having derived enjoyment from a mountainous country, he finds a sensible gratification in traversing extended plains, boundless heaths, and in permitting his eye to wander over an interminable tract of ocean. Without darkness, even the brilliancy of the sun would be no longer splendid; without discords, the most agreeable melody would fatigue the ear; without the interchange of varied objects, even the finest landscape in Gascony, or Savoy, would pall upon the sight.

A general love of novelty, however, which is not indulged

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