. Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the
promontories, of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, the
shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like
shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners, passing from a
nation's grave.

Let us, with Claude, make a few "ideal" alterations in this landscape.
First, we will reduce the multitudinous precipices of the Apennines to
four sugar-loaves. Secondly, we will remove the Alban mount, and put a
large dust-heap in its stead. Next, we will knock down the greater part
of the aqueducts, and leave only an arch or two, that their infinity of
length may no longer be painful from its monotony. For the purple mist
and declining sun, we will substitute a bright blue sky, with round
white clouds. Finally, we will get rid of the unpleasant ruins in the
foreground; we will plant some handsome trees therein, we will send for
some fiddlers, and get up a dance, and a picnic party.

It will be found, throughout the picture, that the same species of
improvement is made on the materials which Claude had ready to his hand.
The descending slopes of the city of Rome, towards the pyramid of Caius
Cestius, supply not only lines of the most exquisite variety and beauty,
but matter for contemplation and reflection in every fragment of their
buildings. This passage has been idealized by Claude into a set of
similar round towers, respecting which no idea can be formed but that
they are uninhabitable, and to which no interest can be attached, beyond
the difficulty of conjecturing what they could have been built for. The
ruins of the temple are rendered unimpressive by the juxtaposition of
the water-mill, and inexplicable by the introduction of the Roman
soldiers. The glide of the muddy streams of the melancholy Tiber and
Anio through the Campagna, is impressive in itself, but altogether
ceases to be so, when we disturb their stillness of motion by a weir,
adorn their neglected flow with a handsome bridge, and cover their
solitary surface with punts, nets, and fishermen.

It cannot, I think, be expected, that landscapes like this should have
any effect on the human heart, except to harden or to degrade it; to
lead it from the love of what is simple, earnest and pure, to what is as
sophisticated and corrupt in arrangement, as erring and imperfect in
detail. So long as such works are held up for imitation, landscape
painting must be a manufacture, its product