Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 007.djvu/93

78 and is, indeed, beautiful beyond expression. I should pitch upon the one that hangs in the left corner of the inner room, "making a sunshine in a shady place." And yet, without very well knowing why, unless it be that it pours from every part of it a flood of light and warmth into the very depths of the heart; at once soothing the passions of earth to an unearthly stillness, while it makes the blood seem to dance and sparkle within us to the music of its dancing and sparkling waters. To stand before that picture, is to be happy, whatever one's lot maybe; and to leave it, is to leave looking into the very heart and soul of Nature.

That I may not pass over any pictures of the old masters in this choicest of all collections, I will mention that there are two capital landscapes by Gaspar Poussin, one of which in particular (The Sacrifice of Isaac) possesses all his truth, purity, and richness of effect; a portrait of Philip IV. of Spain and his Queen, by Velasquez, which might be mistaken for Vandyke; one picture by Vandyke himself, of which there is an exact repetition by Rubens, which latter has been engraved—unless the engraving has been made from this very picture, and Rubens's name attached to it; a landscape by Cuyp; and finally, an admirable portrait, by Raphael, of Pope Julius II.—I regret being obliged to pass over these capital productions (for they are all first-rate, particularly the last) by merely naming them; but my limits compel me to bring this paper to a close. Before doing which, if I mention Wilkie's "Alehouse Door," it must be less to admire its miraculous truth, than to express a half-regret at finding it here, among these high and solemn effusions of the mighty dead. There is a place, as well as "a time," for all things; and this is not the place for a work, the merit of which (great as it is) depends solely on its developing the lowest and least ideal of the passions, habits, and accidents to which our nature is subject.—I cannot conclude without adding, that the above objection is in no degree applicable to Hogarth's admirable series of The Marriage à la Mode, which are also here, but which it is not part of my plan to notice in detail. Different as these are in object and character from those works of the old masters which I have described, they are no less intellectual than the latter, and scarcely less ideal.