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If we look through the more important of the landscapes in the Salon, we find that there is in the better works an amount of dignity which we have hardly obtained in landscape. In place of the patient reproduction of pre-Raphaelitism, we find in these works a style of treatment in which, while details are given in abundance, they nevertheless are held in strict subordination to the ruling feeling of the painter. It seems to me that the influence of great traditions of painting, which has such a disastrous effect upon the figure compositions of the French, is at the root of the breadth of conception which is to be found in their representations of natural scenery, and that, considering there is no trace to be found among French artists of the pre-Raphaelite love of nature's detail, this academic tradition is, on the whole, a good thing; it at all events prevents the artists from treating landscape in the fashion of the Scotch painters, and reducing it to a mere record of transient gleams of sun and clouds of mist.

If we do not get pictures which tell us how keenly the artist has felt the beauty of the scene, we certainly get some which tell us with what feeling he has regarded it; we have an illustrative rendering of Nature, if not a transcription of her essential beauty. Thus, for instance, in a picture, like that by C. Bernier, of "The Abandoned Avenue," we have a rendering of a scene which is both natural and beautiful, but in which neither nature nor beauty is the chief quality, nor is even the solitude of a deserted park the chief meaning of the painter. What the artist wishes to impress upon us is a sentiment peculiarly national-the feeling that even the most beautiful scenes of nature are desolate when they are abandoned by man-a sort of quaint, halfconceited, half-pathetic regret for the forest, in which the frou-frou of Worth's dresses is no longer heard. This feeling of the profound connection between humanity and nature is, I think, very imperfectly realized by my countrymen, and is partly the reason of much of our bad realistic art. When Mr. Millais painted "Chill October," why was it that every one delighted so much in the picture? Reeds and water and cloudy gray sky had all been done as well before. The secret was, that the artist had caught the feeling of lost summer and coming winter, had combined an intense impression with beautiful painting, and then given the spectator a key to his thought, so that its truth was immediately recognized. If you think that it was only because of the masterly painting of the picture, will you tell me why none of the subsequent landscapes by this master have attracted the same liking? The painting in "Scotch Firs" and "Winter Fuel" was even more wonderful than in "Chill October";

but who, except the penny press, cared for those pictures in the same way? Why is it that Mr. Vicat Cole paints year after year, in entrancing hues, the most beautiful scenes of woodland and river in our land, and yet never awakens in us a thought or a feeling beyond admiration for his skill? It is because he is (as far as can be seen in his works) utterly without any feeling for the scenes which he paints, and is only intent upon making a beautiful picture.

So I would hold that the chief merit of the French landscape-painting is its clear recognition of the human element, which is necessary before paintings of scenery can affect us powerfully. When their paintings are without this, they are distinctly inferior to the majority of English works, and in the element of color they are nearly always either deficient or exaggerated. Thanks to a few determined English artists who have borne their banner triumphantly through a perfect storm of ridicule, our painters in general have grasped the great fact that the grass is green and the sky blue; but our neighbors have yet to learn it. Water-color painting, which has done so much to spread right notions as to landscape, is still in France in a very immature state, and used more for slight sketches and tinted drawings than for completed pictures. Such work as that of Walker, Pinwell, Boyce, Alfred Hunt, and dozens of others, has nothing to come near it in the Société des Aquarellistes; there is hardly a picture which attempts even to give the delicacy of the medium employed. This is especially noticeable in the treatment of skies and water. It seems that this arises more from a mistaken notion as to the capabilities of the material, than actual incompetence on the part of the artists, for in the work which they attempt in water-colors the French are as delicately skillful as could be desired. But the works in this medium seem only to be designed for albums, and there is a bewildering spottiness of bright patches of color, and a general look of unnatural lightness and unsubstantiality, very unworthy of the name of serious art. If I wished to point out, to any admirer of the French coloring, its essential want of depth and feeling, I should take him to this water-color gallery, and then to Boissier's sweetmeat-shop on the Boulevard, and ask him to notice how exactly similar was the coloring of the comfits and the pictures.

