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done from Shakspeare or Milton; they have served to call 

 forth liis energies and excite his enthusiasm, and to mature 

 his judgment ; and in the full power of his creative faculties, 

 he stands in many points superior to his great predecessor ; 

 his mind seems to have taken a higher and a wider range of 

 subject than Claude. His Garden of the Hesperidies, his 

 Pope's Villa, and the Building of Carthage, with many others, 

 will support me in this opinion. It has been said of Claude 

 and G. Poussin that they both looked into nature, and saw 

 her truly, but with very different feelings. Poussin loved 

 to contemplate the morning or evening twilight, while Claude 

 delighted in the full blaze of a glorious sun. Turner embraces 

 the whole of these, and whether we see him in the calm grey 

 of early dawn, or from the first approach to the full blaze of 

 the mid- day sun ; in the furious howling of his tempestuous 

 seas, or the gentle reflection of his pastoral streams, or his 

 liigldy poetical treatment of Ulysis and Polyphemus ; we must 

 admit that, while he sees nature through the medium of poetry, 

 he is equally true, great, and unrivalled. 



Stanfield, the late Sir A. Calcot, Linnell, Pyne, and many 

 others, are quite equal to the old masters, and in many par- 

 ticulars surpass them. Stanfield's picture of the Wreckers is 

 now near Liverpool, and will fully support me in my opinions. 

 If my hearers wish to pursue the enquiry, I refer them to the 

 well-known "Graduates' Book." 



We shall next proceed to the consideration of Teniers and 

 Wilkie or Mulready ; the former of whom possessed almost all 

 the requisites for a fine painter — exquisitely beautiful colour- 

 ing, chaste, and silvery in tone, with an effect admirably adap- 

 ted to his subject ; his figures are well drawn, and painted 

 with characteristic truth and fidelity to nature, and, when 

 separately examined, may be considered as distinct object of 

 study ; the composition of his groups are in perfect harmony 

 with the scene in which they are placed ; and it is only in the 

 story of his pictures that we feel a deficiency, and, however 

 beautiful they are in other respects, in this point lie seems to 



