en influenced
by the predilections first awakened. How far his love of the
picturesque, already alluded to, was reconcilable with an entire
appreciation of the highest characters of Italian architecture we do not
pause to inquire; but this we may assert, without hesitation, that the
picturesque _elements_ of that architecture were unknown until he
developed them, and that since Gentile Bellini, no one had regarded the
palaces of Venice with so affectionate an understanding of the purpose
and expression of their wealth of detail. In this respect the City of
the Sea has been, and remains, peculiarly his own. There is, probably,
no single piazza nor sea-paved street from St. Georgio in Aliga to the
Arsenal, of which Prout has not in order drawn every fragment of
pictorial material. Probably not a pillar in Venice but occurs in some
one of his innumerable studies; while the peculiarly beautiful and
varied arrangements under which he has treated the angle formed by St.
Mark's Church with the Doge's palace, have not only made every
successful drawing of those buildings by any other hand look like
plagiarism, but have added (and what is this but indeed to paint the
lily!) another charm to the spot itself.

146. This exquisite dexterity of arrangement has always been one of his
leading characteristics as an artist. Notwithstanding the deserved
popularity of his works, his greatness in composition remains altogether
unappreciated. Many modern works exhibit greater pretense at
arrangement, and a more palpable system; masses of well-concentrated
light or points of sudden and dextrous color are expedients in the works
of our second-rate artists as attractive as they are commonplace. But
the moving and natural crowd, the decomposing composition, the frank and
unforced, but marvelously intricate grouping, the breadth of
inartificial and unexaggerated shadow, these are merits of an order only
the more elevated because unobtrusive. Nor is his system of color less
admirable. It is a quality from which the character of his subjects
naturally withdraws much of his attention, and of which sometimes that
character precludes any high attainment; but, nevertheless, the truest
and happiest association of hues in sun and shade to be found in modern
water-color art,[21] (excepting only the studies of Hunt and De Wint)
will be found in portions of Prout's more important works.

147. Of his _peculiar_ powers we need hardly speak; it would be
dif