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 Boeotian 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.'

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1.

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

swearing at Highgate. People on their first visit to that village are said to go through the form of a burlesque oath at a tavern bearing the sign of the horns.

I am, &c.

LETTER XX.

TO MADAME DE BIEF.

PERMIT a traveller, who is your countryman, to give you an account of one of his excursions in the vicinity of London. Your graceful manners and charming conversation enable you to give and receive pleasure in the brilliant circles of fashionable society :-yet I know you do not despise the beauties of the country, and that you willingly forsake the splendid drawing-room for the tranquil enjoyment of green fields and shady groves. This encourages me to address to you my recollections of Richmond.

Having determined to pass my Sunday in viewing the picturesque scenery around Richmond Hill, I secured the last vacant place on the top of one of the stage coaches, which as I have before observed, are very different from the humble vehicles of Saint Germain and Saint Cloud. In an hour and a half after starting from town, we alighted at a village, where each of the passengers paid two shillings to the driver. I was obliged to guess

that we were at Richmond, for I had addressed several questions to the person who sat next me on the coach; but John Bull is often more taciturn on Sunday than during the rest of the week. Discouraged by my neighbour's monosyllabic answers, I abandoned all attempts at entering into conversation, and was compelled to content myself with being a silent observer of the surrounding scenery. Our road lay between fertile meadows, the trees on the either side occasionally forming arches of foliage above our heads; and we sometimes passed by rows of houses with flower-plots before them, and with their walls ornamented with festoons of verdure. At intervals we caught glimpses of the peaceful waves of the river, which is only half seen on account of its banks, and which here flows with grace rather than majesty. I repaired to the top of an ascending street, with as much eagerness and curiosity as though I had been on the point of discovering an unknown land. I would not turn my head, until I reached the highest point of the ascent, and at length I found unfolded around me the lovely scenes described by Thomson.

At the depth of three hundred feet beneath me, there extended an ocean of verdure, over which were here and there scattered, like islands, groupes of elm trees and gigantic oaks; the whole forming one vast forest, as elegant and ornamental as a grove. One is at a loss to guess what magic imparts so lovely and varied an effect to a picture whose plan is so simple, and whose chaste unifor