We have had in the Salon large works of historical, allegorical, and sentimental interest treated from the outside point of view, and dependent for their interest on the arrangement of their figures, the gracefulness of their lines, and the accuracy of their treatment. We have had also tableaux de genre, of which we have found the great fault to be a certain staginess of treat

ment, which gave an unreal air to the most ordinary occurrences, except where the motive was one connected with labor and sorrow, both of which are in the main depicted simply and truly. We have had various styles of landscape, in which the greatest kind has been almost invariably actuated chiefly by the personal sentiment of the painter, and various styles of portraiture comprehending all but the very highest department of that art; and we have also had decorative pictures and minute realistic works of many kinds. So much for the Salon. In the Academy we have found that of great historical works we have hardly a trace; but that of the academic principle, which is so fully appreciated and carried out by the French, there are evident traces, though it is by no means such pure academicism as in France. We have glanced at the greatest merit of our portraiture, and tried to show that it is superior to any that the French possess, and noted the great drawback of the large landscapes both of our English and Scotch schools, and also of men like Millais and Brett, and we have rather hinted at than explained the true distinction between pre-Raphaelite and picturesque landscape. So we see that of what I defined in the beginning of this article as the greatest art we have found no specimens, and, as far as I am aware, there are only two painters in England who are capable of producing such work, and these are Rossetti and Burne Jones. Of the former it would be useless for me to speak, since it is years since the public has had any opportunity of seeing his pictures, but "The Annunciation" of the latter hangs in the Grosvenor Gallery; and I think, if any of my readers will take the trouble

to examine it quietly for themselves, they will understand why I place such work on a level by itself, far above the various styles which I have described. There is in it not only beauty and thought, though there is much of both, but there is that which is far beyond either, and can hardly be characterized in words-something which can not be explained if it is not felt. One might as well try to explain the reason why we feel glad on a bright spring morning. I desire especially to avoid all charge of finding imaginary beauties in pictures, or of using extravagant eulogy; but it is my sincere belief that this work is one of the highest class of spiritual art, and that, whatever its errors and inconsistencies may be, they are not to be dwelt upon for a moment in comparison with the great truth and deep insight which are here displayed. Thus I think that if a fair comparison be instituted between French and English art, we shall come to the conclusion that, though the former is considerably wider in its range, and far more daring and varied in its conceptions, yet we have in English pictures three things, and those of the highest importance, which are hardly to be found across the Channel. We have portraiture-painting which excels in depth of feeling and penetration any foreign rivalry; we have a school of landscapepainting which paints nature with absolute truth as far as its power extends; and we have figurepainting which can seize the inner meaning of a scene, and clothe its representation with an amount of poetry and beauty before which we can only bow our heads in admiration, and to which we can find no parallel even in the "pleasant land of France."

Cornhill Magazine.

TWILI

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WILIGHT found us lingering in a palacegarden which had been laid out in the last century for the convenience of contesse in patches and farthingales and lustrissimi in red cloaks and knee-breeches. But Nature, who after all has a tender thought for the barren stone city, had set the well-trimmed hedges shooting out their arms in wild entanglement, had straightened the distorted larches and covered the flowerbeds with rank weed-growth, from which sprang up snapdragons and larkspurs and marigolds, whose seeds had blown down from the soap-box gardens of the neighboring garrets.

Against the ivy-grown wall was an alcove lined with shells, mottled by the weather-stains

of years, with tremulous maiden-hair standing out from the crevices to form a background for the great water-god, with his beard dropping slime and his mantle embroidered with weeds, who stood with a wide-mouthed urn under his arm, from which hung a growth of green, born of the long-gathered dregs of the stream. In the basin below, the water lay dark and silent, with its rock-border filled with ferns that leaned over among the shadows of the bending fir-trees. Ivy-leaves and brown cones lay idly on the surface. Through the arching boughs above, the ray of an early star darted into the sluggish water and trembled at the feet of the old god.

On one side of the garden flowed the canal.

A broad marble stair led to the water's edge where the black gondole were moored. A white carved balustrade gleamed against the dark leafage with vines, heavy with white roses, drooping over it to meet the wash of the canal.

