and thetrees, we stopped before a little inn, finely shaded with a beech trained into an arbor all over the front. A very, very pretty blue-eyed Dutch girl of twenty, received me. We could talk nothing totogether; but there happened a stupid old Meinheer smoking with his wife at the door, through whom I explained my wants. I saw by the twinkle in her eye that she comprehended. If I had spoken an hour it could not have been better-my dinner. There were cutlets white as the driven snow, and wine with cobwebs of at least a year's date on the bottle, and the nicest of Dutch cheese, and strawberries and profusion of delicious cream. The blue-eyed girl had stolen out to put on another dress while I was busy with the first cutlet; and she wore one of the prettiest little handkerchiefs imaginable on her shoulders, and she glided about the table so noislessly, so charmingly, and arranged the dishes so neatly, and put so heaping a plateful of strawberries before me, that, confound me! I should have kept by the dinner table until night if the old lady had not put her head in the door, to say there was a person without who would guide me through the village.

And who is to be my guide?” said I, as well as I could say it.

The old lady pointed opposite. I thought she misunderstood me and asked her again.

She pointed the same way: it was a stout woman with a baby in her arms!

Was there ever such a Cicerone before? I looked incredulously at my hostess; she looked me honestly enough back, and set her arms a-kimbo. I tried to understand her to point to her blueeyed daughter, who was giggling behind her shoulder, but she was inexorable.

I grew frightened; the woman was well enough, though jogging upon forty. But the baby! what on earth should it be doing; suppose she were to put it in my arms in some retired part of the village only fancy me six leagues from Amsterdam, with only ten guilders in my pocket, and a fat Dutch baby squalling in my hands? But the woman, with a ripe, red, laughing cheek had a charitable eye, and we set off together.

Not a bit though could we talk, and it was "nichts, nichts," however I put the questions. Nature designed eyes to talk half a language, and the good soul pleaded to me with hers for the beauty of her village; words of the oldest cicerone

could not plead stronger. And as for the village, it needed none. It was like dreaming; it was like fairy land. Away, over a little bridge we turned off the tow-path of the canal, and directly were in the quiet ways of the town. They were all paved with pebbles or bricks arranged in every quaint variety of pattern; and all so clean that I could find no place to throw down the stump of my cigar. The grass that grew up everywhere to the edge of the walks was short-not the prim shortness of French shearing, but it had a look of dwarfish neatness, as if custom had habituated it to short growth, and habit become nature. All this in the public highway-not five yards wide, but under so strict municipal surveillance that no horse or unclean thing was allowed to trample on its neatness. Once a little donkey harnessed to a miniature carriage passed us, in which was a Dutch miss, to whom my lady patroness with the baby bowed low, came tottling by. It was evidently, however, a privileged lady, and the donkey's feet had been waxed. Little yards were before the houses, and these stocked with all sorts of flowers arranged in all sorts of forms, and so clean-walks, beds, and flowers-that I am sure, a passing sparrow could not have trimmed his feathers in the plat, without bringing out a toddling Dutch wife with her broom. The fences were absolutely polished with paint; and the hedges were clipped not with shears, but scissors. Now and then faces would peep out of the windows, but in general, the curtains were close drawn. We saw no men but one or two old gardeners and half-a-dozen painters. Girls we met who would pass a word to my entertainer, and a glance to me, and a low curtsy, and would chuckle the baby under the chin, and glance again. But they were not better dressed nor prettier than the rest of the world, beside having a great deal shorter waists and larger ancles. They looked happy, and healthy, and homelike. Little boys were rolling along home from school-rolling, I mean, as a seaman rolls-with their short legs, and fat bodies, and phlegmatic faces. Two of them were throwing off hook and bait into the canal from under the trees; and good fishers, I dare say, they made, for never a word did they speak, and I almost fancied that if I had stepped quietly up, and kicked one of them into the water, the other would have quietly pulled

