to pace, trot, or gallop, but never in the sun; for if the English are foolish about habit of prancing or rearing. The animals of Potter, Berghem, Vander Velde, or Vander Does resemble each other; but Cuyp treats his animals differently, painting them from that point where there are the fewest broken lines, and which displays their best develop ment. Cuyp's marines, like his landscapes, bear the stamp of truthfulness; and of one, "The Canal at Dort," M. Waagen writes: "It would be impossible to describe the pervading transparency of the morning sunlight, or the delicacy of the aerial perspective in the gradation of a succession of vessels lying one behind another. " our Claude, it is because in his marines and landscapes he has painted with a ray of that luminary. For watery England it was a consolation to see sunlight, if only in a picture; and it was M. Ralp, in a note accompanying the collection of engravings published by J. Boydell in 1769, who first gave Cuyp the name of the Dutch Claude- a name well deserved, for these two masters, so different, are both of them true. The difference between the countries they lived in makes the difference in their genius. Claude had at the service of his brush a nature much more rich in inspiration for an artist in love with light. In Holland, on the contrary, the sky has its rare and fleeting days of splendor; it fights almost the entire year, as did the ancient Ormuzd against the clouds; and yet in Cuyp's works we find no traces of this contest between day and night which evidently so strongly affected the genius of Rembrandt." There are eight engravings known to have been done by Cuyp, of which good copies have been made by Bagelaar, and the National Library of France owns six of these. Cuyp was no imitator of other artists. He painted Nature as he saw her, and as she exists in Holland, never seeking to arrange a landscape so as to make it picturesque, but reproducing with fidelity the country near Dort as it lay spread before him. It is true he hated sombre skies and dark shadows, and we always see his Holland in her most attractive garb. So strong was his predilection for the cheerful in nature, that even when painting a winter landscape, with streams covered with ice, snow whitening the roofs of the cottages, and sharply defining the bare tree branches, he makes the fog break away scatteringly at the horizon, so that the cold but transparent rays of the winter's sun may give some gleams of brightness. This is seen in his picture of Fishing under the Ice," owned by the Duke of Bedford, and engraved by Fittler, before which M. Blanc tells us he remained gazing for an hour, and adds: Many times has Cuyp painted fishermen breaking the ice to cast their lines, sledgery possible gradation, from the utmost ers, and skaters, but he has never painted that sad gray winter sky which hangs over the earth as a marble cover over a tomb. A singular artist, and almost alone in this truth, that he knew the art of painting winters without coldness, and moonlights without melancholy." His pictures are very rarely offered for sale, and on such rare occasions are eagerly contended for. Critics vary much in their estimate of his genius. Blanc, as we have seen, has nothing but praise. Kugler writes: "Of Cuyp's works their principal charm lies in the beauty and truthfulness of their peculiar lighting. No other painter, with the exception of Claude, has so well understood how to represent the cool freshness of morning, the bright but misty light of a hot noon, or the warm glow of a clear sunset, in ev force in the foreground to the tenderest tone of the distance...... But, on the other hand, his animals, and more especially his cattle, have a certain uniformity; their heads are somewhat narrow; while his execution, generally speaking, does not extend to any nicety of detail...... Cuyp Lebrun tells us that the English were the varies; the pictures of his earlier days first to estimate Cuyp at his proper value, have a certain heaviness of tone; the fleshfor a long time the French failed to esteem tints are of a hard red; the aerial perspechis works, and that fully nine-tenths of his tive deficient; and his execution, though works are owned in England. Blanc in- careful and fused, is hard in outline. sists it is because of the sunlight in them Later the gradation becomes more true, that the English admire them. "It is not the coloring clearer, especially the warm surprising that enthusiasm should be ex-flesh-tints, and the solid treatment always cited by him in a people who so love the more broad and free." across the undulating field, the blinding drift, like a thing of life, speeds in its wild caprice, now swirling in fantastic eddies around some isolated stack, DOWN BY half hidden in its chill embrace, now Who has not watched the strange antics Happy are we that its promises are not ful- 66 near by receives the continual supply, and gives THE BROOK-SIDE Such days in March are too perfect to endure, and at night the sky is overcast and dark. Then follows a long warm rain that unlocks the ice in all the streams. The whiteness of the hills and meadows melts into broad contracting strips and patches. One by one, as mere specks upon the landscape, these vanish in turn, until the last vestige of winter is washed