There is, in the academy at Antwerp, a picture by Rubens, which represents St. Theresa kneeling before Christ, and interceding for the souls in pur gatory. The treatment of the subject is exceed ingly simple; the upper part of the pictures is occupied by the Redeemer, with his usual attri butes, and the saint, habited as a nun. In the lower part of the picture, instead of a confused mob of tormented souls, and flames, and devils with pitchforks, the painter has represented a few heads as if rising from below. I remember those of Adam,. Eve, and Mary Magdalene. I remember-and never shall forget the expression of each! The extremity of misery in the counte nance of Adam; the averted, disconsolate, repente ant wretchedness of Eve, who hides her face în her hair; the mixture of agony, supplication, hope, in the face of the Magdalene, while a cherub of pity extends his hand to her, as if to aid her to rise, and at the same time turns an imploring look towards the Saviour. As I gazed upon this picture, a feeling sank deep into my heart, which did not pass away with the tears it made to flow, but has ever since remained there, and has become an abiding principle of action. This is only one instance, out of many, of the moral effect which has been produced by painting.

gens qui n'y croient pas beaucoup, et enfin payês par des gens qui, apparemment, n'y croient pas, non plus.

"L'on cherche aprés cela le pourquoi de la décadence de l'art!"

P

To me it is amusing, and it cannot but be interesting and instructive to the philosopher and artist, to observe how various people, uninitiated into any of the technicalities of art, unable to appreciate the amount of difficulties overcome, are affected by pictures and sculpture. But in forming our judgment, our taste in art, it is unsafe to listen to opinions springing from this vague kind of enthusiasm; for in painting, as in music, "just as the soul is pitched, the eye is pleased."

--- I amuse myself in the gallery here with watching the countenances of those who look at the pictures. I see that the uneducated eye is caught by subjects in which the individual mind sympathizes, and the educated taste seeks abstract excellence.

Which has the most enjoyment? The last, I think. Sensibility, imagination, and quick perception of form and color, are not alone necessary to feel a work of art; there must be the power of association; the mind trained to habitual sympathy with the beautiful and the good; the knowledge of the meaning, and the comprehension of the object, of the artist.

In the gallery here there are eighty-eight pictures of Rubens, some among the very finest he ever painted; for instance, that splendid picture, Castor and Pollux carrying off the daughters of Leucippus, so full of rich life and movement; the destruction of Sennacherib's host; Rubens and his wife, full lengths, seated in a garden; that wonderful picture of the defeat of the Amazons; the

meeting of Jacob and Laban; the picture of the Earl of Arundel and his wife, with other figures,

*

full lengths; and a series of the designs for the large paintings of the history of Marie de' Medici, now in the Louvre. His group of boys with fruits and flowers, exhibits the richest, loveliest combination of colors ever presented to the eye; and on that wonderful picture of the fallen (or rather falling) angels, he has lavished such endless variety of form, attitude, and expression, that it would take a day to study it. It is not a large picture : the eye, or rather the imagination, easily takes in the general effect of tumult, horror, destruction, but the understanding dwells on the detail with still increasing astonishment and admiration. These are a few that struck me, but it is quite in vain to attempt to particularize.

One may begin by disliking Rubens in general,

* Of this celebrated picture, Sir Joshua Reynolds says, that it is miscalled, and certainly does not contain the portraits of the Earl and Countess of Arundel. Perhaps he is mistaken. It appears that the Earl of Arundel, of James the First's 'time, (the collector of the Arundelian marbles,) with his Countess, sat to Rubens in 1620, and that "Robin the Dwarf" was introduced into this picture, which was not painted in England, but at Brussels. Rubens was at this time at the height of his reputation, and when requested to paint the portrait of the Countess of Arundel, he replied, "Although I have refused to execute the portraits of many princes and noblemen, especially of his lordship's rank, yet from the Earl I am bound to receive the honor he does me in commanding my services, regarding him, as I do, in the light of an evangelist to the world of art, and the great supporter of our profession."-(See Tierney's History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel.)

(I think I did,) but one must end by standing before him in ecstasy and wonder. It is true, that always luxuriant, he is often gross and sensual-he can sometimes be brutally so. His bacchanalian scenes are not like those of Poussin, classical, godlike debauchery, but the abandoned drunken revelry of animals-the very sublime of brute licentiousness; and painted with a breadth of style, a magnificent luxuriance of color, which renders them more revolting. The physique predominates in all his pictures, and not only to grossness, even to ferocity. His picture here of the slaughter of the Innocents, makes me sick-it has absolutely polluted my imagination. Surely, this is not the vocation of high art. And as for his martyrdoms, they are worse than Spagnoletto's.

For all this, he is the TITAN of painting: his creations are "of the earth and earthy," but he has called down fire and light from heaven, wherewith to animate and to illumine them.

Rubens is just such a painter as Dryden is a poet, and vice versâ; his women are just like Dryden's women, gross, exaggerated, unrefined animals; his men, like Dryden's men, grand, thinking, acting animals. Like Dryden, he could clothe his genius in thunder, dip his pencil in the lightning and the sunbeams of heaven, and rush fearlessly upon a subject which "others had trembled to approach. In both we see a singular and extraordinary combination of the plainest, coarsest

realities of life, with the loftiest imagery, the most luxurious tints of poetry. Both had the same passion for allegory, and managed it with equal success. "The thoughts that breathe and words that burn" of Dryden, may be compared to the living, moving forms, the glowing, melting, dazzling hues of Rubens, under whose pencil

"Desires and adorations,

Winged persuasions and wild destinies,

Splendors, and glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of hopes, and fears, and twilight fantasies,-"

took form and being, became palpable existences: and yet, with all this inventive power, this love of allegorical fiction, it is life, the spirit of animal life, diffused through and over their works; it is the blending of the plain reasoning with splendid creative powers;—of wonderful fertility of conception with more wonderful facility of execution; it is the combination of truth, and grandeur, and masculine vigor, with a general coarseness of taste, which may be said to characterize both these great men. Neither are, or can be, favorites of the women, for the same reasons.

There must have been something analogous in the genius of Rubens and Titian. The distinction was of climate and country. They appear to have looked at nature under the same aspect, but it was a different nature,-the 'difference between Flanders and Venice. They were both painters of flesh and blood by nature, poets; by conformation,