a and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group. The
old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree,
which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way.
These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two
such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For
this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,--the
dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things--melancholy
antitheses--sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had
better be spoken discreetly.

The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures; they put me in
mind of the color of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy, lurid hue. How
noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is in
yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts Diogenes.
The air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear ominous
whispers in the vast forest gloom.

Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite
a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding
up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. O matutini rores
auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to
create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You
can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh,
salubrious airs ("the breath of Nature blowing free," as the corn-law
man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapors are rising up
from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the
time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with
regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without
bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing;
the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast
privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one
fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never
contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You
may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial
imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your
bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more
delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen
landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the c