his drawings have of late
years become both less solid and less complete; not, however, without
attaining certain brilliant qualities in exchange which are very
valuable in the treatment of some of the looser portions of subject. Of
the extended knowledge and various powers of this painter, frequent
instances are noted in the following pages. Neither, perhaps, are
rightly estimated among artists, owing to a certain coldness of
sentiment in his choice of subject, and a continual preference of the
picturesque to the impressive; proved perhaps in nothing so distinctly
as in the little interest usually attached to his skies, which, if
aerial and expressive of space and movement, content him, though
destitute of story, power, or character: an exception must be made in
favor of the very grand sunrise on the Swiss Alps, exhibited in 1844,
wherein the artist's real power was in some measure displayed, though I
am convinced he is still capable of doing far greater things. So in his
foliage he is apt to sacrifice the dignity of his trees to their
wildness, and lose the forest in the copse, neither is he at all
accurate enough in his expression of species or realization of near
portions. These are deficiencies, be it observed, of sentiment, not of
perception, as there are few who equal him in rapidity of seizure of
material truth.

Sec. 25. Samuel Prout. Early painting of architecture, how deficient.

Very extensive influence in modern art must be attributed to the works
of Samuel Prout; and as there are some circumstances belonging to his
treatment of architectural subject which it does not come within the
sphere of the following chapters to examine, I shall endeavor to note
the more important of them here.

Let us glance back for a moment to the architectural drawing of earlier
times. Before the time of the Bellinis at Venice, and of Ghirlandajo at
Florence, I believe there are no examples of anything beyond
conventional representation of architecture, often rich, quaint, and
full of interest, as Memmi's abstract of the Duomo at Florence at S^ta.
Maria Novella; but not to be classed with any genuine efforts at
representation. It is much to be regretted that the power and custom of
introducing well-drawn architecture should have taken place only when
architectural taste had been itself corrupted, and that the architecture
introduced by Bellini, Ghirlandajo, Francia, and the other patient and
powerful workmen of the fifteent