"It appears strange," he says, "to me that any one familiar with Nature, and fond of her, should not grow weary and sick at heart among the melancholy and monotonous transcripts of her which alone can be receieved from the old school of art. A man accustomed to the broad wild seashore, with its bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can scarcely but be angered when Claude bids him stand still on some paltry, chipped, and chiselled quay, with porters and wheelbarrows running against him, to watch a weak, rippling, bound and barriered water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the confining stone. A man accustomed to the strength and glory of God's mountains, with their soaring and radiant pinnacles and surging sweeps of measureless distance, kingdoms in their valleys, and climates upon their crests, can scarcely but be angered when Salvator bids him stand still under some contemptible fragment of splintery crag, which an Alpine snow-wreath would smother in its first swell, with a stunted bush or two growing out of it, and a Dudley or Halifax-like volume of manufactory smoke for a sky. A man accustomed to the grace and infinity of Nature's foliage, with every vista a cathedral, and every bough a revelation, can scarcely but be angered when Poussin mocks him with a black round mass of impenetrable paint, diverging into feathers instead of leaves, and supported on a stick instead of a trunk. Who that has one spark of feeling of what is beautiful or true, would not turn to be refreshed by the pure and extended realizations of modern art?" &c.

"I shall endeavour," he says, "in the present portion of the work to enter with care and impartiality into the investigation of the claims of the schools of ancient