I have now only to mention the charming ‘Cruche Cassée’ of Greuze, which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the colour (a thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and colour; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very fine picture by Bon Bollongue, ‘Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,’ deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigour and richness of colour. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better colour, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects. Every one of Lesueur’s church-pictures are worth examining and admiring; they are full of ‘unction’ and pious mystical grace. ‘Saint Scholastica’ is divine; and the ‘Taking down from the Cross’ as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the ‘Jardinière’ is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the ‘Saint Elizabeth’ is a bad picture,--a bad composition, badly drawn, badly coloured, in a bad imitation of Titian,--a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when Raphael painted this picture, two years before his death, the spirit of painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; _it was time that he should die_!! There,--the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is no time to speak of Lesueur’s ‘Crucifixion,’ which is odiously coloured, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most difficult to translate into words;--one lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colours are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which, for the present, adieu.--Your faithful M. A. T. _To_ MR. ROBERT MACGILP, _Newman Street, London_. THE PAINTER’S BARGAIN Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and, as all the world knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody came to sit to him.