show their application to that of landscape. The merest tyro in
art knows that every figure which is unnecessary to his picture, is an
encumbrance to it, and that every figure which does not sympathize with
the action, interrupts it. He that gathereth not with me,
scattereth,--is, or ought to be, the ruling principle of his plan: and
the power and grandeur of his result will be exactly proportioned to the
unity of feeling manifested in its several parts, and to the propriety
and simplicity of the relations in which they stand to each other.

All this is equally applicable to the materials of inanimate nature.
Impressiveness is destroyed by a multitude of contradictory facts, and
the accumulation, which is not harmonious, is discordant. He who
endeavors to unite simplicity with magnificence, to guide from solitude
to festivity, and to contrast melancholy with mirth, must end by the
production of confused inanity. There is a peculiar spirit; possessed by
every kind of scene; and although a point of contrast may sometimes
enhance and exhibit this particular feeling more intensely, it must be
only a point, not an equalized opposition. Every introduction of new and
different feeling weakens the force of what has already been impressed,
and the mingling of all emotions must conclude in apathy, as the
mingling of all colors in white.

Let us test by these simple rules one of the "ideal" landscape
compositions of Claude, that known to the Italians as "Il Mulino."

The foreground is a piece of very lovely and perfect forest scenery,
with a dance of peasants by a brookside; quite enough subject to form,
in the hands of a master, an impressive and complete picture. On the
other side of the brook, however, we have a piece of pastoral life, a
man with some bulls and goats tumbling headforemost into the water,
owing to some sudden paralytic affection of all their legs. Even this
group is one too many; the shepherd had no business to drive his flock
so near the dancers, and the dancers will certainly frighten the cattle.
But when we look farther into the picture, our feelings receive a
sudden and violent shock, by the unexpected appearance, amidst things
pastoral and musical, of the military: a number of Roman soldiers riding
in on hobby-horses, with a leader on foot, apparently encouraging them
to make an immediate and decisive charge on the musicians. Beyond the
soldiers is a circular temple, in exceedingly bad repair, and close
b