greets them; and thick throngs of people in their Sunday attire move to and fro beneath the Hall of the Procuration. Gay bands of musicians row along the Piazzetta and the Riva. A moist breeze sweeps over the water; the sunshine, now subdued and mellow, now dancing coquettishly, plays upon the water or on the houses. Francesco Guardi, the magician of Venice, is an animated, exquisite, always ingenious _improvisatore_, strong as few others are in the direct transference of his personal impression to canvas. Every stroke of his brush takes effect,--in each one of his pictures one sees the nervous exaltation of the hand; and that gives him a power of attraction which, compared with Canale, is like that of the clay model, in which the hand of the sculptor is still perceptible, compared with the cold, marble statue. Even Spain, which, except for the colossal figure of Velasquez, had so far produced no painters of landscape--even Spain, after the middle of the century, turned into this road. _Don Pedro Rodriguez de Miranda_ painted his broad, clear, and vigorously observed highland studies; _Don Mariano Ramon Sanchez_ his small views of towns and harbours. And, as in England, hand in hand with that came paintings of animals. In France, _François Canova_ was working, the painter of huge battle scenes and small pictures of animals; _Jean Louis de Marne_, who was famous for his cattle, market scenes, village pictures, and the like; and the great _Jean Baptiste Oudry_, who painted with breadth and freedom animals alive and dead, wild and tame, still-life of every kind. In Augsburg lived _Johann Elias Riedinger_, whose field of activity embraced the entire animal world, dogs and horses, stags and roes, wild boars, chamois, bears, lions, tigers, elephants, and the hippopotamus--which he depicted with fine observation, both in their proud solitude and at strife with men.