The animal is triumphing--not over, but--in the
absence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual part of man. I could fancy
that Rubens had seen in a vision--
All the souls that damned be
Leap up at once in anarchy,
Clap their hands, and dance for glee!
That landscape[4] on the other side is only less magnificent than dear Sir
George Beaumont's, now in the National Gallery. It has the same charm.
Rubens does not take for his subjects grand or novel conformations of
objects; he has, you see, no precipices, no forests, no frowning castles,--
nothing that a poet would take at all times, and a painter take in these
times. No; he gets some little ponds, old tumble-down cottages, that
ruinous chateau, two or three peasants, a hay-rick, and other such humble
images, which looked at in and by themselves convey no pleasure and excite
no surprise; but he--and he Peter Paul Rubens alone--handles these every-
day ingredients of all common landscapes as they are handled in nature; he
throws them into a vast and magnificent whole, consisting of heaven and
earth and all things therein. He extracts the latent poetry out of these
common objects,--that poetry and harmony which every man of genius
perceives in the face of nature, and which many men of no genius are taught
to perceive and feel after examining such a picture as this.
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