No. If we would be consistent with probability, we should read, or understand, that Claude cherished and preserved as criteria, and examples of reference, or occasional imitation, for his own especial use in composing and executing the pictures which he painted for his various patrons, certain studies from nature, of which one, painted from the Villa Madama, a favourite retirement of his holiness, was coveted by Clement IX.; and it is quite within probability, that the Beaumont "Study of Trees" may be another. Such a large and single picture as Lanzi seems uncritically to treat of, "enriched with views," in which a wonderful variety of trees were introduced, would not only be an heterogeneous assemblage of discordant parts, but it would moreover be impracticable to paint such a large work out of doors, and foolish to attempt it.

The present picture is of upright proportions, and of portable dimensions (namely, one foot eight inches, by one foot four inches and a half, being such a canvas as an artist, without too much encumbering himself, or his sumpter beast, might carry with him into the fields:) and although the Liber Veritatis contains no record or sketch of it; yet of a landscape lengthways, which he obviously copied from it, with certain traceable variations and additions, "for Mons. Rospigliosi at Rome," there is both record and sketch.

Almost every body knows that the Liber Veritatis was a record kept by the artist, in order to verify such pictures as he had parted with to his patrons, as being his genuine productions. Rospigliosi's picture is therein numbered 15; and we shall now proceed to certain points of comparison between the

two, with the view of showing that Rospigliosi's was the published picture, and Beaumont's the preparatory study from nature.

1st. A road, or footway, cuts across, or rather passes along, the fore-ground in the study, which road Claude found in nature, and copied on the spot; but after he had introduced his goats and figure, he reflected that the road was not quite compatible with the pastoral sentiment that should prevail where herds are feeding he therefore, to give a more sequestered air to the picture which he painted for Mons. Rospigliosi, suppressed the road.

2d. A robust figure, with his naked back toward the spectator, sits at the right-hand corner of the fore-ground of the original study, where goats are browsing, and others sporting, or reposing. In the second picture, Claude, or Philippo Lauri (who occasionally painted the figures in his landscapes) has put a pastoral reed, or flageolet, into the hands and mouth of this figure; faced him about; bound his brows with ivy; and placed him at the left-hand corner under his lofty tree-which circumstances, conferring on the work that poetic air of pastoral seclusion which the subject demanded, may be inferred to be the result of after thoughts, and show Sir George's Study to have been the first painted of the two; for the artist's mind would never have retroceded upon such points, from Rospigliosi's to the present picture.

3d. Rospigliosi's second edition is more homogeneous in its parts. The distance is here kept together: a river winds through a pastoral country; a distant bridge is there, with shepherds and their flock passing over it; and on the higher ground a castle. Sir George's looks as if, when the painter

had brought home the Study which he had made out of doors, there had been an opening between the trees in the middle part of the landscape--he having rejected, or omitted, what he found there in nature, on account, perhaps, of its deforming the composition, or of its interfering with something he wanted more; and as if he had afterward filled up that opening with a portion of a river, a cascatella, a ruined tower, or the little temple of Tivoli partially seen, and a lofty blue mountain beyond; which lofty mountain does not thoroughly accord, and, were the trees removed, would not harmoniously blend, with the bit of distance to the right-hand of the trees. The whole of this middle opening has a done-at-home appearance, as if it were taken from another sketch made at another place and time. And it is quite obvious, from the tenor of his works, that Claude often compiled his landscapes, by bringing together select bits from Tivoli, from the banks of the Tyber, and from other places, and assimilating them into the happiest accordance by his occult and peculiar power.

Now, in the second edition, the above-mentioned trees are brought more together; and the opening is closed up, so as only to permit light sky, leading on to the piping and ivy-crowned pastoral figure, to appear between them, and its sunny emanations to catch on the stems of the trees.

4th. There is, moreover, a pentimento, or perceptible after-correction, from the pencil of Claude, in the Beaumont Study. A white goat, of which the traces are obvious on near inspection, has lain originally under the middle opening (mentioned above) which the artist found interfered with the light on the cascatella, after he had introduced it; and he therefore covered up the goat with verdure.

These evidences taken together, and combined with the record of Rospigliosi's picture in the Liber Veritatis, appear to demonstrate, nearly, that our National Gallery is enriched with an out-of-door study from the pencil of Claude, painted immediately from Nature, which, if I mistake not, is unique in England.

LANDSCAPE, WITH NARCISSUS AND ECHO.

CLAUDE OF LORRAINE.

THE very charming scene which this delightful landscape-painter has embellished with a sleeping Naiad; the beautiful self-enamoured youth Narcissus; and the babbling nymph Echo-with perhaps her daughter Re-echo behind her--is perfectly Claudesque in the sequestered air of its nearer grounds; the delicate degraduations of its distance and sky; and the harmonious glow of its chiar-oscuro. In its composition the elements of grandeur and beauty are blended with peculiar felicity, much more so than in some other of his works; and those dulcet and melodious aerial tones for the exemplary production of which this artist is so justly famous, are placidly smiling through the whole performance.

The ruined and very picturesque castle, bathed in a warm gray tint, and sparkling with glittering perforations, which stands forth nobly on a rocky knoll near the centre of the picture, gives poetic dignity, while it adds great pictorial value, to the performance. Beyond it is one of those lovely lunette bays of the Mediterranean, which abound on the western coast of Italy, between Naples and Tuscany. A shepherd is wending homeward with his flock, through

the vale beneath the castle knoll; and the view is terminated by lofty and very distant mountains, seen beyond the horizontal line of the sea.

The time represented in Claude's picture is rather late in the afternoon, the sun having declined far westward, yet with so little apparent abatement of his meridional splendour, that the glow of a tropical climate still seems to pervade the landscape-an effect, however, which is partly the result of those broad umbrageous shadows of the near ground, by which the bright sky is contrasted.

The sylvan grandeur of the fore-ground, where the trees shoot up loftily; where an Italian stone pine with a crooked stem, impends over a tank, wellspring, or pool of still water, beyond which is a mountain ash, of light and tender foliage, which the slant rays of the sun has warmed into glowing harmony-are all much to be admired, as well as the aquatic plants and flowers which are growing around the water, for the taste with which they are pencilled ; their characteristic branching; and the just tones and varieties of their verdure.

In this, as in all the landscapes of Claude-generally speaking the finishing is accurately harmonious with regard to light, shade, and colour; and in such perfect unison with itself, that it charms us by whatsoever light we inspect it. Look at it by a strong light and at noon-day, and you shall see a considerable number of Nature's minor details of foliage, flowers, and wild forms in the branching and broken ground, which gradually become partially, and at length wholly, invisible, as the daylight fades; just as in the works of Nature herself, the multitude of objects by which the eye is caught, and