This is not the only instance in which Poussin has mistaken erudition and detail of circumstances for evidence. The Exposition of Infant Moses on the Nile, is a picture as much celebrated as the former: a woman shoves a child placed in a basket from the shore. A man mournfully pensive walks off followed by a boy who turns towards the woman and connects the groups; a girl in the back-ground points to a distance, where we discover the Egyptian princess, and thus anticipate the fate of the child. The statue of a river god recumbent on the sphinx, a town with lofty temples, pyramids and obelisks, tell Memphis and the Nile; and smoking brick-kilns still nearer allude to the servitude and toil of Israel in Egypt: not one circumstance is omitted that could contribute to explain the meaning of the whole; but the repulsive subject completely baffled the painter's endeavour to show the _real_ motive of the action. We cannot penetrate the _cause_ that forces these people to expose the child on the river, and hence our sympathy and participation languish, we turn from a subject that gives us danger without fear, to admire the expression of the parts, the classic elegance, the harmony of colours, the mastery of execution. * * * * * The importance of some secondary points of invention, of scenery, back-ground, drapery, ornament, is frequently such, that, independent of the want of more essential parts, if possessed in a very eminent degree, they have singly raised from insignificance to esteem, names that had few other rights to consideration; and neglected, in spite of superior comprehension, in the choice or conception of a subject, in defiance of style and perhaps of colour, of expression, and sometimes composition, often have left little but apathy to the contemplation of works produced by men of superior grasp and essential excellence. Fewer would admire Poussin were he deprived of his scenery, though I shall not assert with Mengs, that in his works the subject is more frequently the appendix than the principle of the back-ground; what right could the greater part of Andrea del Sarto's historic compositions claim to our attention, if deprived of the parallelism, the repose and space in which his figures are arranged, or the ample draperies that invest them, and hide with solemn simplicity their vulgarity of character and limbs: it often requires no inconsiderable degree of mental power and technic discrimination to separate the sublimity of Michael Agnolo, and the pathos of Raffaelle from the total neglect or the incongruities of scenery and back-ground, which frequently involve or clog their conceptions, to add by fancy the place on which their figures ought to stand, the horizon that ought to elevate or surround them, and the masses of light and shade indolently neglected or sacrificed to higher principles. How deeply the importance of scenery and situation, with