Italy cannot with justice lay claim to the talents of Claude Lorraine. The greatest of all landscape painters, he who saw and corrected the errors of nature; he who is her rival in the depth and extent of his views, owes little to birth and less to education. He was born a Frenchman, and bred a pastry-cook.

The painters of Spain have not been few, nor have they been wanting in genius. She yields only to the inspiration of Italy. The names of Velasquez, of Murillo, of so many others, are enrolled amongst the greatest masters of the art. Yet the stern grandeur of her sierras, and the milder majesty of the limestone range which borders her southern coast, and overhangs the garden of Murcia, have found none to record their claims to admiration. The remnants of her Moorish greatness moulder unobserved.

It is not in the gay scenery of the south of Europe, amidst groves of oranges and myrtles, that the genius of the picturesque has fixed his abode; nor yet in the gloomy valleys and icy glaciers of the Alps; nor yet in those less darksome mountains, so dear to the lovers of romance, where the plaintive echo still draws out through many a winding dale, the oft-repeated note of Roncesvalles' dirge. It is in the populous and commercial towns of Holland and England, that he has set up his throne. It is in the bosom of Dutch and Flemish burgomasters that he reigns with most unlimited sway. These men, so unpicturesque in their appearance, with their pipes, and their nightcaps, and their banyans, have been his most devoted worshippers; they have been the most munificent protectors of landscape painting. To their patronage it owes its perfection, and almost its existence. Every stiver which could be turned away from the calls of avarice has been devoted to the purchase

of pictures; every moment which could be abstracted from their calicoes, and their indigo, and their pepper, has been dedicated to their study and contemplation. They have lived but for the art. It has been the solace of their cares, the reward of all their toils. Their wealth has not been for themselves but for artists. Under their auspices have flourished the greatest masters of landscape painting; they have called forth and fostered their genius. Ruysdael, Berghem, Both, Cuyp, Hobbema, and Paul Potter, were all born, and passed their lives in the flat and tasteless regions of Belgium and Batavia. They have been successful in their art exactly in proportion as they have been ignorant of the more varied surface of other countries. Berghem and Both travelled in Italy, and studied its delightful scenery; but their vague and undetermined landscape, though enriched with ruins of ancient buildings, can ill stand the competition with the truth and simplicity of their less instructed countrymen. Ruysdael is exquisitely picturesque, yet his deep and winding roads, his lank and drawn-up trees for ever repeated through all his works, shew that his imagination had never wandered beyond the sterile and sandy plain of Brabant. The neighbourhood of Delft, with its saw-mills, its polders, its ditches, its hazy atmosphere, seems to have served as a model to its townsman Cuyp. Hobbema was born in Haerlem ; and his water-mills, with their undershot wheels, the smouldering smoke of the turf fire just rising above the thatch of the building, and faintly streaking the horizon, the damp green of his trees determine him as a native of that oozy region, where the waters look down on the land. Paul Potter first saw the light, and passed the greater part of his life in the alluvial territory of North Holland; a district so flat that it required no small effort

of imagination to conceive the hillock on which he has placed his ragged bull.

The genius of these men, the most picturesque of painters, was not surely the gift of nature: it was not called forth by a contemplation of her varied works; they were almost wholly ignorant of them. That the homely burgher should be pleased with the high and laboured finishing of Mieris and Netscher, and their domestic details; that he should delight in the vulgar drolleries of Teniers and Ostade, is what might be naturally expected. Vulgarity and a love of neatness, are almost inseparable from his condition; nature seems to have attached them to his calling. But it is difficult to conceive that the phlegmatic Dutchman owes to her his exquisite sensibility for the picturesque; that he who never saw the beauties of the country, but from the roof of a treckschuyt, or the window of a summer-house, overlooking the lazy course of a canal, should have the quickest feeling for the charm of rural scenery. We cannot persuade ourselves that the landscape acquires its richest colouring when seen through the smoke of tobacco.

The existence of the taste, which cannot be called in question, can only be accounted for on other principles. Men seem naturally to seek their amusement in that which is most removed from their constant and habitual occupations. Sometimes to suffer hunger and thirst is not disagreeable to those who pass their lives in plenty. The idle sportsman toils through the deep ling of the moors in search of pleasure. The fatigue of the chase is luxury to him who knows no other labour. Monarchs fly from their splendid palaces to seek retirement under the humble roof of the cottage. The companions, whom kings choose for their idle moments, are seldom the graceful courtier, or the high-spirited and accomplished

nobleman; they are sought for among the humblest of their domestics; the hours of their relaxation are enlivened by coarse mirth and low buffoonery. When our lawyers were really deep read in black-letter law, the halls of the Temple resounded with revelry; when their cheek grew pale, and their eye lost its lustre, as they pored over the pages of Fleta, of Bracton, of Littleton, the amusements of the circuit were horseplay and practical jokes; they delighted in boyish merriment. As they have less cultivated the abstract parts of the law, as their minds have been less fatigued with study, their diversions have assumed a more chastened form. The pleasure we derive from the stage, in this, only reflects the realities of life. Comedy is most grateful to the serious; the most tender natures are those who find the greatest pleasure in the deep pathos of the tragic scene. Those who shudder at the very thought of cruelty, feel the most delight in its representation. The characters of the Irishman, or Yorkshireman, are the favourites of the London stage. That of the gentleman is too familiar to please. The haughty spirit, and mock majesty of Cæsar or Alexander, never fail to draw down thunders of applause from the unheroic tenants of the gallery. It is not the idle lord of ten thousand acres, whose mind is most occupied, and whose revenue is most frequently employed in the embellishment of his residence. The highest decorations which art can conceive or money can procure, are lavished on the villa of the tradesman, where he retires on a Sunday to get rid of the tedium of the Sabbath, to ruminate on the bad debts of the last week, and to plan the speculations of the next. Sir Isaac Newton sometimes lost sight of the revolutions of worlds, whilst he meditated on the gambols of his cat.

These facts, if well weighed, cannot fail to convince

us, that it is not where nature displays her charms most profusely that she will have the greatest number of admirers. The taste for the picturesque is an artificial taste, which, like the love of the Swiss for their country, grows strongest by privation. It flourishes most among the monotonous scenes of towns. It is the privilege of citizens.

The principle is every where the same; the manner which it shews itself is influenced by the different institutions, and different state of society, in different countries. It displays itself under three forms; the love of painting-the love of landscape gardening-and the love of contemplating the wild scenery of nature. Which shall predominate, will depend on the arbitrary regulations of society. The form which our social relations have of late years assumed in England, has been highly favourable to the two last; our institutions have not been equally so to the first.

The success of our commerce has raised up a number of wealthy traders, of persons who look to the land with other views than those of profit; who consider the coun try merely as the canvas on which they may display their wealth and their taste. Tied down by their occupations to dwell in cities, deriving from them their incomes, they behold them with no pleasure. The country is the refuge from their cares; it is the place of amusement for their idle hours. It appears to them as one of the objects which shall assist them in the getting rid of their riches. It helps to satisfy that gnawing want of wealth, the squandering of its stores. Such men naturally encourage landscape gardening.

The different circumstances of the stockholders make the passion assume in them the wandering disposition that delights to pursue the beauties of nature into their