ft in the picture
of Salvator, No. 220 in the Dulwich Gallery. The whole is first laid in
with a very delicate and masterly gray, right in tone, agreeable in
color, quite unobjectionable for a beginning. But how is this made into
rock? On the light side Salvator gives us a multitude of touches, all
exactly like one another, and therefore, it is to be hoped, quite
patterns of perfection in rock-drawing, since they are too good to be
even varied. Every touch is a dash of the brush, as nearly as possible
in the shape of a comma, round and bright at the top, convex on its
right side, concave on its left, and melting off at the bottom into the
gray. These are laid in confusion one above another, some paler, some
brighter, some scarcely discernible, but all alike in shape. Now, I am
not aware myself of any particular object, either in earth or heaven,
which these said touches do at all resemble or portray. I do not,
however, assert that they may not resemble something--feathers, perhaps;
but I do say, and say with perfect confidence, that they may be Chinese
for rocks, or Sanscrit for rocks, or symbolical of rocks in some
mysterious and undeveloped character; but that they are no more _like_
rocks than the brush that made them. The dark sides appear to embrace
and overhang the lights; they cast no shadows, are broken by no
fissures, and furnish, as food for contemplation, nothing but a series
of concave curves.

Sec. 9. And of Poussin.

Yet if we go on to No. 269, we shall find something a great deal worse.
I can believe Gaspar Poussin capable of committing as much sin against
nature as most people; but I certainly do not suspect him of having had
any hand in this thing, at least after he was ten years old.
Nevertheless, it shows what he is supposed capable of by his admirers,
and will serve for a broad illustration of all those absurdities which
he himself in a less degree, and with feeling and thought to atone for
them, perpetually commits. Take the white bit of rock on the opposite
side of the river, just above the right arm of the Niobe, and tell me of
what the square green daubs of the brush at its base can be conjectured
to be typical. Rocks with pale-brown light sides, and rich green dark
sides, are a phenomenon perhaps occurring in some of the improved
passages of nature among our Cumberland lakes; where I remember once
having seen a bed of roses, of peculiar magnificence, tastefully and
artistically assisted in e