refer to such of their works in this Gallery as seem calculated to illustrate my meaning.

ALBERT CUYP is incomparably the finest among the Flemish landscape-painters, with the exception of Paul Potter. There is a simpli city, a purity, and a truth of character about his best works, which none of his other rivals were capable of reaching; and there is, at the same time, not only an absence of all the faults, but a union of nearly all the merits, by which those rivals were distinguished respectively. Cuyp has all the delicious warmth and elegance of Both, without that feathery lightness of touch in the details which so frequently takes from the natural effect of his scenes. He has all the sweetness of Wouvermans, without his finical and affected niceness; all the brightness of Wynants, without his patchy, fluttery, and undecided mode of handling; and all the elegance and neatness of Berchem, without that insipid and mawkish manner which dilutes even the best results of his efforts.-Cuyp must have possessed incomparably more imagination than any other Flemish landscape-painter, or than all the others united; for, though he appears rarely to have strayed beyond the suburbs of his native town of Dort, he has, by the aid of an extremely limited number of objects of study that he met with there, created scenes of the most chaste and exquisite beauty, unlike any thing that he could have seen, and yet consistent with nature and with themselves in every particular. He seems to me to have conceived these scenes in his mind in the first instance, and (so to speak) finished them there, and then to have as it were breathed them on his canvass, almost without the aid of his pencil-so sweetly clear, delicate, and ethereal some of them are. I now allude in particular to two or three in this collection. Number 3, in the first room, is an open country, with a broken fore-ground, bare of trees, two cows and two men in the centre, and distant hills; and yet there is a fascination in the effect of it that is indescribable. It seems all-cattle, men, ground, hills, clouds, and all-made of woven air and sunshine. There are no marks of the pencil about it. You cannot tell how it got there,-unless, as I before said, it has been breathed there. And you cannot be sure that it will stay before you -that it is not an illusion of the mind-a vision of the golden ageand that when you take your eyes off it, it will not, when they return, have disappeared. I confess that this, and two or three others of the same kind in this collection, give me a more apt idea of the golden age of the poets than all the classical works expressly intended to typify it even those of Claude and Poussin themselves; and this notwithstanding the perfect truth of the details introduced into them, and above all, the rude and altogether modern character of the figures, and the dresses they wear.-No. 18, in the same room, is another delicious example of what I mean. It is a landscape consisting of two departments, divided from each other by two of those rich and elegantlyfoliaged trees that Claude so frequently ran up in the centre of his pictures. The right-hand department is a secluded spot, shaded from the sun by light foliage, with a pool of clear water to make it still cooler-and two silent fishers to make it still more silent; while the left is all open, stretching away into the distance, and misty with heat, -the distant mountain seeming to quiver through the mist, as objects do that you see beyond an open space of sand or earth from which the heat

is rising; while over the mountain's head a few fleecy clouds are hovering, as if they loved it, and longed to rest upon it. In the front of this portion of the picture there is a sunny road that leads you away towards the distant hills, but leaves you in the midst of the scene before you reach them. This is a lovely picture, and much more elaborate than the preceding one (No. 3); but there is not that mysterious character about it which I seem to feel in the other. You can remember every part of it, and think of them separately; but of the other you can only remember the general effect. No. 26 is another of these charming works-much smaller than the two preceding ones, more regularly and what may be termed correctly composed, according to the rules of art, and more delicately pencilled than even No. 18. In other respects it is of the same character with them, and steeped in the same sunny tone of colour; but its, smallness prevents it from producing the effect that they do, by giving it a sort of prettiness. You are admiring the difficulty that has been overcome in producing it, instead of feeling its effects as a reflection of natural objects. This latter quality is, in fact, the grand objection to all very small highly finished works of this kind: you think more of the workman than the workwhich is always a bad sign, as it respects the former.-There are three more of a similar description, and almost as fine as the foregoingNos. 68, 72, and 83. In fact, those who would study the style of this most delightful artist, can in no single gallery in the world, perhaps, do so to such advantage as they may here. Here are no less than eighteen of his pictures, including specimens of all his different manners; and some of them are unrivalled.

