ey break upon us
as with the angular flash of lightning; the eye is dashed up one
precipice only to be dashed down another; then, suddenly hurried to
the sky, it shoots up, almost in a direct line, to some sharp-edged
rock; whence pitched, as it were, into a sea of clouds, bellying with
circles, it partakes their motion, and seems to reel, to roll, and to
plunge with them into the depths of air.

If we pass from Salvator to Claude, we shall find a system of lines
totally different. Our first impression from Claude is that of perfect
_unity_, and this we have even before we are conscious of a
single image; as if, circumscribing his scenes by a magic circle, he
had imposed his own mood on all who entered it. The _spell_ then
opens ere it seems to have begun, acting upon us with a vague sense of
limitless expanse, yet so continuous, so gentle, so imperceptible in
its remotest gradations, as scarcely to be felt, till, combining
with unity, we find the feeling embodied in the complete image of
intellectual repose,--fulness and rest. The mind thus disposed, the
charmed eye glides into the scene: a soft, undulating light leads it
on, from bank to bank, from shrub to shrub; now leaping and sparkling
over pebbly brooks and sunny sands; now fainter and fainter, dying
away down shady slopes, then seemingly quenched in some secluded dell;
yet only for a moment,--for a dimmer ray again carries it onward,
gently winding among the boles of trees and rambling vines, that,
skirting the ascent, seem to hem in the twilight; then emerging
into day, it flashes in sheets over towers and towns, and woods and
streams, when it finally dips into an ocean, so far off, so twin-like
with the sky, that the doubtful horizon, unmarked by a line, leaves no
point of rest: and now, as in a flickering arch, the fascinated eye
seems to sail upward like a bird, wheeling its flight through a
mottled labyrinth of clouds, on to the zenith; whence, gently
inflected by some shadowy mass, it slants again downward to a mass
still deeper, and still to another, and another, until it falls into
the darkness of some massive tree,--focused like midnight in the
brightest noon: there stops the eye, instinctively closing, and giving
place to the Soul, there to repose and to dream her dreams of romance
and love.

From these two examples of their general effect, some notion may be
gathered of the different systems of the two Artists; and though
no mention has been made o