GRATIAN.—You laid down some such theory with regard to colour, as a means of telling the story, in your late paper on Rubens. I could not but agree with you there. I see now how you would extend the subject. We certainly do talk too much about “_the_ truth of nature,” not considering sufficiently how many truths there are. CURATE.—And what a great truth there is that is of our own making, greater than all the others; for, according to the showing of Aquilius, it comes of a divine gift, of the creative faculty, under a higher power; works the wonders in poetry, painting, music, and architecture, fittest for our admiration and our improvement. It is surprising that our landscape painters have not seen this walk within their reach; nearly all confine themselves to the imitative. GRATIAN.—But in that they have raised their pretensions. We had nothing great or poetical in the least degree in landscape, before Wilson; nay, to a late period, our landscape subjects were of the most limited range. They do now go at least to beautiful nature, and while we have such painters of landscape as Creswick and Stanfield, and Lee, and Danby, (but there you will say is an advance into a higher walk,) for my own part, I shall hesitate before I give my vote for your more perfect ideal. AQUILIUS.—The works of the painters you mention are beautiful, fascinatingly so, both from the character of their chosen scenery, and their agreeable manner of representing it. And I rejoice to see, that even these are advancing, are discarding something or other of the old recipes every year. We have at last some better English scenery. We must no longer refer to Gainsborough as _the_ painter of English landscape; we find it not, that is, true English scenery, in his pictures, nor in his “studies.” GRATIAN.—And yet he painted nature, and came upon the world that began to be sick of the attempts at your ideal compositions, the prince of whom, and who won the prize over Wilson, was Smith of Chichester. AQUILIUS.—Oh, do not dignify his presumptions with the name of ideal. GRATIAN.—I can’t give up Gainsborough, his sweet cottage scenery, with his groups of rustic figures. AQUILIUS.—Was there nothing better within the realms of England than beggary and poverty, rags and brambles,—her highest industry, the cart and the plough,—her wealth in stock, the pig, poultry, and donkey? GRATIAN.—But it was the taste of the day; even our aristocracy were painted not as ideal, but as real shepherds and shepherdesses. A few years ago, there was a picture fished out of some lumber room, where it ought to have been buried till it had rotted, of George the Third’s family group, as cottagers’ children, playing in the dirt before a mud hovel. It was by Gainsborough, and I believe was held at a high price.