NATURALNESS OF HOMER.

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history of Madame de la Rochejacqueline, so famous in the sad story of La Vendée. Overwhelmed by grief, plundered of her property, and flying from cruel enemies, she nevertheless adds, that while following the litter of her wounded husband, her feet were pinched by tight shoes.

The descriptions which are natural in Homer, become picturesque in his successors. He indicates they delineate. He hastily touches a figure into the picture-they bestow skill and toil upon the background and accessories. He produces his effect by single strokes. The slender tongue of his wolves is the one scratch of the Master. They work out their design by composition and costume, light and shade. The following specimens, from two most dissimilar writers, will show the artistic quality of the poetical mind in its elements :

And much to be admired is the painting of the Countess of Winchelsea, in whose poetry Wordsworth found the only

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new images of outward nature, between Paradise Lost and The Seasons:

WATER-MILL.

Whilst now a paler hue the fox-glove takes,
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes,—
When odours, which declin'd repelling day,
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray;
When darken'd groves their softest shadows wear,
And falling waters we distinctly hear;

When through the gloom more venerable shows
Some ancient fabric, awful in repose ;-

When the loos'd horse now, as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
Whose stealing pace, and lengthen'd shade we fear,
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear.

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I think that Gilpin's definition of the Picturesque is sufficiently accurate; that it includes all objects which please from some quality capable of being illustrated in painting. The suggestion of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that "Picturesque is somewhat synonymous to the word taste," I am quite unable to understand; although his remark is obviously just, that Michael Angelo and Raffaelle have nothing of it; while Rubens and the Venetian painters exhibit it in every variety of shape and combination. That the Picturesque is distinct from the sublime or the beautiful, cannot be questioned. A certain roughness and irregularity are necessary to its existence. An old mill, with intricate wood-work, clinging mosses, weather-strains, and

The dark round of the dripping wheel;

the dim broken lights of a cathedral; the glimmering hollows and shattered branches of trees; rough-hewn park-pales,—each and all of these are features of the Picturesque. Salvator Rosa and Rubens may represent it in colours; Spenser and Collins in words. If classic literature be included, Virgil would stand at the head of the school. Taking, therefore, Picturesque to mean any object, or group, susceptible of representation by pencil or

pen, the following, added to the preceding specimens, will display

it under its most striking manifestations :-