325 



painters of the Dutch scliool : I shall iio^v 

 speak more fully of that school, in which, 

 after the example of Sir Joshua Reynolds,! 

 mean to include those of the Flemish masters 

 Avho painted similarsubjects. In the pictures 

 of the Dutch masters few instances of archi- 

 tectural beauty or grandeur occur, yet it 

 is certain that many of the buildings which 

 those masters have represented, though 

 void of those two qualities, attract our at- 

 tention in a high degree by means of others 

 which I have assigned to the picturesque. 

 It may, perhaps, be thought, that the plea- 

 sure arises solely from the exact imitation 

 of familiar objects, and that we again ti*ans- 

 fer to the objects themselves, the pleasure 

 acquired from that imitation : this is a 

 point on which some further discussion will 

 by no means be useless in the present in- 

 quiry ; and I am the more inclined to en- 

 ter upon it, as Mr. Burke has but slightly 

 touched upon it in his Essay on the Sub- 

 lime and Beautiful. 



He there proposes a rule, which, he ob- 

 serves, " may inform us with a good degree 

 Y 2 