You may read of such gardens as these of Venice in the old Italian poets-gardens inhabited by lovely enchantresses who intoxicated the senses of the warriors they lured to their painted pavilions lost in groves of orange and oleander, and lulled their valor to sleep with the scents of magical flowers, the plashing of enchanted fountains, the tinkling of mysterious lutes. You may see sometimes, in the Italian theatres, some coarse picture on the curtain, of marble steps and balustrades, with oleanders massed above them, with walks stretching back in far perspective, and a cloud-land palace high up on a hill in the vaporous distance, while in the foreground sits a lady, in rich-toned broidered dress, listening to the love-words of some page or knight. There is something in the gaudy daub that will carry you away from the vulgar actuality of its representation into the ideal country where the poor scene-painter wandered in his dreams.

A wide gateway led to the court of the palace. On either side stood a dark, weather-beaten group in stone—a satyr bearing away a nymph in his arms-things by which some old noble, infected with the false classicism of his time, had no doubt set great store, but which Nature had charitably hidden under the drooping larchboughs.

The court was inclosed by arches with balconies behind them above the covered walk. Above the street entrance was a large gilded escutcheon-all arabesques and scrolls, tarnished and stained. Grated windows, overgrown with convolvulus-vines, looked on to the court. Busts of warriors, in bronze and marble, with wide ball-less eyes, frowned from their smoky pedestals. Over the winding stair was a gilded Madonna with a black face. A well, with Byzantine arches and twisted columns carved upon it, black in the hollows and gleaming white on the worn marble projections, stood in the middle of the court. Old wine-casks, dull blue, with rusty iron bands, lay under the arches. A man sat smoking his pipe under a bit of green vine in the corner. A woman was knitting near the stair.

young girls in light dresses, with dashes of color in them that lightened the gray arches and harmonized with the glittering balls, red and yellow and blue and silver, that hung from the oleanderboughs, reflecting the glow of the street-lamps and catching the rays of the early moon.

We came upon an archway by the side of a church-the entrance to a dismantled cloister. The moonlight lay white on the pavement, broken by the oblique shadows of the inner columns. A stone quadrangle, raised above the level of the walk, occupied the body of the cloister space, with two stone wells upon it, about which, all day long, patter the naked feet of the water-carriers, the jangling of whose copper vessels breaks the convent peace.

High on the wall were perched worn tombs of old divines and physicians and soldiers and senators. Angels bearing scrolls, grotesque monsters, grave-eyed human heads peered down from the stone masses rendered shapeless by the shadows. The windows of the cells looked out upon the quadrangle, but, instead of peering, cowled heads, the moonlight fell on cheerful flowergrowth. Along the ledge above the columns, crawled stealthy feline shapes, like the ghosts of the old brotherhood roused from their tombs by the night-spell.

About the windows, tawny, large-limbed shapes were faintly outlined in the moonlight— the green and red draperies of old Venice-cherubs and goddesses and giants-strong and muscular-drawn in the red-brown tones that the old lagoon painters loved, and thrown into bolder relief by the gray of the wall, where the plaster had dropped away, carrying with it the bare limbs of some frescoed virtue or the floating cloak of a pagan god.

We paused in the moonlight silence. There was no sound but an occasional quick tread along the outer walk, which died away under the arches. It is at times like this that Venice is peopled with phantoms.

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"Look there, where the moonlight falls on the flowers in that window! Do you not see a scaffolding rising against the arch?" I cried to my companions. And, standing with his hand following the outline of that robust nymph, do you not mark a tall, bearded figure in velvet cap and gown? Something bright, like steel, gleams under his long robe. As he works, he glances around, and now and again his hand leaves the brush and wanders to his side. Down below, on the cloister-walk, do you mark those slight figures in doublet and long hose, lurking behind the columns and gazing up at the painter as though they would blight him with one glance from their fierce black eyes? Do you know who he is, that On the balconies sat, among the leafy plants, phantom painter who plies his brush so busily in

Along the narrow streets, the people were sitting about the thresholds with their children playing near. Through the open doors we caught glimpses of chests of drawers with fanciful pottery adorning them and flaring sacred prints on the walls-all merged into the dusk that was broken only where the rays of the shrine-lamp darted from among the flowers.

the moonlight of the summer nights? It is one Pordenone, who lived in the golden age of Venice. He was all his life fired with a passion to rival Titian, the pride of the republic. He painted so closely after his great model, and so well wrought was his work, that the disciples of the great colorist feared for their master's fame and swore to annihilate this upstart. And so, when the monks of San Stefano ordered Pordenone to cover their cloister-wall with shapes of beauty, the poor painter was forced to work at his task with his sword by his side, for he knew not at what moment some fiery Venetian youth, whose colorgod was Titian, might not snatch his brush from his hand and strangle him there on the holy cloister-ground."

