There are some pictures of the Louvre Gallery in particular, with which my children are well acquainted, either by engravings or description, whose eclipse produced a very sad effect. "The Deluge" of Poussin is one of these. Perhaps it may have been my brother's striking description of this picture which made it pre-eminently an object of interest to us. You may remember that Mr. Milton, in his elegant and curious little volume on the Fine Arts, written at Paris just before the breaking up of Napoleon's collection, says in speaking of it--"Colouring was unquestionably Poussin's least excellence; yet in this collection there is one of his pictures--the Deluge--in which the effect produced by the mere colouring is most singular and powerful. The air is burdened and heavy with water; the earth, where it is not as yet overwhelmed, seems torn to pieces by its violence: the very light of heaven is absorbed and lost." I give you this passage, because I remember no picture described with equal brevity, yet brought so powerfully before the imagination of the reader. Can the place where one comes to look for this be favourable for hanging our illustrious countryman's representation of the same subject? It is doing him a most ungratifying honour; and were I Mr. Martin, or any other painter living, I would not consent to be exposed to the invidious comparisons which must inevitably ensue from such an injudicious arrangement. How exceedingly disagreeable, for instance, must it be for the artists--who, I believe, not unfrequently indulge themselves by hovering under the incognito of apparent indifference near their favourite works--to overhear such remarks as those to which I listened yesterday in that part of the gallery where Le Sueur's St. Brunos hang!--"Certainly, the bows on that lady's dress are of a delicate blue," said the critic; "and so is the drapery of Le Sueur, which, for my sins, I happen to know is hid just under it.... Would one wish a better contrast to what it hides, than that unmeaning smile--that cold, smooth, varnished skin,--those lifeless limbs, and the whole unspeakable tameness of this thing, called _portrait d'une dame_?" He spoke truly; yet was there but little point in what he said, for it might have referred with equal justice to many a pretty lady doomed to simper for ever in her gilded frame. On the whole, however, portraits are much less oppressively predominating than with us; and among them are many whose size, composition, and exquisite style of finishing redeem them altogether from the odium of being _de trop_ in the collection. I cannot but wish that this style of portrait-painting may find favour and imitation in England.