64 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



Rubens has employed it, in a moft wonderful 

 manner, in giving expreffion to the face of his 

 Mary de Medicis, in which you diftinguilh, at 

 once, the anguifh and the joy of child-bearing. 

 He farther heightens the violence of the phyfica! 

 paflion, by the carelefs attitude into which the 

 Queen is thrown, in an eafy-chair, and by her 

 naked foot, which has (haken off the flipper; and, 

 on the other hand, conveys the fublimity of the 

 moral fentiment awakened in her, by the high def- 

 tiny of her infant, who is prefented to her by a 

 God, repofed in a cradle of bunches of grapes and 

 ears of corn, fymbols of the felicity of his reign. 



It is thus that the great Matters, not fatisfied 

 with oppofing mechanically groups of figures and 

 vacuity, fhades and lights, children and old men^ 

 feet and hands, purfue with unremitting care, 

 thofe contrats of our internal powers which ex- 

 prefs themfelves on '* the human face divine," in 

 touches ineffable, and which mufb conflitute the 

 eternal charm of their produdlions. The Works of 

 Le Sueur abound in thefe contrafts of fentiment, 

 and he places them in fuch perfeâ: harmony with, 

 thofe of the elementary nature, that the refult from 

 them is the fweetefl, and the moft profound me- 

 lancholy. But it has been much ealier for his pen- 

 cil to paint, than it is for my pen to defcribe, 

 them, 



I flwll- 



