. Witness his
"Salutation of the Virgin," in the Marquis of Westminster's collection,
which is evidently engendered from the idea contained in the design of
Albert Durer. His strict application to nature, while it enabled him
to destroy the unmeaning combinations of his predecessors, led him
into many errors, by the simple fact of drawing from the people in his
presence. But are not others chargeable with some incongruities? Are the
Madonnas of Murillo anything but a transcript of the women of Andalusia?
The women of Venice figure in the historical compositions of Titian and
Paul Veronese, and the Fornarina of Raffaelle is present in his most
sacred subjects; those, therefore, who accuse Rembrandt of vulgarity
of form, might with equal justice draw an invidious comparison between
classic Italian and high Dutch. In many of his compositions he has
embodied the highest feeling and sentiment, and in his study of natural
simplicity approaches Raffaelle nearer than any of the Flemish or Dutch
painters. Of course, as a colourist and master of light and shade, he
is all powerful; but I allude, at present, to the mere conception and
embodying of his subjects on this head.

Fuseli says,--"Rembrandt was, in my opinion, a genius of the first
class in whatever relates not to form. In spite of the most portentous
deformity, and without considering the spell of his _chiaro-scuro_, such
were his powers of nature, such the grandeur, pathos, or simplicity of
his composition, from the most elevated or extensive arrangement to
the meanest and most homely, that the best cultivated eye, the purest
sensibility, and the most refined taste, dwell on them equally
enthralled. Shakspere alone excepted, no one combined with so much
transcendent excellence so many, in all other men unpardonable,
faults,--and reconciled us to them. He possessed the full empire of
light and shade, and of all the tints that float between them; he tinged
his pencil with equal success in the cool of dawn, in the noon-day ray,
in the livid flash, in evanescent twilight, and rendered darkness
visible. Though made to bend a steadfast eye on the bolder phenomena of
nature, yet he knew how to follow her into her calmest abodes, gave
interest to insipidity and baldness, and plucked a flower in every
desert. None ever, like Rembrandt, knew how to improve an accident into
a beauty, or give importance to a trifle. If ever he had a master, he
had no followers; Holland was not made