.

It is especially so, because it never appears, even in the slightest
measure, until the days of the decline of art in the seventeenth
century. The love of neatness and precision, as opposed to all disorder,
maintains itself down to Raphael's childhood without the slightest
interference of any other feeling; and it is not until Claude's time,
and owing in great part to his influence, that the new feeling
distinctly establishes itself.

Plate +18+ shows the kind of modification which Claude used to make on
the towers and backgrounds of Ghirlandajo; the old Florentine giving his
idea of Pisa, with its leaning tower, with the utmost neatness and
precision, and handsome youth riding over neat bridges on beautiful
horses; Claude reducing the delicate towers and walls to unintelligible
ruin, the well built bridge to a rugged stone one, the handsome rider to
a weary traveller, and the perfectly drawn leafage to confusion of
copse-wood or forest.[1]

How far he was right in doing this; or how far the moderns are right in
carrying the principle to greater excess, and seeking always for
poverty-stricken rusticity or pensive ruin, we must now endeavor to
ascertain.

The essence of picturesque character has been already defined[2] to be a
sublimity not inherent in the nature of the thing, but caused by
something external to it; as the ruggedness of a cottage roof possesses
something of a mountain aspect, not belonging to the cottage as such.
And this sublimity may be either in mere external ruggedness, and other
visible character, or it may lie deeper, in an expression of sorrow and
old age, attributes which are both sublime; not a dominant expression,
but one mingled with such familiar and common characters as prevent the
object from becoming perfectly pathetic in its sorrow, or perfectly
venerable in its age.

Sec. 2. For instance, I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I
have always in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in
England, at the foot of the old tower of Calais church. The large
neglect, the noble unsightliness of it; the record of its years written
so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness
and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the
bitter sea grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet
not falling; its desert of brickwork full of bolts, and holes, and ugly
fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessn