the freshness, variety, and lightness of their foliage, as they gain in the general fulness of it, and the superior size of their leaves.

The Midsummer shoot is the first thing that gives relief to the eye, after the sameness of colour which immediately precedes it; in many trees, and in none more than the oak, the effect is singularly beautiful; the old foliage forms a dark back-ground, on which the new appears, relieved and detached in all its freshness and brilliancy: it is spring engrafted upon summer. This effect, however, is confined to the nearer objects; the great general change in all vegetation is produced by the first frosts of autumn: it is then that the more uniform green of summer, is succeeded by a variety of rich glowing tints, which so admirably accord with each other, and form so splendid a mass of colouring; so superior in depth and richness, to that of any other part of the year.

It has often struck me, that the whole system of the Venetian colouring, particularly that of Giorgione and Titian, was

formed upon the tints of autumn; whence their pictures have that golden hue, which gives them such a superiority over all others. Their trees, foregrounds, and every part of their landscapes, have more strongly than those of any other painters, the deep and rich browns of that season: the same general hue prevails in the draperies and even in the flesh of their figures*, which has neither the silver purity of Guido, nor the freshness of Rubens, but a glow perhaps more enchanting than either. Sir Joshua Reynolds has remarked, that the silver purity of Guido is more suited to beauty, than the glowing golden hue of Titian: it was natural for him to mention Guido,

* A strong proof of this is in the Ganymede of Titian in the Colonna palace, to which, by the order of the old Cardinal, Carlo Maratt put a new sky of the same tone as those in his own pictures; and I may say, that none but such a cold insipid artist could have borne to execute, what such gross unfeeling ignorance had commanded. Such a sky would have been a severe trial to the flesh of any warm picture, but it makes that of the Ganymede appear almost black; which certainly would not have been the case, if it had been painted by Rubens, or Correggio.

as being the painter who had most succeeded in beauty of form; but with less of his purity and evenness of tint, there is a freshness in that of Rubens, which would admirably accord with beauty, though there are but few instances in his works of such a union.

I have observed in a former part, that if any one of the qualities which Mr. Burke has so justly ascribed to beauty be more essential than the others, it is freshness; and it is that, which makes the most distinct line of separation between the beautiful and the picturesque in colouring. I should on that account, even if I were not supported by the authority of Sir Joshua Reynolds, be inclined to call the Venetian style of colouring, and that of Mola, of Domenico Feti, and others who have imitated it, the picturesque style, as being formed upon the deep and glowing tints of autumn, and not upon the fresh and delicate colours of spring; and although this Venetian colouring may not pon the whole be so congenial to the

sublime, as the severer styles of the Roman and Florentine schools, yet it is much more so, than the fresh and sensual tints of Rubens*, or the silvery tone of Guido; and in this it accords with the general character of the picturesque, which more readily mixes with the sublime than the beautiful does. Sometimes also, the grandest effects have arisen from the broken tints of the Venetian painters; effects that are displayed in their highest perfection in the back grounds and skies of Titian, and which, in those parts of the picture, could not be produced by the unbroken, and distinct colours of the Roman school. Claude always mixed a much larger proportion of cool, fresh colours in his landscapes, than the Venetians did in theirs. In some of his early pictures, those cool tints prevail too much, and give

* I am here speaking solely of the tints of Rubens, especially those of his women and children, without any reference to the forms or the dispositions of his figures, or the richness of his dresses and decorations; on account of which Sir Joshua Reynolds has classed him with the Venetians, as belonging to the ornamental, and, in that respect, the picturesque style:

them a cold sickly appearance; his best works, however, are entirely, free from that, as well as the opposite defect, and his authority for the due proportion of cool and warm colours which beauty requires, is as high as any man's can be; for no one studied beauty more diligently, more successfully, or for a greater number of years.

In many of Rubens's works we distinguish the freshness of the early season of the year; and the whole of that well known picture of the Duke of Rutland's, has the springlike hue of those flowers, which with so gay and spring-like a profusion, yet still with a painter's judgment, he has thrown about it. But when Titian introduces flowers, they are made to accord with his general principle; they are not the children of spring; they seem to belong to a later season: for he spreads over them an autumnal hue and atmosphere, which would make even Rubens's flowers, much more those of a mere flower painter, look rawin comparison.