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nature and of God is here asserted. man race. And when the throes which Faust, in the anguish of his scepticism, shook Europe, destroying the old forms looking at the moonlight, longs to be far of social order, had produced a scepticism off upon the hills, or on the meadows, in the hearts of many, Nature and her and to bathe his pain away in mingled undisturbed repose became the only reflight and dew. When passion is strug- uge for them in the tumult of the world. gling with the sense of duty in his soul, Removing their faith from man, and from he seeks the mountains. We find him the god of his imagination, they reposamong trees and caverns, listening to the ed it in Nature, and in the spirit that tempest and endeavoring to lose his hu- controlled the elements. In England, man troubles in the contemplation of Wordsworth became the high-priest of eternal nature. Again, after the catas- this creed. Shelley, and Keats, and Coletrophe of Margaret's episode it is among ridge, each in his own way, contributed the fields, and pines, and waterfalls of to render it permanent and influential Switzerland that Faust recruits his shat- over thought. The point in which they tered strength. all agreed, was reverence for Nature as the source of intellectual enjoyment and moral instruction. They were not content with the slight attention which had been paid to her more superficial aspects by preceding poets. They ransacked her deeper secrets, dwelling alone with her, exercising their powers of observation on the minutest incidents, and making pictures from hitherto neglected scenes. Man,in truth, had descended from the high tower of his humanity, whence he had been wont to cast a careless and half-patronizing eye upon the hills and pastures that surrounded him. From that time forward he has learned to recognize that not only are men interesting to mankind, but that also in the world itself there is a dignity and loveliness which he must study with humility and patience. This is a great lesson, the whole value of which has hardly yet been recognized. But the progress of the age in physical science, and in the facilities of locomotion, tend to make it every day more widely felt. The more we know of the universe, as revealed to us by chemistry, geology, astronomy, and all our other instruments of discovery, the less we boast that man is the centre of all things. The world and its immensity necessarily occupy our thoughts more duly than in days when wars and politics and metaphysical discussion filled the minds of men. And while we traverse new countries to satisfy our curiosity, or for the sake of health and pleasure, the various objects of natural interest presented to our eyes, explained by science, or admired for their intrinsic beauty, must extend our observation, and distract our cares from petty griefs and from the sense of personal importance.

Nature is always made the antidote of human ills. Its peace contrasts with our unrest, its unbroken continuity with our changefulness, the order of its recurring seasons with our chaotic history, the durability of its powers with our ephemeral lease of life, its calm indifference with our fretfulness and intolerance of pain. Shakspeare, in his play of As You Like It, has expressed this aspect of modern sentiment with regard to nature. The lyrics "Under the greenwood tree," and "Blow, blow, thou winter wind." most delicately point the contrast we have tried to draw. But since the days of Shakspeare the love of natural beauty has increased and been developed. He, and the men of his time, cared for the colors, and the scents, and the freshness of the outer world with the keen sensibilities of youth. Man was still uppermost in their thoughts. They loved the earth as a pleasure-ground in which he passed his time. The idea of nature as a vast power -instinct with divinity, from which the human soul, in solitude, might draw great thoughts and inspirations-had not yet occurred to them. They did not find in landscape a mirror of their own emotions, or transfer the feelings of humanity to inanimate objects.

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This kind of pantheistic reverence has grown up of late years. Rosseau led to it by the doctrine which he preached of returning to a state of nature. In the old age of feudal civilization men imagined golden period of youth, before the growth of statecraft and class prerogatives. Naked savage life appeared to them, half throttled by the chains and bandages of centuries, to be the true condition of the hu

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The highest claims of landscape painting rest upon the promptitude with which it has arisen to satisfy, to lead, to strengthen, to instruct, and to immortalize these modern tendencies of human intellect. It is a new form of art, because the want from which it springs is new; because the phase of life to which it is adapted has so recent an origin. The Greeks, and the Italians of the Renaissance, did not need it, since they were occupied with the beauty of man. They lived in the two boyhoods and spring-times of the world; but when the bloom of youth had passed away, and reflection led the mind from man to nature, landscape then began at first feebly, as an adjunct to figure painting, then timidly asserting for itself an independent sphere, and lastly, in our days, rising to the dignity of an original fine art in which the spirit of the age reflects itself no less distinctly than in music and in poetry.

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If we are now able to see why landscape painting has assumed so prominent a place among the arts of modern times, may be well to ask ourselves what special aim and scope it has, and to review the conditions under which it flourishes in our own country. The object of all art is truth of representation. "The first and last thing required of genius is love of truth," said Goethe. "To hold the mirror up to nature is another maxim which applies to art. We expect from the artist a faithful transcript of the truth in nature. The more of this truth given, the greater is the art. As a sculptor represents the human forin, with human thoughts and passions shining through its beauty, so in landscape painting the artist seeks to show us scenes of natural sublimity and loveliness, with nature's moods depicted on their features. The expression, without which a face is dead and meaningless, may be compared to the "effects" of landscape painting. The greatest artist is he who can depict most powerfully the fleeting smiles of sunlight and of vapor, the lowering menaces of gathering tempests, and all those transitory aspects and rare conditions of the atmosphere which must be studied, waited for, observed, and remembered. The artist stands between nature and the men around him. It is his duty to make them see what they have not seen before, to