I can picture old Pordenone sitting up there on the scaffolding in the summer mornings, when the friars were pacing the length of the cloisters, conning their mass-books or telling their beads, stopping to give the painter a word of greeting, or to glance stealthily at the wondrous mythic shapes, pagan gods or goddesses in the disguise of Christian virtues, with which he is covering their hitherto undefiled walls. I wonder if then, as now, the pigeons circled about the wells, drinking at the hollows in the marble; if the bright dresses of the water-carriers flashed among the columns; if the country girls trudged with their baskets of roses and lavender through the barren stone passage; if the white-kerchiefed market-women bore their shrieking fowls head downward along the walk; if the tired peasants dragged their baskets of purple figs, with sweet red mouths, into the cloister-shade and begged leave of the friars to stand there and sell them? How fair and gracious the summer must have seemed to the painter who sat up there in the world of his creation!

Voices began to echo through the streets from the groups gathered about the doorways or high up in the windows under the tiles-the harsh voices of men drinking in the lighted wine-shops, the tender lullabies of watching mothers, the shrill young melody of girls' voices, hidden like nightingales in high leafy prisons, the passionate utterance of young men's hearts. There is a deep reverence for nature and the unseen in the nightsongs of the Venetian people. Light and gay they are, for they are born of the moonlight and the lagoon-foam, but, like the light and the foam, they are the blossoming of the heart-depths of the universe.

A sudden turning brought us into a broad street with shops and booths on both sides, closed and deserted, save for some sleepy vagabond lying at full length against a door, or a watchful carabiniere striding by, with his tall plume nodding at every step. The street wi

dened into a piazza that stretched away on one side under high, covered arches, under which stood market-stalls. A wide, sloping staircase, with low buildings on either side, led across a bridge.

The inner arches were thick with shadows, through which gleamed out, touched by the moonlight, a marble shape that bore the semblance of a kneeling human figure supporting a platform. It was the old Gobbo, the Hunchback of the Rialto, a poor broken slave who had knelt there, year after year, through the noisy noondays and the silent midnights, bearing upon his bowed shoulders the pedestal from which the laws and edicts of the old republic were proclaimed. Scrawled with pencil-marks-the calculations of some brown fisherwife-blackened with dust and charcoal, a mark for decayed vegetables from the surplus stock of youthful traders, he had dragged on a weary, miserable life that should have ended with the end of the republic. There was something pathetic in that submissive attitude of his, there in the mellow loneliness of the moonlight. He had outlived his day. Centuries of humiliation had bowed his back till he dared no longer walk erect among the scoffing market - people. He should have gone down into the past with all the old legends of the city, and have remained an honored, intangible memory.

Who knows but that Antonio's indebtedness to Shylock was proclaimed from the weary shoulders of the Gobbo? Or perhaps the merry maskers, of whom Lorenzo was one, laid a rude hand on his poor head as they passed, bidding him rise and come with them.

Back under the arches, at the opening of a narrow street, stands the dark, moldy pile the people call Shylock's house. And there is a window, set high in the wall, through which, says tradition, fair Jessica escaped. Tell us, old Gobbo, if thou didst see the sweet, bold page waiting up there for gay Lorenzo?—didst see her let fall the jewel-case?-didst hear the ring of the ducats on the pavement? Didst thou twist thy wry neck and prick up thy poor, servile ears to see the meeting of the lovers? Was thy poor heart wrung with longing and fierce despair at the sight of their happiness? Did Jessica give thee a kindly glance from her black eyes as she passed on in the midst of the mad train, with the torch-glare reddening the arches, frightening the drowsy bats, and glowing on thy pale, pitiful countenance? Didst thou watch the merry crew dash up the long stair till it was lost on the other side, and then sink down into the darkness and cry out in thine agony for the human Godgifts of love and joy and pain and tears?

Dost thou remember, old dreamer, how thy

human counterpart, Launcelot Gobbo, was wont to come sauntering by, and assail thee with his foolish wit, turning thy miseries to a jest and striking thee for thine ugliness? And the longbearded Jew, tottering home to find his ducats and his daughter gone-didst thou not writhe when he smote thee in his agonized rage?

