hill, where the white horse's head
coming against the dark, scowling face of the man makes as fine a
contrast as can be imagined. An old stump of a tree with rugged bark,
and one or two straggling branches, a little stunted hedge-row line,
marking the boundary of the horizon, a stubble-field, a winding path,
a rock seen against the sky, are picturesque, because they have all of
them prominence and a distinctive character of their own. They are not
objects (to borrow Shakespear's phrase) 'of no mark or likelihood.'
A country may be beautiful, romantic, or sublime, without being
picturesque. The Lakes in the North of England are not picturesque,
though certainly the most interesting sight in this country. To be a
subject for painting, a prospect must present sharp, striking points of
view or singular forms, or one object must relieve and set off another.
There must be distinct stages and salient points for the eye to rest
upon or start from in its progress over the expanse before it. The
distance of a landscape will oftentimes look flat or heavy, that the
trunk of a tree or a ruin in the foreground would immediately throw
into perspective and turn to air. Rembrandt's landscapes are the least
picturesque in the world, except from the straight lines and sharp
angles, the deep incision and dragging of his pencil, like a harrow
over the ground, and the broad contrast of earth and sky. Earth, in his
copies, is rough and hairy; and Pan has struck his hoof against it!--A
camel is a picturesque ornament in a landscape or history-piece. This is
not merely from its romantic and oriental character; for an elephant has
not the same effect, and if introduced as a necessary appendage, is also
an unwieldy incumbrance. A negro's head in a group is picturesque from
contrast; so are the spots on a panther's hide. This was the principle
that Paul Veronese went upon, who said the rule for composition was
_black upon white, and while upon black._ He was a pretty good judge.
His celebrated picture of the Marriage of Cana is in all likelihood the
completest piece of workmanship extant in the art. When I saw it, it
nearly covered one side of a large room in the Louvre (being itself
forty feet by twenty)--and it seemed as if that side of the apartment
was thrown open, and you looked out at the open sky, at buildings,
marble pillars, galleries with people in them, emperors, female slaves,
Turks, negroes, musicians, all the famous painters of the tim