‘Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare, Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air, Chuse a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it Catch, ere the change, the Cynthia of a minute!’ But the days of Watteau are over, and the plodding gravity of the Dutch has succeeded to the natural levity of French art. It is no wonder: for both proceed from a want of real concentration and force of intellect.[23] There is another picture in this collection which we would recommend to the attention of all _whom it may concern_, as a most instructive lesson of the vanity of human pretensions, and the capriciousness of national taste. It is the historical picture of the return of Marcus Sextus, by Guerin, one of the most admired painters of the modern French school. This picture combines all the vices of that school in their most confirmed and aggravated state, and yet it drew, at the time when it was first exhibited in Paris, crowds of admirers, whose raptures were excited exactly in proportion as it flattered their habitual prejudices, and outraged every principle of common sense. It consists of three figures, that of the husband standing in front of the bed, the wife who lies dead upon it being behind him, and the daughter kneeling at his feet. Now all these figures seem as if they had been cut out of pasteboard, smeared over with putty to represent the shadows, and then stuck flat against the canvass to make a picture. This is not truth, nor invention, nor art, nor nature: but it is the French style of painting. Their pictures are sections of statues, or architectural elevations of the human figure. They have the effect neither of painting nor sculpture; for painting has colour, and the appearance of substance, sculpture has real substance without colour; but these have neither colour, substance, nor the appearance of it, but consist of mere lines. Whatever they may do, we cannot think this the highest style of history: because proceeding on arithmetical principles only, it wants two out of three of the physical requisites of the art of painting. The picture of Guerin is painted in strong contrast of light and shade, and ought to have proportionable prominence and relief. But from the habit of attending only to lines and detached parts, that is, of never combining the lesser masses into larger ones, or of contemplating the general appearance of nature, the whole effect is frittered away, and neither the prominent parts stand out, nor do the receding ones fall back. The same flat, imbecile, and dingy effect is produced, as by smearing white streaks upon a black ground, without knowledge or design, or reference to any actual object in nature. The drawing in this picture is equally characteristic of the general French style, and equally repulsive. It is not easy to explain the elaborate absurdity of the process: but it is in reality this. The painter has taken the figure of an antique statue for