is in his usual manner. There is truth of character and delicate finishing; but the fault of all Berghem's pictures is that he continues to finish after he has done looking at nature, and his last touches are different from hers. Hence comes that resemblance to tea-board painting, which even his best works are chargeable with.

We find here one or two small Claudes of no great value; and two very clever specimens of the court - painter, Watteau, the Gainsborough of France. They are marked as 197 and 210, Fête Champêtre, and Le Bal Champêtre.

There is something exceedingly light, agreeable, and characteristic in this artist's productions. He might also be said to breathe his figures and his flowers on the canvas-so fragile is their texture, so evanescent is his touch. He unites the court and the country at a sort of salient point-you may fancy yourself with Count Grammont and the beauties of Charles II. in their gay retreat at Tunbridge Wells. His trees have a drawing-room air with them, an appearance of gentility and etiquette, and nod gracefully over-head; while the figures below, thin as air, and vegetably clad, in the midst of all their affectation and grimace, seem to have just sprung out of the ground, or to be the fairy inhabitants of the scene in masquerade. They are the Oreads and Dryads of

the Luxembourg! Quaint association, happily effected by the pencil of Watteau ! In the Bal Champêtre we see Louis XIV. himself dancing, looking so like an old beau, his face flushed and puckered up with gay anxiety; but then the satin of his slashed doublet is made of the softest leaves of the water-lily; Zephyr plays wanton with the curls of his wig! We have nobody who could produce a companion to this picture now: nor do we very devoutly wish it. The Louis the Fourteenths are extinct, and we suspect their revival would hardly be compensated even by the re-appearance of a Watteau.

No. 254, the Death of Cardinal Beaufort, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a very indifferent and rather unpleasant sketch of a very fine picture. One of the most delightful things in this delightful collection is the Portrait of the Prince of the Asturias, [194] by Velasquez. The easy lightness of the childish Prince contrasts delightfully with the unwieldy figure of the horse, which has evidently been brought all the way from the Low Countries for the amusement of his rider. Velasquez was (with only two exceptions, Titian and Vandyke) as fine a portrait-painter as ever lived!

In the centre room also is the Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, by Murillo [294], a sweet picture with a fresh green landscape, and the heart of love in the midst of it.

There are several heads of Holbein scattered up and down the different compartments. We need hardly observe that they all have character in the extreme, so that we may be said to be acquainted with the people they represent: but then they give nothing but character, and only one part of that, viz. the dry, the literal, the concrete, and fixed. They want the addition of passion and beauty; but they are the finest caput mortuums of expression that ever were made. Hans Holbein had none of the volatile essence of of genius in his composition. If portrait-painting is the prose of the art, his pictures are the prose of portrait-painting. Yet he is a reverend name" in art, and one of the benefactors of the human mind. He has left faces behind him that we would give the world to have seen, and there they are-stamped on his canvas for ever! Who, in reading over the names of certain individuals, does not feel a yearning in his breast to know their features and their lineaments? We look through a small frame, and lo! at the distance of three centuries, we have before us the figures of Anne Boleyn, of the virtuous Cranmer, the bigotted Queen Mary, the noble Surrey-as if we had seen them in their life-time, not perhaps in their best moods or happiest attitudes, but as they sometimes appeared, no doubt. We know at least what sort of looking people they were: our minds are made easy on that score; the body and limbs" are there, and we

may

"add

what flourishes" of grace or ornament we please. Holbein's heads are to the finest portraits what state-papers are to history.

The first picture in the FOURTH ROOM is The Prophet Samuel, by Sir Joshua (286). It is not the Prophet Samuel, but a very charming picture of a little child saying its prayers. The second is The Education of Bacchus, by Nicholas Poussin (115).* This picture makes one thirsty to look at it-the colouring even is dry and adust. It is true history in the technical phrase, that is to say, true poetry in the vulgate. The figure of the infant Bacchus seems as if he would drink up a vintage-he drinks with his mouth, his hands, his belly, and his whole body. Gargantua was nothing to him. In the Nursing of Jupiter (300), in like manner, we are thrown back into the infancy of mythologic lore. The little Jupiter, suckled by a she-goat, is beautifully conceived and expressed; and the dignity and ascendency given to these animals in the picture is wonderfully happy. They have a very imposing air of gravity indeed, and seem to be by prescription "grand caterers and wet - nurses of the state" of Heaven! Apollo giving a Poet a Cup of Water to drink, by N. Poussin (295), is elegant and classical and The Flight into Egypt, by N. Poussin (310), instantly takes

:

The picture in the Dulwich Gallery is only a copy from the fine original in the National Gallery, No. 39.

D

the tone of Scripture-history. This is strange, but so it is. All things are possible to a high imagination. All things, about which we have a feeling, may be expressed by true genius. A dark landscape by the same hand (279), in a corner of the room, is a proof of this. There are trees in the fore-ground, with a paved road and buildings in the distance. The Genius of antiquity might wander here, and feel itself at home. The large leaves are wet and heavy with dew, and the eye dwells" under the shade of melancholy boughs." In the old collection (in Mr. Desenfans' time) the Poussins occupied a separate room by themselves, and it was (we confess) a very favourite room with us.

No. 159 is a Landscape, by Salvator Rosa. It is one of his very best-rough, grotesque, wild; Pan has struck it with his hoof; the trees, the rocks, the fore-ground, are of a piece, and the figures are subordinate to the landscape. The same dull sky lowers upon the scene, and the bleak air chills the crisp surface of the water. It is a consolation to us to meet with a fine Salvator. His is one of the great names in art, and it is among our sources of regret that we cannot always admire his works as we would do, from our respect to his reputation and our love of the man. Poor Salvator! he was unhappy in his life-time; and it vexes us to think that we cannot make him amends by fancying him so