well as the grand mountain forms,
of the Alpine spaces. To look on this piece exhilarates as does the
sight of the Alps themselves; and it strikes the eye as a shrill
trumpet sound the ear. This landscape, a grand antithesis to the last
described, marks a great range of power in the mind that produced them
both.

But Allston was not a landscape-painter. His landscapes are few in
number, though great in excellence. They are poetic in the truest sense;
they are laden with thought and life, and are of "imagination all
compact." They transport the beholder to a fairer world, where, through
and behind the lovely superficies of things, he sees the hidden ideal of
each member,--of rock, sea, sky, earth, and forest,--and feels by a
clear magnetism that he is in presence of the very truth of things.

We now come to a class of Allston's pictures which are known chiefly,
perhaps only, in Boston. They are justly prized by their owners as
possessions of inestimable value; they are the works that more than
others display his peculiar genius. I allude to certain ideal heads and
figures called by these names: "Beatrice," "Rosalie," "The Bride," "The
Spanish Girl," "The Evening Hymn," "The Tuscan Girl," "Miriam," "The
Valentine," "Lorenzo and Jessica," "The Flight of Florimel," "The Roman
Lady," and others; and I shall give a short description of the most
important of these, sometimes in my own words, and sometimes in those of
one who is the only writer I can find who has said anything distinctive
about the works of Allston. I refer to William Ware, who died in the act
of preparing a course of lectures on the Genius of Allston,--a task for
which he was well qualified by his artistic organization, his long study
of Art, and his clear appreciation of Allston's power.

In these smaller ideal pieces Allston seems to have found his own
genius, so peculiar are they, so different from the works of all other
masters, and so divine in their expressive repose. I say divine in their
repose with full intention; for this is a repose, not idle and
voluptuous, not poetic and dreamy, but a repose full of life, a repose
which commands and controls the beholder, and stirs within him that
idealism that lies deep hidden in every mind. These pieces consist of
heads and figures, mostly single, distinct as individuals, and each a
heaven of beauty in itself.

The method of this artist was to suppress all the coarser beauties which
make up the substance of