ry stain,
But the sun's bright ray, the next noonday, glared fiercely on the
slain;
And the oozing gore began once more from his wounded sides to run;
Good-sooth, that form was bathed by Jove, and anointed by the Sun!

MODERN PAINTERS.[16]

[16] Modern Painters--their Superiority in the Art of
Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, &c. &c.
By a Graduate of Oxford.

We read this title with some pain, not doubting but that our modern
landscape painters were severely handled in an ironical satire; and we
determined to defend them. "Their superiority to _all_ the ancient
masters"--that was too hard a hit to come from any but an enemy! We
must measure our man--a graduate of Oxford! The "scholar armed,"
without doubt. He comes, too, vauntingly up to us, with his contempt
for us and all critics that ever were, or will be; we are all little
Davids in the eye of this Goliath. Nevertheless, we will put a pebble
in our sling. We saw this contempt of us, in dipping at hap-hazard
into the volume. But what was our astonishment to find, upon looking
further, that we had altogether mistaken the intent of the author, and
that we should probably have not one Goliath, but many, to encounter;
while our own particular friends, to whom we might look for help,
were, alas! all dead men. We found that there were not "giants" in
those days, but in these days--that the author, in his most
superlative praise, is not ironical at all, but a most serious
panegyrist, who never laughs, but does sometimes make his readers
laugh, when they see his very unbecoming, mocking grimaces against the
"old masters"--not that it can be fairly asserted that it is a
laughable book. It has much conceit, and but little merriment; there
is nothing really funny after you have got over, (vide page 6,) that
he "looks with contempt on Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin." This
contempt, however, being too limited for the "graduate of Oxford," in
the next page he enlarges the scope of his enmity; "speaking generally
of the old masters, I refer only to Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator
Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Ruysdael, Hobbima, Teniers (in his
landscapes,) P. Potter, Canaletti, and the various Van Somethings and
Back Somethings, more especially and malignantly those who have
libelled the sea." Self-convicted of malice, he has not the slightest
suspicion of his ignorance; whereas he _knows_ nothing of these
masters whom