The poets, of all ages and all languages, have dwelt with particular delight upon the morning scenery, and the epithets of the dappled, the rosy fingered, the saffron, and the blushing morn, have been not less often quoted, than they have been imitated and read; and to these verbal descriptions have followed those of the pencil; and in these graphic truths no man has succeeded in any degree of comparison with Claude Lorraine. The reason appears to be pretty obvious; he studied nature with so much enthusiasm and perseverance, that he may be almost said to have exhausted her varieties; and we hardly behold a composition from his hand in which the rising or the setting sun does not irradiate or warm his scenes; but the sober impressions of the dawn, those chaste and reserved tints that particularly express the break of day, just awakening from repose; when the curtain of the night seems to be insensibly withdrawn, and the landscape appears to open by degrees, when the colours of the sky are yet doubtful, and the landscape imperfect to the view; in short, when darkness is not entirely fled, nor light distinctly seen; this period of the day I do not recollect to have seen expressed by the fidelity of his magical pencil. When coolness sits upon the mountains, and freshness delights the plains, when the dews hang trembling upon every leaf, and the insects flutter on every thorn; when the groves begin to resound with the murmurs of the dove, and the vallies to echo with the twitterings from the spray; how delightful is it to see Arachne weave her web upon every bush and the gossamer uplifted by the breeze! how extatic is the twilight hour, which, for a time, hangs balanced between the dispersion of darkness, and the dapplings of the east; and which gives a solemn pleasure to every thing around! When these images of nature arrest our sight, and their charms find a passage to the heart, how pleasing at such a time are the feelings of anticipation to those who adore in his works, the wonders of the Creator!