Where the market-boats unload and pyramids of green cabbages rise high above the green water, stands the old justice-hall. When the moonlight streams over the great arched door by the side of the bridge, I can see Antonio enter in his black dress, supported by his friend Bassanio, with the Jew whetting his knife on his sleeve as he follows, hustled by the angry crowd of gondoliers and fishermen, eager, one and all, to throw the Jewish dog into the canal. He may thank his prophets that he is well protected by the guards of the senate. When the plash of an oar echoes through the stillness, I know that a gondola has drawn up at the water-gate of the palace. It left the mainland at dawn, and in it sit, half in tears, half mirthful, young Doctor Bellario and his beardless clerk Nerissa. How the crowd cheers and applauds! It is this wise young doctor who is to plead the poor merchant's cause. I linger with the crowd on the bridge, gazing eagerly up at the windows of the great hall. We are silent and breathless, for a clear sweet voice rings out on the summer breeze, speaking of mercy, to judge and Jew. The people outside catch something of the gentle speech and cry: "Bravo! bravissimo! il Signor Dottore!"

There is a hum of voices in the court-room above. The crowd streams down the stairs, calling and huzzaing, for the Jew is worsted and Antonio is free! Here he comes, the pale merchant. The people crowd around him and kiss his hands, and the old market-women snatch at the folds of his robe and press them to their lips as though he were one of their martyr-saints. And the people cry out for a sight of the good young doctor, but he and his clerk have slipped away into the gondola that bore them to Venice, for they are eager to reach Belmont before night.

We crossed the wide space of glittering marble which broke the rhythm of the canal, and passed piazze, surrounded by high, moldy houses, with arches and turreted chimneys thrown into relief by the moonlight. Here and there, a wide church-door, with gaudy paper flowers above it, yawned out from the shadows. As we neared St. Mark's, the footfalls grew more frequent. Bursts of laughter rang through the streets. Through open archways that had plants grouped about them, we looked into gardens where people sat about little tables, eating and drinking and smoking, in a blaze of gaslight among ev

ergreens and flowering trees hung with golden balls.

High up on the terraces, tables were spread among the vines and the pots of flowers. Hidden lamps cast mysterious lights about the stately figures of the men, the clear-cut features of the women, the curly heads of the children.

It was the bathing season in Venice. From the interior towns of the northern provinces the people had flocked to the city to pass their villeggiatura within its dazzling white walls. It was easy to distinguish them from the languid, graceful population of the lagoons. If they were of the upper classes, you would recognize a greater attention to fashion in their dress with less of native elegance and distinction—a certain briskness in speech and motion which jars on the eye and ear accustomed to the soft undulations of Venetian form and speech.

But it is in the middle class that the most fruitful field for comparison is found. You may know them, as they stroll about the streets, by their awkward air of unaccustomed idleness. The women are brave in gold rings and pins, and silks of green and blue and violet, made with all the splendor of adornment that the taste of the provincial dressmaker could devise. The men wear shining black hats and fine new broadcloth that is a deal too flimsy for their stalwart limbs, and indeed they look as though they were aware of the fact, and wished the ambition of their hard-toiling spouses had run into some other channel. Undoubtedly they are great prophets in their own country-own fields of vine and olive and yokes of snow-white oxen, or else spend their lives in dark shops, in some gray old town of Lombardy or Romagna, accumulating lire, with no greater dissipation in their thoughts than a cheap seat at the opera on festa nights or a chair near the music-stand on the market-place of a Sunday afternoon. They wore a look of sober concentration, as though enjoyment were a new thing to them, and the folding of their hands a crime to be confessed to the cathedral priest on their return home.

The women ape the Venetian graces-powdered their hair and draped the black veil about their sunburned faces-but it booted nothing. The taint of life-long activity and workfulness would not give place to the calm grace and inborn repose of the Venetian nature.

We entered the brilliant street of shops, which is as narrow and fantastic in its construction as an Eastern bazaar. We passed arched doorways, with reliefs of their patron saints over them, in which the medieval tradesmen were wont to stand in their sleek prosperity on summer evenings-churches with tombed philosophers over the door, frowning from among their books and

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