The same reasons that have been urged why a mixture of the Venetian style
cannot improve the great style will hold good in regard to the Flemish
and Dutch schools. Indeed, the Flemish school, of which Rubens is the
head, was formed upon that of the Venetian; like them, he took his
figures too much from the people before him. But it must be allowed in
favour of the Venetians that he was more gross than they, and carried all
their mistaken methods to a far greater excess. In the Venetian school
itself, where they all err from the same cause, there is a difference in
the effect. The difference between Paulo and Bassano seems to be only
that one introduced Venetian gentlemen into his pictures, and the other
the boors of the district of Bassano, and called them patriarchs and
prophets.

The painters of the Dutch school have still more locality. With them, a
history piece is properly a portrait of themselves; whether they describe
the inside or outside of their houses, we have their own people engaged
in their own peculiar occupations, working or drinking, playing or
fighting. The circumstances that enter into a picture of this kind are
so far from giving a general view of human life that they exhibit all the
minute particularities of a nation differing in several respects from the
rest of mankind. Yet, let them have their share of more humble praise.
The painters of this school are excellent in their own way; they are only
ridiculous when they attempt general history on their own narrow
principles, and debase great events by the meanness of their characters.

Some inferior dexterity, some extraordinary mechanical power, is
apparently that from which they seek distinction. Thus, we see, that
school alone has the custom of representing candle-light, not as it
really appears to us by night, but red, as it would illuminate objects to
a spectator by day. Such tricks, however pardonable in the little style,