e, the
tables loaded with viands, goblets, and dogs under them--a sparkling,
overwhelming confusion, a bright, unexpected reality--the only fault
you could find was that no miracle was going on in the faces of the
spectators: the only miracle there was the picture itself! A French
gentleman, who showed me this 'triumph of painting' (as it has been
called), perceiving I was struck with it, observed, 'My wife admires
it exceedingly for the facility of the execution.' I took this proof of
sympathy for a compliment. It is said that when Humboldt, the celebrated
traveller and naturalist, was introduced to Buonaparte, the Emperor
addressed him in these words--_'Vous aimez la botanique, Monsieur'_;
and on the other's replying in the affirmative, added, _'Et ma femme
aussi!'_ This has been found fault with as a piece of brutality and
insolence in the great man by bigoted critics, who do not know what a
thing it is to get a Frenchwoman to agree with them in any point. For my
part, I took the observation as it was meant, and it did not put me out
of conceit with myself or the picture that Madame M----liked it as well
as _Monsieur l'Anglois._ Certainly, there could be no harm in that. By
the side of it happened to be hung two allegorical pictures of Rubens
(and in such matters he too was 'no baby'(1))--I don't remember what the
figures were, but the texture seemed of wool or cotton. The texture
of the Paul Veronese was not wool or cotton, but stuff, jewels, flesh,
marble, air, whatever composed the essence of the varied subjects, in
endless relief and truth of handling. If the Fleming had seen his two
allegories hanging where they did, he would, without a question, have
wished them far enough.

I imagine that Rubens's landscapes are picturesque: Claude's are
_ideal._ Rubens is always in extremes; Claude in the middle. Rubens
carries some one peculiar quality or feature of nature to the utmost
verge of probability: Claude balances and harmonises different forms and
masses with laboured delicacy, so that nothing falls short, no one
thing overpowers another. Rainbows, showers, partial gleams of sunshine,
moonlight, are the means with which Rubens produces his most gorgeous
and enchanting effects: there are neither rainbows, nor showers, nor
sudden bursts of sunshine, nor glittering moonbeams in Claude. He is all
softness and proportion: the other is all spirit and brilliant excess.
The two sides (for example) of one of Claude's lands