and purity a man would wish to have in a wife,
and yet Frenchmen find fault with it. C'est un assez joli tableau, say
they, mais la tete manque, de l'expression, si elle avait plus d'esprit,
plus de vivacite! Mais Raphael, il n'avait jamais passe les Alpes." We
burst out laughing, and I added, "Le pauvre Raphael quel dommage, de ne
savoir rien du grand. Monarque! ni de la grande nation." "Yet," I
continued, "there is a painter, Stotherd, who has come nearer to the
great Italian, in the grace and elegance of his women and children, than
perhaps any other, and merits well the proud appellation of the English
Raphael. What a shame that he never met with encouragement." "But I
understood that he was tolerably successful. He painted many things for
me at Fonthill. You are surely mistaken." "By no means," I replied.
"Latterly he seldom sold a picture, and supported himself on the paltry
income of 200 pounds a year, raised by making little designs for
booksellers. Yet what a noble painting is Chaucer's pilgrimage to
Canterbury." "It is indeed," said Mr. Beckford. "But, sir, there is
another painter, Howard, whose conceptions are most poetical. Do you
remember his painting at Somerset House in 1824, representing the solar
system, from Milton's noble lines--

Hither as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light?"

"I remember it perfectly; 'twas a most beautiful picture." "Milton's
original idea, that of the planets drawing light from their eternal
source, as water from a fountain, is certainly a glorious, a golden one;
but who beside Howard could have so tangibly, so poetically developed the
poet's idea in colour. The personifying the planets according to their
names, as Venus, Mercury, and so forth, was charming, and the splendour
of the nearer figures, overwhelmed as it were with excess of light, and
the gloom and darkness of the distant, were admirably managed. What a
wonderful picture!" "He never painted a finer."

Mr. Beckford then pointed out his Claude. It is a cool picture, the
colouring grey and greenish, the time of day, early morning just before
sunrise: but words fail to express its beauties. There is a something in
it, a je ne sais quoi. Such clearness in the colouring; the trees are
all green, but so tenderly green; the sky and distance of such an
exquisite tone that you are at once in imagination transported to those
"southern climes and cloudless skies