Wilson’s historical landscapes, the two _Niobes_, _Celadon and Amelia_, _Meleager and Atalanta_, do not, in our opinion, deserve the name; that is, they do not excite feelings corresponding with the scene and story represented. They neither display true taste nor fine imagination; but are affected and violent exaggerations of clumsy, common nature. They are all made up of the same mechanical materials, an overhanging rock, bare shattered trees, black rolling clouds, and forked lightning. The scene of _Celadon and Amelia_, though it may be proper for a thunder-storm, is not a place for lovers to walk in. The _Meleager and Atalanta_ is remarkable for nothing but a castle at a distance, very much ‘resembling a goose-pye.’ The figures in the two other pictures are not like the children of _Niobe_, punished by the Gods, but like a groupe of rustics, crouching from a hail-storm. In one of these, however, there is a fine break in the sky worthy of the subject. We agree with Sir J. Reynolds, that Wilson’s mind was not, like N. Poussin’s, sufficiently imbued with the knowledge of antiquity to transport the imagination two thousand years back, to give natural objects a sympathy with preternatural events, and to inform rocks, and trees, and mountains with the presence of a God.[13] The writer of the Preface to the Catalogue of the British Gallery, says—‘Few artists have excelled Wilson in the tint of air, perhaps the most difficult point of attainment for the landscape-painter: every object in his pictures keeps its place, because each is seen through its proper medium. _This excellence alone_ gives a charm to his pencil, and by judicious application may be turned to the advantage of the British artist.’—This praise is equivocal: if it be meant that ‘the tint of air’ is the only excellence of Wilson’s landscapes, the observation is not true. He had also great truth, harmony, and richness of local colouring: he had a fine feeling of the proportions and conduct of light and shade; and, in general, an eye for graceful form, as far as regards the bold and varying outlines of indefinite objects—as may be seen in his foregrounds, hills, etc.—where the mind is left to chuse according to an abstract principle, as it is filled or affected agreeably by certain combinations,—and is not tied down to an imitation of characteristic and articulate forms. In his figures, trees, cattle, buildings and in every thing which has a determinate and regular form, Wilson’s pencil was not only deficient in accuracy of outline, but even in perspective and actual relief. His trees, in particular, seem pasted on the canvas, like botanical specimens.