where petty effects are the sole end, are inexcusable in the greater,
where the attention should never be drawn aside by trifles, but should be
entirely occupied by the subject itself.

The same local principles which characterise the Dutch school extend even
to their landscape painters; and Rubens himself, who has painted many
landscapes, has sometimes transgressed in this particular. Their pieces
in this way are, I think, always a representation of an individual spot,
and each in its kind a very faithful but very confined portrait.

Claude Lorraine, on the contrary, was convinced that taking nature as he
found it seldom produced beauty. His pictures are a composition of the
various draughts which he has previously made from various beautiful
scenes and prospects. However, Rubens in some measure has made amends
for the deficiency with which he is charged; he has contrived to raise
and animate his otherwise uninteresting views, by introducing a rainbow,
storm, or some particular accidental effect of light. That the practice
of Claude Lorraine, in respect to his choice, is to be adopted by
landscape painters, in opposition to that of the Flemish and Dutch
schools, there can be no doubt, as its truth is founded upon the same
principle as that by which the historical painter acquires perfect form.
But whether landscape painting has a right to aspire so far as to reject
what the painters call accidents of nature is not easy to determine. It
is certain Claude Lorraine seldom, if ever, availed himself of those
accidents; either he thought that such peculiarities were contrary to
that style of general nature which he professed, or that it would catch
the attention too strongly, and destroy that quietness and repose which
he thought necessary to that kind of painting.

A portrait painter likewise, when he attempts history, unless he is upon