For instance: there have been few pictures more praised for their sublimity than the "Deluge" of Nicolas Poussin; of which, nevertheless, the sublimity, such as it is, consists wholly in the painting of everything grey or brown,--not the grey and brown of great painters, full of mysterious and unconfessed colors, dim blue, and shadowy purple, and veiled gold,--but the stony grey and dismal brown of the conventionalist. Madame de Genlis, whose general criticisms on painting are full of good sense--singularly so, considering the age in which she lived[85]--has the following passage on this picture:-- "'I remember to have seen the painting you mention; but I own I found nothing in it very beautiful.' "'You have seen it rain often enough?' "'Certainly.' "'Have you ever at such times observed the color of the clouds attentively?--how the dusky atmosphere obscures all objects, makes them, if distant, disappear, or be seen with difficulty? Had you paid a proper attention to these effects of rain, you would have been amazed by the exactitude with which they are painted by Poussin.'"[86] Sec. 24. Madame de Genlis is just in her appeal to nature, but had not herself looked carefully enough to make her appeal accurate. She had noticed one of the principal effects of rain, but not the other. It is true that the dusky atmosphere "obscures all objects," but it is also true that Nature, never intending the eye of man to be without delight, has provided a rich compensation for this shading of the tints with _darkness_, in their brightening by _moisture_. Every color, wet, is twice as brilliant as it is when dry; and when distances are obscured by mist, and bright colors vanish from the sky, and gleams of sunshine from the earth, the foreground assumes all its loveliest hues, the grass and foliage revive into their perfect green, and every sunburnt rock glows into an agate. The colors of mountain foregrounds can never be seen in perfection unless they _are_ wet; nor _can moisture be entirely expressed except by fulness of color_. So that Poussin, in search of a false sublimity, painting every object in his picture, vegetation and all, of one dull grey and brown, has actually rendered it impossible for an educated eye to conceive it as representing rain at all; it is a dry, volcanic darkness. It may be said that had he painted the effect of rain truly, the picture, composed of the objects he has introduced, would have become too pretty for his purpose. But his error, and the error of landscapists in general, is in seeking to express terror by false treatment, instead of going to Nature herself to ask her what she has appointed to be everlastingly terrible. The greatest genius would be shown by taking the scene in its plainest and most probable facts; not seeking to change pity into fear, by denying the beauty of the world that was passing away. But if it were determined to excite fear, and