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make them feel what they have not felt, and think what they have not thought. His eyes are constantly fixed upon the beauties of the world, while theirs are bent upon the common things of life. He must select for them the worthiest objects of their contemplation, and exhibit these under the most favorable aspects, so as to draw forth their hidden loveliness and make most prominent those qualities which constitute their dignity. By so doing he will cultivate faculties of observation in many minds which have been dead to all the influences of the outer world. It is only through the medium of pictures that some people have come to care for nature. And all of us are alive to the advantage of possessing portraits of historic scenes which we can never visit, or of realms of beauty which supply our fancy with new loveliness to feed upon. Thus fresh sources of interest are continually being opened up. The education which before consisted in a painful effort to understand conditions widely different from our own, is rendered less difficult. We see before us what we read about. And the thoughts and feelings of other races and other ages are interpreted to our imagination by familiarity with the natural scenery proper to their development. No one who is alive to the influences of climate and physical circumstance in forming national character will depreciate the value of this "local coloring" procured for us by landscape. Nor is it less delightful to possess some portion of familiar beauty constantly before our eyes. The fields which we have known, the flowers which we have loved, by painting are secured to us from the mutabilities of time. We carry pieces of the country into our London homes, and, sitting in our room, may traverse cities of the past, desert sands, and "the unfooted sea;" or turn to dwell with interest upon the hedgerows, nests, and primroses of England. If, as we have tried to prove, there is an innate love in modern hearts for nature, no picture that patiently and truthfully reveals her character will seem too small and insignificant. Wordsworth has drawn true poetry and a deep moral from the simplest plant that grows. And this should be the painter's aim. As a priest of Nature, he must recognize her power in every form, from

the lineaments of men down to the outlines of the meanest herb.

It has been well said that every picture ought to be a painted poem. For poetry is truth appealing to the intellect, reflected from it, and partaking of the thoughts and feelings of mankind. To be true poetry it must excite the imagination, and connect itself with sympathies that are universal in the world. It stands midway between reality and thought. Poetry has well been called "the beautiful investiture of fact." In this sense a picture is half an idea, and half a thing. To give in words or forms a full description of any natural object would be impossible. The mind must select; and the process of selection resolves itself into a representation of mental impressions. Whatever conduces to the vividness and completeness of the impression renders the poem more exact and true. But multitudes of details foisted in, observed with undue reference to their individual importance, and copied with neglect of the main purpose of the work in hand, disturb the conception. Unity and the controlling intellect are necessary for a work of art. Plato, when describing a good essay, compared it to an animal. He meant that it should be an organic whole, dominated by some central thought, and cohering in such a way that the abstraction or addition of any important part would mar its symmetry. And this metaphor may be applied to every work of art. We often hear people say that some landscape is well copied from a beautiful scene, but that it does not make a picture. It has too much or too little in it. You can not trace its meaning. Your eye does not rest upon some central fact to which all others are subordinate. In the same way we might condemn a poem which called itself an idyll, or a picture of life, because an episode distracted our attention from the current of the story, or because the author had turned aside to talk of flowers when great interests were at stake. It would be useless for the artist to exclaim, "I saw things as I painted them;" or for the poet to answer that the story as he heard it first was encumbered with extraneous incidents. We should reply, "So it might have been in nature and in life; but what we want in art is some one object for our contemplation, some choice

piece of beauty, some instructive thought. Your intellect was not enough at work. You painted everything you saw before you. You did not paint the one impression which it made upon your mind, and carefully avoid all matters that might interfere with its transmission to your fellow-men."

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Furthermore, a poem must contain some idea. And this includes the question of how far landscapes can be made the vehicles of thought and feeling. It is clear that, in order to make them play this part, some human sentiment must be connected with the scenes they represent. The earliest landscape painters sought to give their pictures interest by placing a group of persons in the foreground, engaged in some suggestive occupation. Thus Claude filled up his pastorals with shepherds, and with dances under trees, while Salvator Rosa peopled the gloomy caverns and dark chestnut woods he loved to paint, with bandits and soldiers. bens, in the celebrated landscape of the Pitti Gallery at Florence, has painted the story of Ulysses landing after his shipwreck on the shores of Phæacia beneath the palaces and gardens of Alcinous. The storm is broken overhead; vast rainclouds rolling off remind us of the tempest that is gone. The figure of Ulysses on the shore suggests the fury of the sea from which he has escaped, while Nausicaa and her maidens seem to welcome him to fresh sunlight and repose. The correspondence between returning calm in nature and the escape of the hero from his perils on the sea, produce a unity of conception that makes this picture a fine poem. Many of Turner's greatest works might be taken as examples of the same sympathy between the scene in nature and the fortunes of some hero or historic personage. But the landscape painter need not depend so immediately as in the cases we have cited upon human interest. He may indicate it even in a more subordinate degree. Perhaps the most generally attractive of Turner's pictures is the "Fighting Temeraire." This painting teems with objects and associations that provoke the warmest sympathy; and yet the human life there represented is entirely in the background. The sun is setting over the sea, while the crescent moon stands cold and clear to