in his line, taken off his bait, put all in his pocket, and toddled off in true Dutch style, home, to tell his Dutch mamma. Round pretty angles that came unlooked for, and the shady square of the church-not a sound anywhere-we passed along, the woman, the baby, and I. Half-a-dozen times I wanted Cameron with me to enjoy a good Scotch laugh at the oddity of the whole thing; for there was something approaching the ludicrous in the excess of cleanliness-to say nothing about my stout attendant, whose cares and anxieties were most amusingly divided between me and the babe. There was a large garden, a phthisicky old gardener took me over, with puppets in cottages, going by clock-work-an old woman spinning, dog barking, and wooden mermaids playing in artifical water; these all confirmed the idea with which the extravagant neatness cannot fail to impress one, that the whole thing is a mockery, and in no sense earnest. From this, we wandered away in a new quarter, to the tubs, and pans, and presses of the dairy. The woman in waiting gave a suspicious glance at my feet when I entered the cow-stable; and afterward when she favored me with a look into her home, all beset with high polished cupboards and china, my steps were each one of them regarded-though my boots had been cleaned two hours before-as if I had been treading in her churn, and not upon a floor of stout Norway plank. The press was adorned with brazen weights and bands shining like gold. The big mastiff who turned the churn was sleeping under the table, and the maid showed me over the low ditches in the fields, for the sun was getting near to the far away flat grounds in the west. With another stroll through the clean streets of the village, I returned to my little inn, where I sat under the braided limbs of the beech tree over the door. There was something in the quiet and cleanness that impressed me like a picture or a curious book. It did not seem as if healthy flesh and blood, with all its passions and cares, could make a part of such a way of living. It was like reading a Utopia, only putting household economy in place of the politeia of Sir Thomas More. I am sure that some of the dirty people along the Rhone and in the Vallais Canton of Switzerland, if suddenly translated to the grass slopes that sink into the water at Broek, would imagine it some new creation.

So I sat there musing before the inn, looking out over the canal, and the vast plain with its feeding flocks, and over the groups of cottages, and windmills, and far off delicate spires.

By and by a faint gush of a distant bugle note came up over the evening air. It was from the boat that was to carry me back to Amsterdam.

It came again, and stronger, and rolled tremulously over the meadows. The sheep feeding across the canal lifted their heads and listened. The blue-eyed girl of the inn came and leaned against the doorpost and listened too. The landlady put her sharp eyes out of the half opened window and looked down the meadows. The music was not common to the boaters of Broek. Presently came the pattering steps of the horse upon the footway, and the noise of the rush of the boat, and a new blast of the bugle. The sheep opposite lifted their heads and looked,and turned, and looked again, and ran away in a fright.

The blue-eyed girl was yet leaning in the door-way, and the old lady was looking out of the window when the boat slowly sailed by and left the inn out of sight.

I was standing by the side of the skipper, musing on what I had seen one does not get there, after all, a true idea of the Dutch country character, since the village is mostly peopled by retired citizens. This other, the true Ostade and Teniers light upon Dutch land, is seen farther north and east, and in glimpses as we floated along the canal in the evening twilight home. The women were seated at the low doors knitting, or some belated ones were squatting like frogs on the edge of the canal, scrubbing their coppers till they shone in the red light of sunset, brighter than the moon. Our skipper with his pipe sitting to his tiller, would pass a sober good eben' to every passer on the dyke, and to every old Dutchman smoking at his door; and every passer on the dyke, and every smoking Dutchman at his door would solemnly bow his good eben' back. More than this nothing was said.

One could hear the rustling of the reeds along the bank, as our boat pushed a light wave among them. Far in advance, a black tall figure-the boy was moving on his horse, but he did not break the silence by a word. The man in the bow was quiet, and we so still behind that I

could count every whiff of the skipper's pipe. The people were coming up through the low meadows from their work, and occasionally some old woman harnessed to a boat load of hay in a side canal. And soon-sooner than I thought -the spires of the city were black in the sky before us. In an hour, I was in the back room at the Oude Doelen, in bed. What on earth had become of Cameron?

Five days, and he had not come. I thought of the little Prussian vixen, but her father had a lynx's eye--I thought of the two pretty Russians; but their mamma sat between them-I thought of the Suedoise bride, but her husband was a Tartar. And so thinking, and my heart warming with pity toward all who have Tartars for husbands, I fell gently asleep.

WHEN we begin to exercise our senses upon works of Imitative Art, we are first impressed, as in Nature, with the forms and colors; but soon a deeper sense is asserted, and we discover the resem blances, the beauty of the parts, and, finally, the tone and oneness of the composition.

Let the scene represented be the murder of a son by his father, with all the bloody horrors that might attend on such a deed. Already the brain and bowels of the victim are dashed out by the murderous axe: the insane father, with the countenance of a fiend, stands meditating his completed work. The figures are correctly drawn, excellently colored; the attitudes are terrible, free and natural; the picture is complete in its parts, and has a sombre tone, with appropriate scenery. In fine, it is a perfect work, and renders back a true image of nature. One only defect it has, and that is fatal to it: the subject is unfit; it is hateful, horrible. We will not look at it, nor praise it, much less purchase or make a show of it. The painter has lost his labor, and injured his reputation. It is, therefore, evident that not the mere imitation of nature, but the imitation of what is sublime, beautiful or fanciful in nature is the object of the painter's skill. His subjects must amuse the fancy, satisfy the sense of beauty, arouse sublime emotions; or they fail to be artistic, and have no more intrinsic value than a ballad or narrative which should describe with a villainous accuracy a banquet of vultures or a scene of in

cestuous commerce.

