paint can make them, and there is not, and cannot be, the slightests increase of force or any marking whatsoever of distance by colour, or any other means, between them and the foreground. Compare with these Turner's treatment of his materials in the 'Mercury and Argus.' He has here his light actually coming from the distance, the sun being nearly in the centre of the picture, and a violent relief of objects against it would be far more justifiable than in Poussin's case. But this dark relief is used in its full force only with the nearest leaves of the nearest group of foliage, overhaninging the foreground from the left, and between these and the more distant members of the same group, though only three or four yards eparate, distinct aerial perspective and intervening mist and light are shown, while the large tree in the centre, though very dark, as being very near, compared with all the distance, is much diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group of leaves, and is faint compared with all the foreground. It is true that this tree has not, in consequence, the actual pitch of shade against the sky which it would have in nature, but it has precisely as much as it possibly can have to leave it the same proportionate relation to the objects near at hand. And it cannot be but evident to the thoughtful reader, that, whatever trickery or deception may be the result of a contrary mode of treament, this is the only scientific or essentially truthful system, and that what it loses in tone it gains in aerial perspective."

"The effect of a fine Canaletti is in its first impression dioramic; we fancy we are in our beloved Venice again, with one foot by mistake in the clear invisible film of water lapping over the marble steps in the foreground. Every house has its proper relief against the sky, - every brick and stone its proper hue of sunlight and shade, - and every degree of distance its proper tone of retiring air. Presently, however, we begin to feel that it is lurid and gloomy, and that the painter, compelled by the lowness of the utmost light at his disposal to deepen the shadows, in order to get the right relation, has lost the flashing, dazzling, exulting light, which was one of our chief sources of Venetian happiness. But we pardon this, knowing it to be unavoidable, and begin to look for something of that in which Venice differs from Rotterdam, or any other city built beside canals. We know that house, certainly; we never passed it without stopping our gondolier, for its arabesques were as rich as a bank of flowers in Spring, and as beautiful as a dream. What has Canaletti given us for them? Five black dots. Well, take the next house; we remember that too; it was mouldering inch by inch into the canal, and the bricks had fallen away from its shattered marble shafts, and left them white and skeleton-like, yet with their fretwork of cold flowers wreated about them, still untouched by time: and through the rents of the wall behind them there used to come along sunbeams, greened by the weeds through which they pierced, which flitted and fell one by one round those grey and quiet shafts, catching here a leaf and there a leaf, and gliding over the illumined edges and delicate fissures, until they sank into the deep dark hollow between the marble blocks of the sunk foundation, lighting every other moment one isolated emerald lamp, on the crest of the intermittent waves, when the wild sea-weeds and crimson lichens drifted and crawled with their thousand colours and fine branches over its decay, and the black, clogging, accumulated limpets hung in ropy clusters from the dripping and tinkling stone. What has Canaletti given us for this? One square red mass composed of - let me count - five and fifty - no - six and fifty - no - I was right at first - five and fifty bricks of precisely the same size, shape, and colour, one great black line for the shadow of the roof at the top, and six similar ripples in a row at the bottom! And this is what people call 'painting nature.' It is indeed painting nature as she appears to the most unfeeling and untaught of mankind. The bargeman and the bricklayer probably see no more in Venice than Canaletti gives, - heaps of earth and water, with water between; and are just as capable of appreciating the facts of sunlight and shadow, by which he deceives us, as the most educated of us all. But what more is there in Venice than brick and stone - what there is of