Next to Cuyp (omitting Paul Potter for the present, as there are none of his works here of sufficient importance to be offered as illustrations of what I might have to say respecting his peculiar style)— next to Cuyp, commend me to Both-JOHN BOTH, who did for Italian scenery almost what Cuyp has done for Flemish; with this difference, that Both found the beauty created to his hands, while Cuyp half created it himself. In Both we have a remarkable and interesting example of the effects resulting from the curious truth and industry of a Dutch eye and hand, when employing themselves on the lovely scenery and beneath the delicious skies of Italy. The contrast he felt between the cold flatness and tedious monotony of his own country, and the rich, bright, and ever-varying scenes of that in which he was sojourning, (for Both studied and painted for many years in Italy) seems to have kept his mind in a perpetual glow of delight, which has diffused itself over all his works. This is the characteristic of them-the fault, if the critics will have it so. They are even more warm and sunny; than Italian nature itself; for to the real atmosphere through which he saw them he seems to have superadded an imaginary one of his own, formed by the glow of an admiring love. The real fault of Both, and his only fault, is one which probably arose from his Dutch education, acting on what I must venture to call his Dutch nature. He is too nice and literal in his execution. The leaves of his trees, for ex-. ample, do not look like leaves, precisely because they are like them. To satisfy his conscience for what he, perhaps, considered as the too great attention that he in some instances paid to effects, he in other instances paid too much to causes. He would, in order to produce a

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general effect, steep a whole set of objects in the very essence of sunshine, and make all the air about them glow and glitter with it; and then, when his picture was complete, he would run up in the middle of the foreground, from top to bottom, a thin straggling tree, every leaf and twig of which he would make out distinctly, so that you might count them. This gives a poorness of effect to many of his scenes, and greatly detracts from the general impression they would otherwise produce; for generals and particulars cannot be made to consist together in this way. It is true, that Claude finished exquisitely, and yet it is his general effects that we admire him for. But the case is different. Claude produced the truth of his general effects by means of the truth of his details; and his details are all equally true, and therefore none of them attract particular attention away from the rest, and exclusively. His scenes look like Nature, because they are like it; while those of all other distinguished landscape-painters look like nature in spite of their being unlike it. But, however this may be, certain it is, that the straggling and unhealthy, and indeed unnatural-looking trees that Both so frequently runs up over his landscapes, as if for no purpose but to intercept our view of them, produce a very equivocal effect. Let the spectator compare any one of his works in this collection, having a tree in it of this kind, with the landscape by Cuyp which I first noticed (No. 3), and he will see at once what I mean. do not deny that in some instances the stratagem is good, where it is used to break the monotony of those large pieces of rock which Both so often introduces with such fine effect; but then he is never content with making them perform this office alone, but scatters them all over his delicious skies, which cannot be too much seen, too open and uninterrupted. This Gallery is not near so rich in the works of this, upon the whole, delightful master, as in those of the preceding one; but there are several very charming specimens. No. 184, a sunset, is, I think, the best.

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Next in merit to Both, though in a totally different class from his, and indeed from all other painters, stands PHILIP WOUVERMANS. As the value of all other landscapes arises from the nature they display, so I would say (if it would not sound paradoxical) that the value of Wouvermans' landscapes consists in the art. His pictures are like nothing but each other. They are perfectly gratuitous works of art. And yet we love them almost as much as we do nature; and with the same kind of love. Place one of Wouvermans' best landscapes by the side of one of Paul Potter's, both professing to represent the same class of scenery -and then determine whether, being, as they are, unlike each other in every particular, they can both be like nature. And yet both affect us nearly in the same manner, and nearly in the manner that nature affects us. The truth is, Wouvermans was a man of genius, and has invented a nature of his own, which is so lovely in itself, and at the same time so much in the spirit of the real nature which he imitated (not copied ), that we not only permit but admire in him what in a man of inferior talent had been a mere impertinence. His pictures are, to the scenes they profess to represent, what a delicately, finished enamel miniature of a human face is to the face from which it was copied; that is to say, exactly like in every individual feature,-so that you can tell at once. from whom it was copied, if you know the person,--but exactly unlike

