festive dance?-A moot point this, concerning which authorities are at variance.

Even according to European notions of much later date, Yorick granted to those who gather grapesnot indeed in Ionia or Arcadia, but in the south of France that a cheerful dance was "the best thanks that an illiterate peasant could pay—or a learned prelate either." And we may not forget that we are here transported amid Arcadian or Sicilian scenes, when and where Pan was worshiped as a personification of all-bounteous Nature-of no purified or abstract principle (of nature), but of Existence-animated Existence, in the gross, or aggregate. This is the reason why Pan-though his superior parts were human-was represented with the legs of a goat.

And all the sylvan creations of Poussin, including his sublime Polyphemus, are called into being upon homogeneous principles. Being perfectly unsophisticated, his shepherds, fauns, nymphs, satyrs, and bacchanals, appear a primitive progeny, and the native inhabitants of the mountains and woodlands of the genial climate of Greece, and of that golden age, when Hellas and Asia Minor may be supposed to have been overspread by aboriginal forests, and life was careless resignation to present enjoyment, "where no misgiving is."

In all his Bacchanalian or Anacreontic subjectsof which abandonment to the joys of love and wine constitutes the essence, this delectable artist seemsbut only seems to throw the reins of Reason upon the neck of Imagination. Mr. Payne Knight says, there was a description of erotic poets, who combining the refinements of sentimental love, which they ac

quired amidst the elegancies of the most polished society, with the manners of primeval simplicity, and the imagery of pastoral life, have called into being a race of mortals utterly unknown to Nature, yet rendered credible by Art. Of this description are the Cyclops and Swains [of course he must have meant to include the Nymphs, Satyrs, and Fauns of antiquity, also] of the elegant Theocritus; who, bred in the polished court of Syracuse, and writing in the still more polished court of the second Ptolemy, gave a new character to his own delicate sentiments of love, by expressing them in the archaic simplicity of dialect, or with the native rusticity of imagery, of Sicilian peasants; and the novelty of that character, the simplicity of that dialect, and the beauty and gaiety of that imagery, naturally rendered the sentiments expressed, more pleasing and impressive.

Anacreon had done this, with certain modifications, long before Theocritus; and this is very much what Poussin has since done in painting-with the important difference, that, instead of being contemplated as "utterly unknown to nature," the painter charms us, more completely than the poets had done, into the belief that his imagery is better known to Nature than even to Poetry. Simple pleasures are persuasive; and the love of novelty, when sanctioned by the consciousness of truth, nature, and innocence, effectually bears down the force of habit. The prolific trains of joyous ideas and emotions connected with the imagery of Poussin, therefore, charms us into the willing belief that the artificialities and restraints of that modern society where ourselves are stationed, are, in fact, the sophisticated and fictitious things, obstructing the clearness of our native perceptions, and re

pugnant alike to nature and good taste. Even Saint Gregory, and other fathers of the church, have occasionally lapsed, or sprung, away from their theological studies, to write Anacreontics; and the greatest of our epic poets appears to agree with our Anacreontic painter, that "Nature wantons when in her prime,' and that to be "wild without rule or art," is "enormous bliss."

Poussin's own trials during the earlier part of his professional career, were somewhat severe: his intellectual gold was kept rather of the longest in the crucible of adversity. To feel pleasurable excitement seldom fell to the lot of his youth; but when it did arrive, he doubtless felt it the more intensely. It reached his heart; and he was the more intensely conscious of his own inherent capabilities. As these were seldom called into genial action, he had hoarded such a store of susceptibility of enjoyment, as carried him through his trials, and enabled him to conserve his powers. Anxious to arrive at the land of Raphael and improvement, he twice set forth from France on foot, very slenderly provided, and was twice retarded, or turned back, by adverse circumstances, ere he could reach the classic soil. On the second occasion he was arrested for debt a little beyond Lyons; and the expenses of his liberation, leaving but a solitary crown in his pocket-What did he do? Invincible to adversity; strong in hope; confident in his own latent energies, he called together his few intimate friends, and spent his last crown in a jovial supper, during which he apostrophised Fortune with an air of cheerful defiance. This shows the artist and the man; and here is the germ of that hilarious abandonment to trains of ideas of joyful revelry, which

"rules and reigns without control" through this class of his productions.

Our pen has somehow become, perhaps too didactic here for a catalogue; yet, trusting chiefly to the oblivious influence of fine pictures for our apology, we will not suppress the sanction which the tenor of our speculations derives from their congeniality with those of the modern Milton, who sings

"Serene will be our days, and bright,

And happy will our nature be,
When Love is an unerring light,
And Joy its own security;

And blest are they, who in the main
This faith, e'en now, do entertain."

A LAND STORM.

GASPAR POUSSIN.

BEFORE Marino died he had presented his friend Poussin to Cardinal Barberini, a man of taste, who appreciated the merits of the painter, and promised him patronage; but, losing his friend Marino, and the cardinal being dispatched by the pope on a distant legation, Poussin fell into neglect during his absence, and was compelled by his necessities to part with his pictures at very low prices. He also fell sick, but was consoled by the society of Fiamingo, the sculptor, and befriended by his countryman, Jaques Dughet, whose daughter he married, and whose son Gaspar he instructed in the elements and mysteries of his art. Bellori says, that Nicholas left Gaspar, as an inheritance, his name and his talent in landscape.

That Gaspar assumed the name of Poussin, and

suffered that of Dughet gradually to lapse into oblivion, is certain, and not less so, that his style of landscapepainting is derived from that of his brother-in-law and instructor: we say derived-not copied, since it is not exactly the same, being of a less abstract, noble, elevated, or idealised, character; and of a more simple and pastoral kind. Gaspar was far less accomplished in painting the human figure than his extraordinary relative: his genius, though poetical, was less epic and towering: he had no such heroic and mysterious aspirations: he would never think of attempting the terrors of the Universal Deluge, or to scale the acclivities of Etna, and represent there the loves of Acis and Galatea, and the jealousy of Polyphemus; or he modestly and reverently avoided, in his superior presence, to emulate the lofty flights of his master.

To this rule, or habitual motive of conduct, there are, however, some few exceptions. Gaspar Poussin did now and then indulge his pencil and his imagination in painting a storm, in which ideas of danger, grandeur, and heroism, are of course included or adverted to, and of which we have two instances in the National Gallery. And as the Land Storm which is here under our notice, has a good deal of the same drenched look, for which the Deluge of the elder Poussin has been so much celebrated, we may conjecture that it was perhaps painted while his Deluge remained in their studio, and operated at once as a stimulus and an exemplar.

Upon such occasions Gaspar, of course, approached nearer than at other times to the sublimities of his senior; and rarely do we see a work of his without that favourite line in landscape composition--a pic