most beautiful and sublime objects in Nature,-the θηνα πολυφλος βοιο θαλασσης—the beautiful piece by moon-light, the sublimity of Jupiter or Neptune, to be the most poetical painter in the world? especially of the god whose statue has given immortality to the name of PHIDIAS? I need not inform your Lordship, that the Jupiter of HOMER was the original of the Jupiter of PHIDIAS.

What are all the gods of HOMER,* in the description of whom he has so wonderfully excelled, from the Supreme Deity to the Lord of the Ocean, and to the inferior deities of the sea or skies? what are these but personifications of some of the elements or appearances of nature? From Pluto, starting at the light, and crying out in his gloomy' dominions, to Neptune in his car, wheeling so rapidly, that the axle is dry, from the struggling dusky dawn of morning to the

Ροδοδάκτυλος πως,

The first light touching, as it were, the extreme fingers of Aurora. But we may have more to say of this hereafter. To follow the argument.

* The Arms, &c. will be considered, when we speak of the spear of Achilles.

+ If in this animated picture the introduction of the car be adduced as a work of art, I ask which is more poetical, Neptune, the Tritons, the sounding Conch, &c. or the car?

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Secondly, I would observe "of your richest as"semblage of works of art," as more poetical than the spots where they are, this may be true. But let us leave these " spots," as they are called. Let us leave Greece, or even the wild Sierras of Spain, and pass to America. Mark the vast Mississippi or Missouri, pouring their ocean-like waters, from interior sources, through regions "dark with shades "of eternal forests!" Hear the astounding fall and torrent-roar of the stupendous Niagara! Call up your PHIDIAS, let him form a god there! Call him who placed Memnon's Head in the desert, and left his name unknown for ever! Call up the builders of those temples and columns, the description of which gives your pictures such interest; will their works add to the magnificence of Nature, or make it more poetical, where the character of the scenery is already on the highest scale of magnificence ? "Manifestations of mind!" What are the manifestations of the human mind in St. Peter's, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, in the Venus, to the manifestations of the power and the majesty of the Godhead in all his works?

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Thirdly, The "ruins," you say, are as poetical in Piccadilly, as they are in the Parthenon. Its "rocks are less so without them." Of that I have no doubt; but the rock is not the sublimest of rocks, though the ruins are the sublimest remains of the works of art; and this is scarcely, as I have

E

said, a fair way of stating the comparison: add, that the ruins themselves are more poetical from associations, than from their intrinsic sublimity; they indeed stand "alone in the world," as ROGERS, speaking of the "Torso," has finely said. Besides, are not these ruins, independent of their being the highest specimens of human art, connected with a thousand associations, and all connected with the feelings of Nature? I must have the most sublime and beautiful of objects to meet them in the visible creation; and if these will not do, (but I think the sun and the seas quite sufficient,) I might rise, as I have remarked,

"From NATURE up to NATURE'S GOD!"

to the far more sublime, and therefore more poetical, ideas of ALMIGHTY power, and the IMMENSITY OF HIS WORKS, who "walketh upon the wings "of the wind."

"THESE ARE THY GLORIOUS Works, Parent of Good, "ALMIGHTY, THINE THIS UNIVERSAL FRAME,

"THUS WONDROUS FAIR; THYSELF HOW WONDROUS THEN! "UNSPEAKABLe, who sitst above these heav'nS

"TO US INVISIBLE, OR DIMLY SEEN

"IN THESE THY LOWEST WORKS; YET THESE DECLARE "THY GOODNESS BEYOND THOUGHT, AND POWER DIVINE."

MILTON.

VENICE, &c.

I Have followed you with delight, my Lord, over the course you have taken since we left the pigsties; but I have to offer some reflections that prevent my coming to your conclusions.

We are now at the gay and glittering Venice.

"And the CHILDE stood upon the BRIDGE OF SIGHS;"

Lord BYRON asks, "Does its poetical beauty de

pend upon the sea and canals ?"-Answer. Take the sea away, let it be of what colour it may, and even Venice would be less poetical. But why canals? These are dug by labour. Take away the sea, and will not Venice, in its aspect, be less poetical? "Is it the canal which makes it "poetical?" Certainly not. For I can conceive

nothing in the visible world, notwithstanding its water, so unpoetical as an artificial canal; to add to its interest, creeping, in a straight line, between a row of houses, with a palace on one side, and a prison on the other. The CANAL, or the Bridge

of Sighs! Oh! the Bridge of Sighs against all the world. The very name is poetical, and that of canal is quite the contrary. A bridge alone is beautiful and picturesque, and so far poetical; but the clearness of the water, the moving objects, the verdure, or trees, or, if you plea e, the boats near it, and, perhaps, a solitary fisherman, make it more poetical; especially if, like London Bridge, it were an appendage to a great commercial city, and if the flags and ships from all parts of the globe entered the moral associations connected with it.

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I never saw Venice but in a "picture," though assure you I have seen the sea.

But the "Canal Grande" gives me only the idea of that least poetical of American rivers, called by the romantic name of the "Big Muddy."

At Venice, your Lordship is apparently at home; and I have never seen that singular and beautiful city, except as it appears in the paintings of CANALETTI. There, I think, nothing ever appeared so unpicturesque and unpoetical. How little do these paintings resemble in beauty the works of CLAUDE, where the admixture of buildings, trees, cattle, &c. is so poetical! It must also be remembered, in the peculiar situation of this unique city, every thing appears on the side of ART, and scarce any thing on the side of NATURE; one is exalted, and the other depressed. The sea, instead of rolling and rocking in splendour, bccon:cs a great ditch,