ET AT ROME.

Vernet arrived at Rome in 1732, and became the scholar of Bernardino
Fergioni, then a celebrated marine painter, but Lanzi says, "he was
soon eclipsed by Joseph Vernet, who had taken up his abode at Rome."
Entirely unknown in that metropolis of art, always swarming with
artists, Vernet lived for several years in the greatest poverty,
subsisting by the occasional sale of a drawing or picture at any price
he could get. He even painted panels for coach builders, which were
subsequently sawed out and sold as works of great value. Fiorillo
relates that he painted a superb marine for a suit of coarse clothes,
which brought 5000 francs at the sale of M. de Julienne. Finding large
pictures less saleable, he painted small ones, which he sold for two
sequins a-piece, till a Cardinal, one day gave him four louis d'or for a
marine. Yet his ardor and enthusiasm were unabated; on the contrary, he
studied with the greatest assiduity, striving to perfect himself in his
art, and feeling confident that his talents would ultimately command a
just reward.

VERNET'S "ALPHABET OF TONES."

It was the custom of Vernet to rise with the lark, and he often walked
forth before dawn and spent the whole day in wandering about the
surrounding country, to study the ever changing face of nature. He
watched the various hues presented by the horizon at different hours of
the day. He soon found that with all his powers of observation and
pencil, great and impassioned as they were, he could not keep pace with
the rapidly changing and evanescent hues of the morning and evening sky.
He began to despair of ever being able to represent on canvass the
moving harmony of those pictures which nature required so little time to
execute in such perfection, and which so quickly passed away. At length,
after long contemplating how he could best succeed in catching and
transferring these furtive tints to his canvass, bethought himself of a
contrivance which he called his Alphabet of tones, and which is
described by Renou in his "Art de Peindre."

The various characters of this alphabet are joined together, and
correspond to an equal number of different tints; if Vernet saw the sun
rise silvery and fresh, or set in the colors of crimson; or if he saw a
storm approaching or disappearing, he opened his table and set down the
gradations of the tones he admired, as quickly as he could write ten or
twelve letters on a piece of paper. After having thus noted