from the face of the earth to swell the tide of the rushing stream. Even now, from the distant valley, we hear a continuous muffled roar, as the mighty freshet, impelled by an irresistible force, ploughs its tortuous channel through the lowlands and ravines. The quiet town is filled with an unusual commotion. Excited groups of towns-people crowd the village store, and eager voices tell of the havoc wrought by the fearful flood. The tepid rain has penetrated deep into the yielding ground, and with the winter's frost now coming to the surface, the roads are well-nigh impassable with their plethora of mud. After warm winds and sunny days, the ground once more packs firm beneath the tread. This consummation marks the close of idle days. The junk pile in the barn is invaded, and the rusty plough abstracted from the midst of rakes and scythes and other farm im plements. The old white horse thrusts his long head from the stall near by, and whinnies at the memories it revives, and with pricked-up ears and whisking tail tells plainly of the eagerness he feels. The Back and forth through the sloping lot the ploughman slowly turns the dingy sward, and in the rich brown furrow, following in his track, we see the cackling troop of hens, and the lordly rooster, with great ado, searches out the dainty tidbits for his motley crowd of favorites. whole landscape has become infused with human life and motion. Wherever the eye may turn it sees the evidences of varied and hopeful industry. Yonder we notice an oft-recurring little puff of mist like a burlesque snow-drift, ever and anon bursting into view, and softly vanishing against the sward. Another glance detects the slow progress of horse and cart, and farmer sowing his load of plaster across the whitening field. Further up, where the brow of the hill stands clear against the sky, a pacing figure with measured sweep of arm scatters the handfuls of wheat, and team and harrow soon are in his path, combing and crumbling the dark brown mould. High curling wreaths of smoke wind upward from the flat swamp lot beyond, where hilarious boys enjoy both work and play in burning off the brush. Here we shall see the first welcome nibble of fresh grass for the poor bereaved cow whose lamenting bleat now echoes through | only by the faint columns of blue smoke the barn near by; and for these oxen, too, that with swaying clumsy gait lug the huge roller across the neighboring field. And what strange yells and exclamations guide them in their labored progress! Ho back! Gee up ahoy! Ho haw!" From every direction, in voices near, and others faint with distance, we hear this same jargon. Who could believe that so much good work hung upon the incessant reiteration of that brief and monotonous Vocabulary? Rather would we listen to the musical ring of the laughing children riding on the big "brush harrow" down through that barn-yard lane beyond. that rise above the trees, and melt away against the twilight sky. I look out upon a wilderness of gloom, where all above is still and clear, and all below is wrapped in impenetrable mystery. A plaintive piping trill now breaks the impressive stillness. Again and again I hear the little lonely voice vibrating through the low-lying mist. It is only a little frog in some faroff marsh; but what a sweet sense of sadness is awakened by that lowly melody! Where, in all the varied voices of the night, is there another song so lulling in its dreamy melody, so full of that charm which moves the human heart? How the very air seems to quiver with its full So runs the record of a busy day in the early New England spring-time, and withness! its all-absorbing industry it is a day that passes quickly. The afternoon runs into evening. Cool shadows creep across the landscape as the glowing sun sinks through the still bare and leafless trees and disappears behind the wooded hills. The fields are now deserted, and through the uncertain twilight we see the little knots of workmen with their swinging pails, and hear their tramp along the homeward road. In the dim shadows of the evergreens beyond, a faint gray object steals into view. Now it stops at the old watering trough, and I hear the sip of the eager horse and the splash of overflowing water. Some belated ploughman, fresh, perhaps, from a half-hour's gossip at the village store. How quickly the receding form is lost in the darkening road! One by one the scattered barns and houses have disappeared in the gathering dusk, marked I recall, too, the pleasant sound upon the shingles overhead as the dark-clouded sky let fall its tell-tale drops to warn us of the coming rain. Who can forget those rainy days, with their games of hide-andseek in the old dark garret? How we looked out upon the muddy, puddled road, and laughed at the great drifting sheets of water that ever and anon poured down from some bursting cloud, and roared upon the roof! How the tree trunks outside seemed to squirm and twist! The dark doorway of the barn, too, what strange capers it performed for our amusement! -now swelling out to twice its size, now stretching long and thin, or dividing in the middle in its queer contortions. Out in the dismal barn-yard we saw the forlorn row of hens huddled together on the hay-rick under the drizzling strawthatched shed, and the gabled coop near |