pourtraying the scenery of nature he is as bold and grand as nature herself, and he combines ideal beauty with correctness of detail. While contemplating Turner's landscapes the heart bounds with joy, and is carried away by the enthusiasm which is felt when on the summit of a mountain. The eye wanders to the remote horizon. Turner paints all his landscapes on an extensive scale, and he seems, like a god, to rise above the world. The figures which he occasionally introduces are merely secondary objects, and are so diminutive in size, that they are like the men described by Shakspeare from the summit of Dover cliff. The insignificance of man when surrounded by the imposing masses of a mountain, or lost on the expanse of the ocean, is observable in Turner's works, even when his figures represent historical characters. In his picture of Hannibal crossing the Alps, the captain and his troops, who in history shook the colossal power of Rome at every step they advanced, are represented as mere pigmies, whom the genii of the mountains might annihilate by a few flakes of snow: yet the scene is as grand as though the artist had hurled the frightful avalanche upon the Carthaginians. One of our painters, in imitation of Poussin, has attempted to give an idea of the deluge, by the agony of a single family on the point of being swallowed up. Turner has represented the whole spectacle of the inundation of the earth. In Girodet's episode we tremble for a few solitary

victims; in Turner's picture we behold the danger of the whole human race.

If Turner represents the sun dispelling the vapours of the morning, and suspending his disk over the sea, instead of a single trembling ray, tracing a line of light over the surface of a few light waves, he unfolds, as it were, the boundless extent of the ocean, and the light of the orb of day blending with the water, forms a flood of sapphir and gold. In pictures of more limited dimensions, the same varied and beautiful effects are produced on the foliage of a tree, the smooth surface of a transparent lake, or on the undula

tions

Du moindre zéphir dont l'haleine
Fait rider la face de l'eau.*

Turner is less successful in his views of cities. Even at Rome he seems to be confined, and does not breathe freely. He must have air and distant perspective. But whatever subject he represents, he always contrives an outlet, by which the imagination wanders beyond the confines of his canvas. I observed, at the commencement of my letter, that the effects of Turner's pictures cannot be described. Cook's engravings of the coasts of England, which are known in France, will afford a better idea of Turner's style than anything I

can say.

I should be equally at a loss were I to attempt

* Lafontaine,

to explain the charm which pervades the works of Constable, Calcott, Ward, and Collins. Where is the secret of that humid freshness which one seems to feel on approaching their landscapes? With what artificial atmosphere do they envelope every object they delineate?

These painters seem to possess an art unknown even to Gainsborough, Ruysdael, and our landscape painters. Is it legitimate art, or is it the art of Sir Thomas Lawrence applied to landscape? I am not an artist, as I have before observed, and in the pictures of Constable and Calcott, I see only faithful representations of trees, water, and all the fugitive shades of the atmosphere. When animals are introduced into these rustic scenes, they are pourtrayed with admirable truth; it is in short the style of Cuyp carried to perfection. Cooper, Edwin Landseer, and Ward are the most distinguished animal painters in England.

I ought to add that the water-coloured paintings of Prout and Fielding may be viewed with admiration, even next to those of Girtin and Turner.

It is not certainly without a feeling of mortification, that I thus proclaim the superiority of the English landscape painters over ours. But I doubt not that our artists will sooner or later feel convinced of the necessity of copying nature rather than models. To produce powerful and varied effects of perspective, and light and shade, while at the same time due attention is paid to the

minutest details, appears to be the secret of the English landscape painters. The eye dwells for a moment on the foregrounds of their pictures, which are finished with clearness and delicacy, without being laboured; but the wonderful effects of their distances and skies rivet attention, and seem to realize the finest poetic descriptions.

LETTER XIX.

TO DR. BLACHERE.

I AM now almost reconciled to English Sundays. The first I spent in London was indeed far from agreeable. The gloom of a cloudy sky augmented the dullness which I naturally felt in a capital in which all the shops were shut up, as though the people were mourning for some great national calamity. Yesterday was a bright summer day. The sun shone from an early hour in the morning, and while its rays dispelled the misty exhalations of the Thames, they seemed to animate with a kind of involuntary gaiety, the countenances of this religious people as they proceeded to church. The young girls were dressed out in their best; and the apprentice lads, with nosegays in their button

*Instead of religious I ought perhaps to say Sunday dressing people.

holes, would almost have led me to suppose that they intended to conclude the day by dancing in the neighbouring villages, like the young people of our fauxbourgs. Most of them were, however, prepared to set out on a country jaunt. The hurried and incessant driving of stages, the coachmen calling out to the foot passengers and enquiring whether they wished to go to Greenwich, Windsor, &c., the agility with which the people mounted on the roofs of the coaches, the numerous boats which were in motion on the Thames, all presented a picture of gaiety and animation. I could not help calling to mind the following lines of Lord Byron, who has so seldom described the domestic scenes of England.

"The seventh day this; the jubilee of man.

London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer:
Then thy spruce citizen, washed artizan,

And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air:

Thy coach of hackney, whiskey, one horse chair,
And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,
To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair;
Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.
Some o'er thy Thamis row the riboned fair,
Others along the safer turnpike fly;

Some Richmond-Hill ascend, some scud to Ware,

And many to the steep of Highgate hie.

Ask, ye Baotian shades! the reason why?
'Tis to the worship of the solemn Horn,

Grasped in the holy hand of mystery,

In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,
And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till morn.”

The concluding lines of this latter stanza refer to a vulgar tradition respecting what is called.