in general effect: in fact, there is a perfect likeness, but no resemblance. And we may keep each in our cabinets to very delightful purpose, if we know how to use them;-if we refer to them,-not as fac-similes of the respective realities, and calculated to call up the same feelings that they do for so they would be very likely to injure our taste for each, instead of improving it, but as hints that may lead us to think of the realities when we otherwise should not, and compare them with the imitations, and dwell on the likeness and the unlikeness--the distinctions, and differences-that exist between them; and thus make each illustrate the other, and impress its peculiar characteristics on the memory when we are absent from both. The fault of Wouvermans' landscapes, as compared with those of Cuyp, Paul Potter, &c. (and I have always observed the same deficiency to exist in enamel portraits as compared with some others) is an absolute want of vitality, and consequently of expression. Their want of the truth of nature would not be a valid objection against them in itself, if it were not accompanied by this other deficiency-which it need not necessarily be. Congreve's Millamant is as unlike Shakspeare's Miranda as one human being can be to another. The one is a creation of pure art, and the other an emanation of pure nature; and yet both are almost equally interesting, because both are instinct with vitality, and are consistent not only with themselves, but with each other. Circumstances might have made a Millamant of Miranda. Now the landscapes of Paul Potter, like the Miranda of Shakspeare, are pure nature; but the landscapes of Wouvermans, though they are pure art, like Millamant, are nothing but art, which she was not;-they are like beautiful masks-motionless-breathless-cold; there is "no speculation in them." I conceive this to arise partly (but not very considerably) from the cold and unnatural tone of colour which Wouvermans adopted, in order, perhaps, to distinguish himself from all his contemporaries; for he was certainly not without an affectation of this kind. He was determined to be singular; and he had the sense to know that he could not hope to become so by surpassing his contemporaries; in their own style for those contemporaries were Paul Potter, Cuyp, Both, Berchem, &c. He therefore chose to be at the head of his own style at the expence of truth, rather than second in another style in conformity with it. And we, at all events, have no right to complain of his choice; for though it were evidently better to have one Cuyp than ten Wouvermans, yet it is better to have one of each than two of either.

Here are some delightful specimens of Wouvermans in this collection. Six of them hang nearly together, low on the left hand in the second room-Nos. 108, 113, 114, 115, 119, 120. One of them, containing a cart and horse on a little elevation in the centre, is one of the loveliest gems of this master that I have ever seen, both in colouring and composition-but particularly the latter.

WYNANTS is an artist whose works include all the faults of his pupil (Wouvermans), with scarcely any of their beauties. Like Both and Cuyp, too, he covered his scenes all over with sunshine; but he seemed to introduce it for the express purpose of giving to them a look of cold brightness rather than of glowing warmth. Exquisitely finished as the details of his pictures are, the general effect of them is not only unnatural, like those of Wouvermans, but unpleasing, on account of

their having no tone of colour at all. The light is always broken into little flickering patches, as we see it on the floor of a thick grove of trees when the sun penetrates through the intervals between the branches and leaves. External nature does not seem to have offered to his perceptions any decided sentiment; and consequently, not being able to draw upon himself for any, his works have no pervading spirit. They are to be described and characterized by their different parts; and not as wholes. The leaves and branches of his trees-the patches of light, shade, and colour, in the old dead trunks-the ruts and breakings in his roads, &c. are done to the very life; but there is none of the general truth of nature-none of her general effects. Above all, his patches of sunshine look like sunshine; but they are scattered about at random, and quite gratuitously; and they are also frequently placed in such a way that if half of them fall in the right direction according to the light in which the picture is painted, the other half "have no business there." There are but two pictures by this artist in the present collection (6 and 16)-and those are far from ranking among his best.

The style of HOBBIMA is more purely and exclusively natural than that of any other painter in any department-with the exception of Teniers; and accordingly, the feelings which his scenes excite differ scarcely at all from those excited by the actual scenes of Nature. This arises in some degree from the kind of scenery he has chosen to depict being one upon which the imagination is capable of acting but little. Those who are pleased by Hobbima's pictures, are pleased in virtue of their memory alone; and none are pleased by them in a very high degree, but such as are accustomed to what is called purely rural scenery. It is not very easy to explain exactly what this term means; but lovers of the country will understand it well enough; and it is only to these that Hobbima's pictures address themselves. A scene may be pastoral, or picturesque, without being rural; but to be rural, it must include the pastoral and the picturesque, and at the same time objects connecting the thoughts with the lower classes of country life, and with no other class. The human figures represented must be taken from among those who are engaged in the actual tilling of the land those or their families; a lady or gentleman, in such a scene, would be an impertinence. The other living objects must be connected with the same class. The buildings introduced must be peasants' cottages, or barns, sheds, &c. used for purposes of husbandry: an Italian villa, or a cottage ornée, would look as much out of place as a shepherd's dog in a drawing-room. Even the trees, roads, ground, &c. must be of a particular kind, or the consistency of the scene is broken in upon: knotted oaks-elms spreading their antique arms above hollow trunks-old stunted thorns--broken ground, and roads winding and cut to pieces with deep wheel-ruts :- Poplars, or Weymouth pines, darting up their trim forms into the sky, or a good level turnpike road kept in 'order under the superintendence of Mr. M'Adam, would put the rurality to flight in a moment. In fact, what is called "rural scenery" is of a perfectly peculiar kind, and is well understood by those who attend to differences and distinctions in these matters; and it is this kind of scenery, and no other, that Hobbima paints. And he paints it almost as well as Nature herself does: his colours are as