when I have only stated facts. I have said that the old masters did not give the truth of nature; if the reader chooses thence to infer that they were not masters at all, it is his conclusion, not mine." Preface, p. ix.

Now let us see what he has said of these old masters, and how far he has left a way open for taking cognizance of any of their excellences in a future part of this work; and whether there is any danger of his being understood to mean more of them than he has said, and whose conclusion it is that they were not masters at all. It is first, however, to be observed, that by the term, old masters, he has explained that he means, not the great historical painters of the first half of the sixteenth century, but that later generation which, beginning with the Carracci, includes all the great French, Italian, Dutch, and Flemish landscape-painters. Now it may be remarked in passing, that although the former class, with one exception, painted no landscapes, and therefore are not included in the author's general condemnation, yet the same faults might be found with their historical works as are here so much insisted on against those of the landscape-painters; for they frequently, whether from error or design, violated this truth of nature in parts of their pictures; and if the same judgment were passed on them on the same grounds, Raphael and his contemporaries would fall in the same heap with Claude and Salvator.

We should be inclined to think unfavorably of a person's capacity for judging correctly of works of art, who appeared insensible to the personal qualities of the artist. There is so much of the man in the works of the painter, that we always seem to have known his heart as well as his hand. A critic who could take pleasure in repeating the calumnies that have been made to darken the early death of Raphael can have no feeling for the sublime tenderness of his Madonnas; and we should, on the other hand, think the better of his taste who was inclined to search narrowly into the defects of works which so evidently display a ferocious temper as those of Caravaggio and Ribera. We confess that we felt a kind of prejudice against this author, when we read his sweeping and bitter denunciation of the gentle Domenichino, who has preserved to the present time that soubriquet of endearment which he received from his master when he exhibited his first work; who, born in the decline of art, rose to an eminence that provoked the fatal hostility of rivals, and drew from the profound Nicolo

Poussin the praise of having produced the second picture in the world; whose sublime Communion of St. Jerome stands now uneclipsed by the side of the Transfiguration in the Vatican; and who, with all who have entered deeply into the history of art, stands next to Raphael in their affection for his gentle and yet lofty genius. In an evil hour for his fame, if this author can dispense it, he attempted landscape; and though Turner and all the water-color men in England might esteem themselves most fortunate when they could equal the dewy freshness of the grove in which Diana holds up to her nymphs the prize for archery, and may well despair of ever approaching the twilight grandeur of his more solemn scenes, yet nothing less than the sacrifice of his entire fame can satisfy this ardent partisan.

"I once supposed that there was some life in the landscape of Domenichino, but in this I must have been wrong. The man who painted the Madonna del Rosario and the Martyrdom of St. Agnes, in the gallery of Bologna, is palpably incapable of doing any thing good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind whatever." p. 87.

Now what room is there left here for taking cognizance of other excellences in a future part of this work? Who states here the fact, and who draws the conclusion, whether Domenichino is any master at all? There is no fact stated as to his landscape, but that the author once thought, as every body else still does, that there was life in it, until he saw certain of his inferior historical works, and from them he reverses his own judgment of his landscape, and denies the possibility of his doing any thing good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind whatever.

"In Salvator there is no love of any kind for any thing; his choice of landscape features is dictated by no delight in the sublime, but by mere animal restlessness or ferocity, guided by an imaginative power of which he could not altogether deprive himself. He has done nothing which others have not done better, or which it would not have been better not to have done." p. 88.

Now is this merely denying that Salvator gives the truth of nature? And what room is left in the forthcoming continuation of this work to show that he is, notwithstanding all this, a master ?

when I have only stated facts. I have said that the old masters did not give the truth of nature; if the reader chooses thence to infer that they were not masters at all, it is his conclusion, not mine." Preface, p. ix.

Now let us see what he has said of these old masters, and how far he has left a way open for taking cognizance of any of their excellences in a future part of this work; and whether there is any danger of his being understood to mean more of them than he has said, and whose conclusion it is that they were not masters at all. It is first, however, to be observed, that by the term, old masters, he has explained that he means, not the great historical painters of the first half of the sixteenth century, but that later generation which, beginning with the Carracci, includes all the great French, Italian, Dutch, and Flemish landscape-painters. Now it may be remarked in passing, that although the former class, with one exception, painted no landscapes, and therefore are not included in the author's general condemnation, yet the same faults might be found with their historical works as are here so much insisted on against those of the landscape-painters; for they frequently, whether from error or design, violated this truth of nature in parts of their pictures; and if the same judgment were passed on them on the same grounds, Raphael and his contemporaries would fall in the same heap with Claude and Salvator.

