are the faint
outlines of a villa of Italian architecture, but to whose luxurious
halls you can hardly wish the lovers should ever return, so long as they
can remain sitting upon that bank. It is all painted in that deep,
subdued, but rich tone, in which, except by the strongest light, the
forms are scarcely to be made out, but to which, to the mind in some
moods, a charm is lent, surpassing all the glory of the sun.

"'The Spanish Girl' is another example to the same point. It is one of
the most beautiful and perfect of all of Mr. Allston's works. The
Spanish girl gives her name to the picture, but it is one of those
misnomers of which there are many among his works. One who looks at the
picture scarcely ever looks at, certainly cares nothing for, the
Spanish girl, and regards her as merely giving her name to the picture;
and when the mind recurs to it afterwards, however many years may have
elapsed, while he can recall nothing of the beauty, the grace, or the
charms of the Spanish maiden, the landscape, of which her presence is a
mere inferior incident, is never forgotten, but remains forever as a
part of the furniture of the mind. In this part of the picture, the
landscape, it must be considered as one of the most felicitous works of
genius, where, by a few significant tints and touches, there is unveiled
a world of beauty. You see the roots of a single hill only, and a remote
mountain-summit, but you think of Alps and Andes, and the eye presses
onwards till it at last rests on a low cloud at the horizon. It is a
mere snatch of Nature, but, though only that, every square inch of the
surface has its meaning. It carries you back to what your mind imagines
of the warm, reddish tints of the Brown Mountains of Cervantes, where
the shepherds and shepherdesses of that pastoral scene passed their
happy, sunny hours. The same deep feeling of repose is shown in all the
half-developed objects of the hill-side, in the dull, sleepy tint of the
summer air, and in the warm, motionless haze that wraps sky, land, tree,
water, and cloud. It is quite wonderful by how few tints and touches, by
what almost shadowy and indistinct forms, a whole world of poetry can be
breathed into the soul, and the mind sent rambling off into pastures,
fields, boundless deserts of imaginary pleasures, where only is warmth
and sunshine and rest, where only poets dwell, and beauty wanders abroad
with her sweeping train, and the realities of the working-day w