exhibit their common ground of Invention, we will briefly examine a
picture by Ostade, and then compare it with one by Raffaelle, than
whom no two artists could well be imagined having less in common.

The interior of a Dutch cottage forms the scene of Ostade's work,
presenting something between a kitchen and a stable. Its principal
object is the carcass of a hog, newly washed and hung up to dry;
subordinate to which is a woman nursing an infant; the accessories,
various garments, pots, kettles, and other culinary utensils.

The bare enumeration of these coarse materials would naturally
predispose the mind of one, unacquainted with the Dutch school, to
expect any thing but pleasure; indifference, not to say disgust, would
seem to be the only possible impression from a picture composed of
such ingredients. And such, indeed, would be their effect under the
hand of any but a real Artist. Let us look into the picture and follow
Ostade's _mind_, as it leaves its impress on the several objects.
Observe how he spreads his principal light, from the suspended carcass
to the surrounding objects, moulding it, so to speak, into agreeable
shapes, here by extending it to a bit of drapery, there to an earthen
pot; then connecting it, by the flash from a brass kettle, with his
second light, the woman and child; and again turning the eye into
the dark recesses through a labyrinth of broken chairs, old baskets,
roosting fowls, and bits of straw, till a glimpse of sunshine, from
a half-open window, gleams on the eye, as it were, like an echo, and
sending it back to the principal object, which now seems to act on the
mind as the luminous source of all these diverging lights. But the
magical whole is not yet completed; the mystery of color has been
called in to the aid of light, and so subtly blends that we can hardly
separate them; at least, until their united effect has first been