The development of landscape north of the Alps, presents us with the
same general phases under modifications dependent partly on less
intensity of feeling, partly on diminished availableness of landscape
material. That of the religious painters is treated with the same
affectionate completion; but exuberance of fancy sometimes diminishes
the influence of the imagination, and the absence of the Italian force
of passion admits of more patient and somewhat less intellectual
elaboration. A morbid habit of mind is evident in many, seeming to lose
sight of the balance and relations of things, so as to become intense in
trifles, gloomily minute, as in Albert Durer; and this mingled with a
feverish operation of the fancy, which appears to result from certain
habitual conditions of bodily health rather than of mental culture, (and
of which the sickness without the power is eminently characteristic of
the modern Germans;) but with all this there are virtues of the very
highest order in those schools, and I regret that my knowledge is
insufficient to admit of my giving any detailed account of them.

In the landscape of Rembrandt and Rubens, we have the northern parallel
to the power of the Venetians. Among the etchings and drawings of
Rembrandt, landscape thoughts may be found not unworthy of Titian, and
studies from nature of sublime fidelity; but his system of chiaroscuro
was inconsistent with the gladness, and his peculiar modes of feeling
with the grace, of nature; nor from my present knowledge can I name any
work on canvas in which he has carried out the dignity of his etched
conceptions, or exhibited any perceptiveness of new truths.

Not so Rubens, who perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of
complete unconventional unaffected landscape. His treatment is healthy,
manly, and rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to
minute and multitudinous detail; always as far as it goes pure,
forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in
color. In the Pitti palace, the best of its two Rubens landscapes has
been placed near a characteristic and highly-finished Titian, the
marriage of St. Catherine. But for the grandeur of line and solemn
feeling in the flock of sheep, and the figures of the latter work, I
doubt if all its glow and depth of tone could support its overcharged
green and blue against the open breezy sunshine of the Fleming. I do not
mean to rank the art of Rubens with that of