To escape all confusion of ideas regarding the true objects of pictorial art, it

is necessary to make a distinction between the poetical and artistical view of nature; for it is certain, poets and painters see things with different eyes. The poetic imagination occupies itself with the motion and the change of things-it delights in movement and in revolution, the turn of events, the catastrophe, the deed-change is its passion, its forte. But in representative art, we see exactly the reverse; and the most perfect designs represent the fixed quality of things-as in the quiet Madonnas of Raphael, the Moses and the Night and Morning of Angelo, and, above all, the Antinous and Jove of Greek sculpture.

It would be idle to say that motion can be shown iu painting or in statuary; only such moments are representable as the eye may catch and remember; and such moments are times of rest-pauses or instants previous to motion: as when the orator has just lifted his arm, and holds it for an instant extended; when an eagle stoops in her flight, or soars quietly; when the courser gathers himself for a spring, or is holding himself extended in the leap; when the two wrestlers have seized each other, and are stilled in their striving by equality of strength;-only such points as these have been chosen by the best artists as truly representable; and if the painter, neglecting this principle, attempts to paint real motion in bodies, he produces a ridiculous stiffness, as if his figures had been struck by a thunderbolt, or petrified on a sudden in their motion. The effect of such figures is like that of those taken from lay figures, or jointed dolls, as is very commonly done, without a proper study of the life; for the designer

begins with putting the limbs of the doll, or manikin, into an attitude of motion, in which it could not remain an instant if alive without suffering pain; and when these are put upon canvas, they give an almost equal pain to the eye of the connoisseur.

This vice of the studio may be classed with that of the theatre. Every one may have observed that some painters give an air to their subjects which is merely theatrical; or such as as would be taken on by an actor whose genius is not of the first order. This kind attribute passionate actions to moral emotions, and by that error make heroes appear like naughty boys, and proud ladies like forward minxes. In such hands, King Lear is but a driveler, and Hamlet a metaphysical coxcomb; Cordelia looks pert, and Sir Thomas More quizzes the executioner. In this vice, the actor or the figure always anticipates his part, and is so ready and complete with his passions and surprises, we soon learn them by heart and set

them down at their true value.

The vice of the study and the theatre follows that of the parlor. Nothing is more commonly to be seen in portraits than a silly, impudent, or artificial stare, contracted, perhaps, by the perpetual study of silly, impudent, or artificial faces, or by a desire on the painter's part to give a fashionable air to his faces; a fault which never makes its appearance in design, without disgusting one-half the world, at least.

Another remarkable fault, and which must flow altogether from the painter's own disposition, is the choice of contemptible subjects. A painter of fine abilities will often expend the very marrow of his genius in the representation of mean and pitiful ideas. Here, for example, we have a piece entitled, "The Junk Bottle," in which two or three ragged hay-makers grin ominously at you from over a bottle of “ black strap," of which they are about to drink.

Let us imagine, for an instant, the different handlings of this subject by a Flemish painter of the old school, and a modern one of no school. The Flemish artist begins his piece under a belief that his object is to please the observer. He remembers that it is not a pleasure to be irreverently blinked at by three impudent fellows; or that if there is any satisfaction to be felt in such an accident, it is of a kind which even a coxcomb would take care to conceal.

The Flemish artist would make a scene of his picture, as a good actor makes a "scene" of the play, disconnecting it from the spectator, who should seem to look at it from without, as one looks out upon a prospect, affected by it, but not affecting it. For the instant we begin to influence a scene by our presence, and perceive this effect, or seem to perceive it, the scenical pleasure, which it is the business of true art to produce, is replaced by one of a very different kind. Every person who frequents the theatre, will have noticed the disagreeable effect of the stolen glances of the actors upon the audience. A frequent repetition of them produces a laugh or a hiss, as the humor prompts. But the effect of painting is feebler in its kind, and requires a much greater skill of management than the stage; and with this disadvantage, that the hiss or the laugh lights, not upon the figure, but on the head of the poor artist, who had not wit enough to hide his own vanity, but it must leak out in his designs.