We should be inclined to think unfavorably of a person's capacity for judging correctly of works of art, who appeared insensible to the personal qualities of the artist. There is so much of the man in the works of the painter, that we always seem to have known his heart as well as his hand. A critic who could take pleasure in repeating the calumnies that have been made to darken the early death of Raphael can have no feeling for the sublime tenderness of his Madonnas; and we should, on the other hand, think the better of his taste who was inclined to search narrowly into the defects of works which so evidently display a ferocious temper as those of Caravaggio and Ribera. We confess that we felt a kind of prejudice against this author, when we read his sweeping and bitter denunciation of the gentle Domenichino, who has preserved to the present time that soubriquet of endearment which he received from his master when he exhibited his first work; who, born in the decline of art, rose to an eminence that provoked the fatal hostility of rivals, and drew from the profound Nicolo

Poussin the praise of having produced the second picture in the world; whose sublime Communion of St. Jerome stands now uneclipsed by the side of the Transfiguration in the Vatican; and who, with all who have entered deeply into the history of art, stands next to Raphael in their affection for his gentle and yet lofty genius. In an evil hour for his fame, if this author can dispense it, he attempted landscape; and though Turner and all the water-color men in England might esteem themselves most fortunate when they could equal the dewy freshness of the grove in which Diana holds up to her nymphs the prize for archery, and may well despair of ever approaching the twilight grandeur of his more solemn scenes, yet nothing less than the sacrifice of his entire fame can satisfy this ardent partisan.

"I once supposed that there was some life in the landscape of Domenichino, but in this I must have been wrong. The man who painted the Madonna del Rosario and the Martyrdom of St. Agnes, in the gallery of Bologna, is palpably incapable of doing any thing good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind whatever." p. 87.

Now what room is there left here for taking cognizance of other excellences in a future part of this work? Who states here the fact, and who draws the conclusion, whether Domenichino is any master at all? There is no fact stated as to his landscape, but that the author once thought, as every body else still does, that there was life in it, until he saw certain of his inferior historical works, and from them he reverses his own judgment of his landscape, and denies the possibility of his doing any thing good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind whatever.

"In Salvator there is no love of any kind for any thing; his choice of landscape features is dictated by no delight in the sublime, but by mere animal restlessness or ferocity, guided by an imaginative power of which he could not altogether deprive himself. He has done nothing which others have not done better, or which it would not have been better not to have done." p. 88.

Now is this merely denying that Salvator gives the truth of nature? And what room is left in the forthcoming continuation of this work to show that he is, notwithstanding all this, a master?

Again, of those who have been universally allowed to excel all others in rendering the truth of water :

"The water-painting of all the elder landscape-painters, excepting a few of the better passages of Claude and Ruysdael, is so execrable, so beyond all expression and explanation bad, and Claude and Ruysdael's best are so cold and valueless, that I do not know how to address those who like such painting; I do not know what their sensations are respecting sea. I can perceive nothing in Vandevelde or Backhuysen of the lowest redeeming merit; no power, no presence of intellect, or evidence of perception, of any sort or kind; no resemblance, even the feeblest, of any thing natural; no invention, even the most sluggish, of any thing agreeable." p. 324.

After this, the author need not be afraid of being thought to mean more than he has said; the danger is, that, saying so much, he will be thought to mean nothing at all; which, perhaps, would be his best apology·

Of Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar :

"There is no evidence of their ever having gone to Nature with any thirst, or received from her such emotion as could make them even for an instant lose sight of themselves; there is in them neither earnestness nor humility; there is no simple or honest record of any single truth; none of the plain words nor straight efforts that men speak and make when they once feel." p. 76.

And much more of such general denial of all capacity for what they undertook, which, even where the denial is limited in terms to their truth, is attributed to an incapacity which leaves no room for the acknowledgment of any other merit.

The author claims to have formed these strange opinions, if such words really denote any, from a "familiar acquaintance with every important work of art from Antwerp to Naples"; and yet, by his own admission, he was ignorant, when he wrote the last of the foregoing extracts, of one of the most important pictures of Ruysdael in the Louvre; and one of the very character in which he had sagacity enough to know that Ruysdael could paint well enough to compel praise even from him. "I wish Ruysdael had painted one or two rough seas. I believe, if he had, he might have saved the unhappy public from much victimizing, both in mind and pocket; for he would have shown that Vandevelde and Backhuysen were