eaves in the air, glad of
the rain, proud of the sun, awake to the winds of heaven. In his Plague
of Athens, the very buildings seem stiff with horror. His picture of the
Deluge is, perhaps, the finest historical landscape in the world. You
see a waste of waters, wide, interminable the sun is labouring, wan and
weary, up the sky the clouds, dull and leaden, lie like a load upon the
eye, and heaven and earth seem commingling into one confused mass! His
human figures are sometimes 'o'erinformed' with this kind of feeling.
Their actions have too much gesticulation, and the set expression of the
features borders too much on the mechanical and caricatured style. In
this respect they form a contrast to Raphael's, whose figures never
appear to be sitting for their pictures, or to be conscious of a
spectator, or to have come from the painter's hand. In Nicolas Poussin,
on the contrary, everything seems to have a distinct understanding with
the artist; 'the very stones prate of their whereabout'; each object has
its part and place assigned, and is in a sort of compact with the
rest of the picture. It is this conscious keeping, and, as it were,
_internal_ design, that gives their peculiar character to the works of
this artist. There was a picture of Aurora in the British Gallery a year
or two ago. It was a suffusion of golden light. The Goddess wore her
saffron-coloured robes, and appeared just risen from the gloomy bed of
old Tithonus. Her very steeds, milk-white, were tinged with the yellow
dawn. It was a personification of the morning. Poussin succeeded better
in classic than in sacred subjects. The latter are comparatively heavy,
forced, full of violent contrasts of colour, of red, blue, and black,
and without the true prophetic inspiration of the characters. But in his
pagan allegories and fables he was quite at home. The native gravity and
native levity of the Frenchman were combined with Italian scenery and
an antique gusto, and gave even to his colouring an air of learned
indifference. He wants, in one respect, grace, form, expression; but
he has everywhere sense and meaning, perfect costume and propriety.
His personages always belong to the class and time represented, and are
strictly versed in the business in hand. His grotesque compositions
in particular, his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at least, as far
as style is concerned) even to those of Rubens. They are taken more
immediately out of fabulous history. Rubens' Sa