essions; they call up or steady imperfectly defined images; bring
forward into light struggling memories;--and, by a union of brief
description, classic or historical allusions, picturesque and
significant epithets, and reflections hinted at, rather than wrought
out, they very successfully accomplish their object--that of realizing
to the eye of the mind that distinctive and prevailing expression which
each aspect of nature, like each movement of the human face, wears in
itself, and is calculated to awaken in others--cheerful, sombre,
majestic, or awe-inspiring, according to the nature of the scene, the
associations past and present with which it is surrounded, and the
conditions, or, as a painter would term it, accidents under which it has
been viewed.

While we say that Mr Whyte has generally been very successful in his
aim, we must not be understood to express by any means an unqualified
probation of the taste in which these volumes are conceived, or the plan
on which they are constructed. The train of reflection is _sometimes_
too obviously an afterthought--not spontaneously evoked at the moment by
the influences of the scene, but evidently devised and wrought up into
point and _apparent_ application by a subsequent process. We have dreams
which were never dreamt, and reveries which are any thing but
involuntary. There are too many Tristram Shandy transitions, sundry
cockneyisms in expression, (we use the word in a wide sense,) and one or
two jokes which make the blood run cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say
that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in
architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no
feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while
the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by
Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his
mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes
that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have
been attended; for at this moment we do not recollect having seen them
noticed by any of those who assume to themselves the right of
distributing the rewards and punishments of criticism.

Let us now look at one or two of Mr Whyte's sketches of Rome, or rather
of the train of thought called up by wanderings among its ruins, tracing
the broken sweep of its ancient walls, or wandering among the stately
aqueducts and nameless tombs of its drear