This figure, which has much of the genuine stern Italian colour, resembles the Dead Christ, as he is called, in the library at Basle by Holbein, in attitude perhaps,--is inferior to it in truth, but certainly much superior in style: it has much of Carravaggio; the head in shade has a mysterious effect, but the fore-part of the arm with the hand wants the rigid truth of the Italian master whom he seems to have imitated. LE BRUN--THE DEATH OF CATO. The countenance of this figure is as unlike Cato, as the style of colour is to all other works of Le Brun: it is a common man with a beard, powerfully drawn, and painted in an austere Italian tone. NICHOLAS POUSSIN. From the extensive list exhibited, we shall select four to make a few characteristic observations--"The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus," formerly an altar-piece at St. Peter's in Rome; "The Philistines struck by the Plague;" "The Death of Saphira;" and "Winter, or the Deluge." The actual martyrdom of St. Erasmus is one of those subjects which ought not to be told to the eye--because it is equally loathsome and horrible; we can neither pity nor shudder; we are seized by qualms, and detest. Poussin and Pietro Testa are here more or less objects of aversion, in proportion to the greater or less energy they exerted. This is the only picture of Poussin in which he has attempted to rival his Italian competitors on a scale of equal magnitude in figures of the size of life; and here he was no longer in his sphere; his drawing has no longer its usual precision of form, it is loose and Cortonesque; his colour on this scale has neither the breadth of fresco, nor the glow, finish, or impasto of oil. In "The Plague of the Philistines," he has again laid too great a stress on objects of aversion;--instead of the effects of infection, he has personified the effluvia of putrefaction; he has indeed discriminated his story from all others of the same species, by the introduction of the mice, the temple of Dagon, the arch, and the fall and fragments of the Idol: and the variegated bustle of the colours is covered by that frowning tone, which ought to preside where "Jove hangs his planetary plague into the murky air."