Perhaps it is impossible for a painter, whose personal character will not permit him to observe the actions of men scenically, to give a true scenic effect to his pictures: which gives a hint of extending the words, "objective" and "subjective," from poets to artists, and of dividing art itself into two forms, the conscious and the unconscious; the affected and unaffected; the natural and the coxcombical.

Here, for example, are two artists; one, an objective, Garrick, or Canova, or Rubens; the other, a subjective,

or

-, or whom you please. The first has a singular power of forgetting himself so completely in his object, and of so separating his personal from his artistic relation to it, that nothing of the former appears in the work; the bust, or character, or picture, does not show us a lady as she smirked upon her particular friend, but a lady au fait, with an expression of pure courtesy, as good for all the world as for you or for me. It is not to be denied, that some of the finest pictures in the world have figures which look out upon the spectator; but the effect is always as though they looked, not at our particular selves, but at some thing, or person, beyond us or near us; and the look is accidental; it does not injure the general unity of the piece, but rather strengthens it, by an apparent deviation, as a rope dragging in the water

shows the motion of the boat. If the eyes of the figure are even directed upon our own, the effect may still be perfectly objective, provided no lurking vanity glances from them, of which we seem to be the cause; and if then it is objected that in nature the fact is so, and that the features of the sitter, or the life study, do send out unmistakable "subjective" looks; we appeal to our Flemish painter, who assures us that, "the business of art is not merely to copy nature, but to please by the representation." If the painter indulge a comical vein, he may possibly turn these "subjective" looks to some account, but they seem in general as barren for comic as for serious picture; even folly, to be made amusing, must have a touch of originality; it must be, in some measure, disengaged and independent.

To return now to our three hay-makers. The modern artist of no school, will think it effective to put a few ragged holes in their jackets, and to daub their shirts and faces with a little brown pink, or the like, to make them look dirty. Indeed, by the common mode of mixing colors, he will easily distribute a dirtiness over the figures, highly suitable to their quality. The Flemish artist of the old school, on the contrary, did not lay any stress upon dirt and squalor as a source of pleasure. Abiding always by his first conviction, that "the first duty of his art is pleasure," he has taken care to use pure and bright tints for his flesh and draperies, toning these to their proper softness, and avoiding dirt in his color as he would poison in his food; and to make sure of this, he seems to have believed that a mixture of green and brown, orange and brown, orange and green, or of white with these, or of black, with a mixture of the three primary tints, piled crudely on the canvas, always makes dirt. Perhaps, with Ostade, he has laid on his local tints in thin coats, one over the other, preserving a perfect transparency and blending, with the greatest purity and splendor; or, with Rembrandt, he has deposited them in clots of strong and pure color, laid side by side; so as proroduce an effect of all together upon the eye; but whatever his method, he did not attempt to represent those harsh and dirty colors, so ordinary and so disagreeable in nature.

The Three Hay-makers have nothing of particular interest for the general observer, so far as they are merely haymakers; but our modern artist of no school, did not consider this when he designed them. He remembered that he himself had been very happy a-making of hay, or seeing it made, on some invalid tour in the country; and that, for him, is "subjective" reason enough why he should represent them. The Fleming, on the contrary, finding it impossible to introduce these invalid associations, or the smell of fresh hay, or the taste of buttermilk, into his picture, took care, instead of these, to offer a satisfaction to the eye and mind, not only by the purity, harmony, and depth of his color, but by marks of vigor, health and pleasure in the figures. His hay-makers, though they be very ugly fellows, are wonders in their kind; full of natural happiness, stronglimbed, content; capable of all the rustic pleasures; they are merry over their pottle and viands, and take no heed of the blackening thunder-cloud that lowers on the left. They have borne their labor easily, and enjoy what is before them as though there was nothing else to be considered. All this is evident in a Teniers or a Mieris; as truly as the rapture of devotion, or of love, in a Raphael; or the deep force of character in a Poussin. The hay-makers of our modern, on the other hand, have a raw, sickly look; there is a dyspepsia streak under their eyes; or they have the faces and figures of broken drunkards, whose labors are a grief to them, and life itself a burden; or they have brassy, insolent visnomies, in which no pleasure ever shone, and which therefore give no pleasure. They are naturally, and truly, but not agreeably, and therefore not artistically depicted.

No less careful was the Fleming to preserve a proper balance of light and shadow in this picture. The designer of no school, trusting solely to form, and color, and either ignorant or neglectful of "the power of sombre shadow," chose a point of view for the spectator which puts the sun behind him, and consequently conceals the diversity of clear obscure. A glare of daylight is poured over the landscape, at once painful and monotonous; though in all respects natural. In the folds of the draperies, however, he