lowed in
favour of the Venetians that he was more gross than they, and carried all
their mistaken methods to a far greater excess. In the Venetian school
itself, where they all err from the same cause, there is a difference in
the effect. The difference between Paulo and Bassano seems to be only
that one introduced Venetian gentlemen into his pictures, and the other
the boors of the district of Bassano, and called them patriarchs and
prophets.

The painters of the Dutch school have still more locality. With them, a
history piece is properly a portrait of themselves; whether they describe
the inside or outside of their houses, we have their own people engaged
in their own peculiar occupations, working or drinking, playing or
fighting. The circumstances that enter into a picture of this kind are
so far from giving a general view of human life that they exhibit all the
minute particularities of a nation differing in several respects from the
rest of mankind. Yet, let them have their share of more humble praise.
The painters of this school are excellent in their own way; they are only
ridiculous when they attempt general history on their own narrow
principles, and debase great events by the meanness of their characters.

Some inferior dexterity, some extraordinary mechanical power, is
apparently that from which they seek distinction. Thus, we see, that
school alone has the custom of representing candle-light, not as it
really appears to us by night, but red, as it would illuminate objects to
a spectator by day. Such tricks, however pardonable in the little style,
where petty effects are the sole end, are inexcusable in the greater,
where the attention should never be drawn aside by trifles, but should be
entirely occupied by the subject itself.

The same local principles which characterise the Dutch school extend even
to their landscape painters; and Rubens himself, who has painted many
landscapes, has sometimes transgressed in this particular. Their pieces
in this way are, I think, always a representation of an individual spot,
and each in its kind a very faithful but very confined portrait.

Claude Lorraine, on the contrary, was convinced that taking nature as he
found it seldom produced beauty. His pictures are a composition of the
various draughts which he has previously made from various beautiful
scenes and prospects. However, Rubens in some measure has made amends
for the deficiency with which he is char