and though the scene conveyed to my mind the chearful ideas of fruitfulness and plenty, I could not help feeling how defective it was in all those qualities and principles, on which the painter sets so high a value.

If there be any thing in the universal range of the arts peculiarly required to be a whole, it is a picture. In pieces of music, particular movements may without injury be separated from the whole; in every species of poetry, detached scenes, episodes, stanzas, &c. may be considered and enjoyed by themselves; but in a picture, the forms, tints, lights and shadows, all their combinations, effects, agreements, and oppositions, are at once subjected to the eye: whatever therefore may be the excellence of the several parts, however beautiful the particular colours, however splendid the lights, if they want union, breadth, and harmony, the picture wants it's most essential quality—it is not a whole. According to my notions therefore, it is

chiefly from this circumstance of union and harmony, that the decaying charms of autumn often triumph in the painter's eye, over the fresh and blooming beauties of spring.

It must not, however, be concluded from what has been said, that the painter has no pleasure in any set of objects, unless they form a picture: the charms of spring are universally felt, and he also feels their influence, unless he has narrowed his mind by that art, which ought most to have enlarged it. The true lover of painting, only adds new sources of pleasure, to those which are common to all mankind*: he enjoys equally the general beauties of nature, but from his quick eye, and keen relish for her more happy combinations and effects, he acquires a number of pleasures which may be dwelt upon, when the first

* This is precisely the case with regard to prospects:

the painter adds those new sources of pleasure to the general and vague delight which is felt by every spectator. For a further discussion of this subject, vide Letter to Mr. Repton, page 113.

enchanting, but vague delight of spring is diminished.

Such indeed are the charms of reviving nature, such the profusion of fresh, gay, and beautiful colours and of sweets, united with the ideas of fruitfulness, that they absorb for the moment all other considerations: and on a genial day in spring, and in a place where all its charms are displayed, every man, whose mind is not insensible or depraved, must feel the full force of that exclamation of Adam, when he first awakened to the pleasure of existence;

"With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflow'd."

I have now mentioned what seem to me the principal beauties and defects of the earlier part of spring, at which time, however, the peculiar character of that season is most striking: for as it advances, and the leaves are more and more expanded, they no longer retain their vernal hue, their gloss of youth; and the trees in the height of summer, lose perhaps as much in

the freshness, variety, and lightness of their foliage, as they gain in the general fulness of it, and the superior size of their leaves.

This

The Midsummer shoot is the first thing that gives relief to the eye, after the sameness of colour which immediately precedes it; in many trees, and in none more than the oak, the effect is singularly beautiful; the old foliage forms a dark back-ground, on which the new appears, relieved and detached in all its freshness and brilliancy: it is spring engrafted upon summer. effect, however, is confined to the nearer objects; the great general change in all vegetation is produced by the first frosts of autumn: it is then that the more uniform green of summer, is succeeded by a variety of rich glowing tints, which so admirably accord with each other, and form so splendid a mass of colouring; so superior in depth and richness, to that of any other part of the year.

It has often struck me, that the whole system of the Venetian colouring, particularly that of Giorgione and Titian, was

formed upon the tints of autumn; whence their pictures have that golden hue, which gives them such a superiority over all others. Their trees, foregrounds, and every part of their landscapes, have more strongly than those of any other painters, the deep and rich browns of that season: the same general hue prevails in the draperies and even in the flesh of their figures which has neither the silver purity of Guido, nor the freshness of Rubens, but a glow perhaps more enchanting than either. Sir Joshua Reynolds has remarked, that the silver purity of Guido is more suited to beauty, than the glowing golden hue of Titian: it was natural for him to mention Guido,

* A strong proof of this is in the Ganymede of Titian in the Colonna palace, to which, by the order of the old Cardinal, Carlo Maratt put a new sky of the same tone as those in his own pictures; and I may say, that none but such a cold insipid artist could have borne to execute, what such gross unfeeling ignorance had commanded. Such a sky would have been a severe trial to the flesh of any warm picture, but it makes that of the Ganymede appear almost black; which certainly would not have been the case, if it had been painted by Rubens, or Correggio.