The even colour, veiled splendour, the solemn twilight, that tone of devotion and cloistered meditation which Lodovico Carracci spread over his works, could arise only from the contemplation of various preceding styles, or their comparison with nature and the object of his choice. The ideal of his style is a harmony equally remote from affected brilliancy and vulgar resemblance of tints. Its element is gravity, and whenever this inspires not its imitation, it will be less serious than sullen, flat not even, heavy without vigour, and the despatching tool of mediocrity. If this be that dignified colour of Lombardy, recommended by Agostino Carracci, his own picture of the Communion of St. Jerome, and the Dead Christ among the Maries by Annibale, (which we have seen here,) excepted, its principle was not adopted by that third ruler of the Carracci school, nor any of its pupils. Annibale, from want of feelings, changed the mild evening ray of his Cousin to the sullen light of a cloudy day, and in the exultation of mechanic power swims on his work like oil: Guido was too gay and affected; Guercino too cutting and vulgar; Albano too airy and insubstantial for it. Under the hand and guided by the sensibility of Lodovico, it communicated itself even to the open silvery tone of Fresco. In the cloisters of St. Michele in Bosco, it equally moderates the deep-toned tints of the muscular labourers of the hermitage and of the ponderous demon who mocks their toil, the warlike splendour in the homage of Totila, the flash of the nocturnal conflagration, and the three insidious Nymphs in the garden scene, who even now, though nearly in a state of evanescence, seem moulded by the hand and tinged by the breath of Love; all are sainted by this solemn tone. Its triumph in Oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching, in a chapel of the Certosa, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil, and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; but Lodovico sometimes indulged in tones austere, pronounced, and hardy. Such is the Flagellation of Christ in the same church, of which the tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the open, wide-expanded sky, and less conveys, than dashes its terrors on the astonished sense.