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the colours remain nearly in their original 

 purity. The /owns of the buildings in that 

 picture, though greatly to be admired for 

 a mixture of beauty and grandeur, are not 

 what I am now speaking of, but the effect 

 of their smoothness, and of the tenderness 

 of their hue ; and this soft "tender hue js par- 

 ticularly apparent in the more distant build- 

 ing, to which the cool morning vapour, so 

 wonderfully expressed by the painter, adds, 

 a still greater softness. I could wish that 

 any person who well recollects, or can again 

 examine the picture, would reflect on the 

 peculiar beauty (in its strictest sense) which 

 arises from the even surface, and silver pu- 

 rity of tint in that furthest building, from 

 the soft haze of the atmosphere, and the 

 aerial perspective produced by the union of 

 these circumstances, which, without any 

 false indistinctness, or uncertainty of out- 

 line, make the architecture retire from the 

 eye and melt into the distance. When this 

 union, and the character it gives to the pic- 

 ture, have made their full impression, let 

 him imagine one alteration to take place ; 



VOL. IT. It 



