a simple bridge, connected with near buildings of very remote antiquity; a corn-field, with cattle; and human figures animated by profound religious emotions, to say nothing of an awful sky-were grand landscape materials; and to doubt whether if these were skilfully combined, the simplicity that is essential to the sublime, must necessarily be merged in multifariousness of parts? As to what Reynolds says of the Ark on its carriage, having little more effect than a common waggon on the highway, in the hands of a second-rate master; his friend, Gainsborough, has shown us that, under the hands of a first-rate master, a common waggon drawn by a team of horned cattle, is no bad subject, even without a sacred Ark. He could even have conferred sublimity on such a waggon if he had so pleased, by his masterly mode of treatment, and by the elevated ideas which he possessed the power to awaken, and associate with rusticity. Be the subject of a picture what it may, it is what is derived from the mind and hand of the artist which constitutes its poetry; and, that inferior artists mar fine subjects, is sufficiently well known.

Aphorisms, or proverbs, are strong walls, yet not always impregnable. Gainsborough, and a few others, have shown that they possessed the power to batter some of them down. He could “make a silken purse of a sow's ear."

After all-does not Sir Joshua, in the above passages, in some measure blink the real question? Does he penetrate fairly to the centre? or does he catch the essence of his subject? Or, does he not rather place the minor accessories on his fore-ground, and keep back the more important and sublime features?

Human passions called into action by supernatural, or divine circumstances, constitute the essence (as it appears to us) of "the restoration of the Ark," as a subject for a picture; just as it would for that of a poem. And wherever human passions are brought into action by supernatural means, the subject is essentially sublime. What else, in fact, is the amount of that lofty praise which Pindar so generously, so admirably, so justly, bestows on Homer-that of his possessing the power of connecting supernatural causes and agency, with the realities of nature and human passion? Sebastian Bourdon has felt this principle, but not felt it with quite sufficient force to catch the imagination, or reach the judgment of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Had his Israelites and Philistines been somewhat more conspicuous, the story had been more completely, and more sublimely told.

THE EMBARKATION OF THE ELEVEN THOUSAND VIRGINS, WITH SAINT URSULA.

CLAUDE OF LORRAINE.

WHY are the figures of Claude of Lorraine, in some instances sustained by sentiment and simplicity, and pertinent to the occasion? And why are they in others, imbecile, and little better than dolls and dowdies? Why have some of his biographers reported that he modestly said to the patrons, who visited his studio, “If you purchase my landscapes, I present you with the figures that you find in them--I throw them into the bargain?" And why have others recorded that he was so vain of his figures, that he

said upon such occasions of chaffering, "It is the figures I sell, and present you with the landscape?" Could the same individual be thus diffident, and thus vain? Is one or other of these accounts, misrepresentation; and has the biography of artists been always as carelessly, or recklessly, written as at present? Has literature formerly, as inferior literature does at present, thought only, or chiefly, of its own sordid gains, and the gains of those who traffic in the mercantile article, and looked only to avail herself of the dazzling glitter that is reflected from spurious splendour, leaving the legitimate concerns of Art and Science to sink in oblivion, or perchance to swim, as if only of collateral, incidental, and very inferior, importance?

Let us examine these questions, as far as they concern this great artist; for though "inconsistencies cannot both be true:" seeming inconsistencies may be unreal.

When Claude arrived from Lorraine at "the eternal city," he was young, ignorant, dull, or as Mr. Cunningham, with more probability, has it, "absent;" as if his mental powers had been husbanded in reserve, till the advent of his initiation threw the arcanum of landscape-painting open before him, as the theory of gravitation revealed itself to Newton, when he saw the apple fall. His hand appears to have possessed no power but for the imitation of still life, or the slow life of landscape, and his mind no elective attraction for aught but its theory; and hence he is a remarkable example of the justness of that part of the reasoning of Helvetius, which led him to the inference that the Arts and Sciences are carried farthest by those men who know but few things, but know them profoundly.

Landscape, and landscape alone, seems to have absorbed his faculties. Even the indispensable accompaniment of figures, claimed not the same affinity with his mental character, but cost him effort, as we shall presently see, and they evidently have not the same con amore air with his landscape painting. It is very likely, that on his arrival at Rome, Claude did clean pencils, and grind colours for Agostino Tassi, as Sandrart, or somebody, has informed us; and that Tassi loved him, and taught him what he himself knew of the rudiments of the Art, at that juvenile period of his life, when they were both employed in painting signs for pastry-cooks, and other eating-houses; and that Nature was meanwhile engrafting on this rude stock, the elementary germs of all that was lovely in her inanimate productions

All that the genial ray of morning gilds,

And all that echoes to the song of even.

But when he first began to paint landscapes, the cattle and figures which he introduced into them, were not good-they say. We may readily admit this, since it could scarcely have been otherwise. They could not be good: because no man, with whatever sensibility of perception he may be gifted, and even though accustomed to paint from still life, can delineate the human figure with any thing approaching to anatomical accuracy, without close and reiterated attention, and much practice; and the reader need not be told that cattle and figures do not stand still in the fields, or elsewhere, to be drawn or painted, like rocks and trees. Of the comparative imperfections of his human figures, Claude was so conscious (then) at this juvenile period of his life; or

beginning of his career as an artist, that he said to those who noticed his pictures favourably, "If you will purchase my landscapes, I will make no charge for my figures, but throw them into the bargain."

And this state of things must of course have continued for some years, during which we read that Courtois and Lauri, at least occasionally, peopled the landscapes of Claude with such scriptural, legendary, or classical, figures, as in the opinions of his friends and patrons, would suit the several scenes which he exhibited.

But what was proceeding meanwhile? Why, the great landscape-painter was assiduously applying himself to the delineation of the human figure in the Roman Academy, both from the antique sculpture, and from the living model: and by the time he arrived at the prime of his life, he was so much improved, and could paint figures so well, or fancied he could paint them so well, as no longer to need, or desire, the extraneous assistance that had before been welcome.

He might now have become self-assured—perhaps in some degree vain and tenacious-upon this point; as men generally are of what they perform but second best and during this period of his life some one may have heard him say, and afterward reported it, "If you will purchase my figures, I will present you with the landscape accompaniment:"-and this without any conscious, or unconscious, impeachment of his former sentiments.

In his youth he sought and wrought for landscapefame, and for profit, and knowing his figures were of inferior pretensions, might well offer to throw them into the bargain to the purchasers of his landscapes.