eastward. Between the sunset and the moonlight a black steamer-tug is drawing an old ship-of-war to her last resting-place. The sun is going down, and night is coming on; but the red beams of the evening fall upon the steamer, while the white rigging and gigantic hull of the veteran ship look spectral in the pale light of the moon. The pathos of this picture depends upon the sympathy which it excites in us for the vast, helpless manof-war. Men have always felt a personal attachment to their ships. Argo was respected as a kind of goddess, and Catullus wrote a sonnet to his favorite skiff. Equally in modern times are battle-ships regarded as actual personalities by the men who fight in them.

But, again, it is possible to make a poem in landscape from even simpler elements. The mind of man serves for nature's mirror, but it can not reflect her scenes precisely as they are. They waken some feelings in his heart which he endeavors to transfer to canvas, in connection with the forms and colors that excited them. We all know how calm, solemnity, and rest are associated with sunset, and how sunrise produces different emotions of a more active and joyous character. This is the simplest instance which can be found of human feeling insensibly connected with external scenes. To a painter, these associations by long communing in solitude with nature become more intense in degree and more varied in kind. Every mood of mind, grave, gay, sublime, languid, tender, or impassioned, receives its echo in some phase of natural beauty. These he paints, and these it is the critic's and spectator's task to read. Of course these different animating ideas can not be of a very complex or multiform description. Like the thoughts which music represents, the themes of landscape must be simple and confined within a narrow sphere. But they admit of exquisite gradations and the most delicate expression. In a summer afternoon, such as Giorgione painted, we find peace, the peace of pensive contemplation. Alter the tone, make it gayer and less rich, then a fresh kind of peace suggests itself, less majestic and luxurious than the calm of the Venetian's thought, more commonplace and fit for daily uses. Sunsets over broad

flat lands; a promontory running out in to a cloudy sky, with waves beneath, and seagulls wheeling at its base; a solitary ship at sunrise; cypress-trees or poplars bent by winds, beside a ruined towerstrike different notes of loneliness and melancholy. Branches dashed together in the forest, or surf strewn with spars chafing against stones, tell us of strife and anguish, danger and unrest. In sunlight on broad meadows we see plenty and content, recalling days of quiet toil, and harvests crowned with happiness. It seems superfluous to spend more time in such illustrations of the poetical thoughts which may be conveyed through landscape painting. Association governs all the actions of our mind, and if the artist but feels strongly, and expresses to the best of his ability what he has felt, his work can scarcely fail to be of value. It is only to the greatest men that high poetic inspiration is vouchsafed. They must stand alone. Their intuitions into nature, whether expressed in form and color as by Turner, or in music as by Beethoven, or in words as by Shelley, are the highest utterances of art. But the priesthood of the beautiful has many ranks; and it is the painter's privilege that, even though he do not stand among the poets of the world, he yet can embody in his works those emotions which vast numbers feel, which few can express in words, and which, from their purity, universality, and nobleness, are truly poetical.

Though we have dwelt upon the poetry which every picture ought to aim at, many valuable works may be produced which can be estimated only as clear and lucid descriptions of scenery and natural objects. So much has been said respecting the place and purposes of "topographical" painting by Mr. Ruskin, and by the able author of a Painter's Camp in the Highlands, that we need not enter into a further discussion of its merits. A good critic will always discern the picture which aims at nothing more than topographical exactitude. But it is not an uncommon fault of the people who pretend to criticize our exhibitions, that they class pictures almost entirely by reference to their subject, awarding higher praise to some transcript of grand scenery, which is simply a good map, than they bestow

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upon the less striking and more unob- the scene complete. He should pay trusive subject, which has passed through especial attention to weather, for upon the mind of an imaginative man, and the changes of the sky depend those by his thought has been elevated into effects which we before compared to expoetry. We wish, still, to confine at- pression in the human countenance. In tention to the imaginative style of land- this miute and patient labor he will follow scape painting. Speaking generally, we the steps of the greatest masters, of may discern two great classes into which Tintoretto, Titian, Raphael, and Velasthis style divides itself. The one is con- quez; nor need he be afraid of the scorn tented with broad and simple effects of which has been thrown on the precolor, and of light shade, deliberately Raphaelistic school for forcing every desacrificing all minor details in order to tail on our attention with equal power. produce a picture which shall stimulate Since it must be remembered that all the imagination, and not fatigue it by pictures which commit this error are enthe effort of minute attention. David tirely wrong in their ideal of art. The Cox is the chief representative of this cardinal rule that can not be too much style. His work gives unfailing pleas- insisted on is this:-That detail is only ure to those who have a knowledge of valuable in so far as it builds up a single art and vivid fancy. It is full of sug- and characteristic scene. Any fact which gestions. It rouses our imagination in is superfluous, or which strikes a note at the same agreeable way as sketches and all discordant with the keynote of the designs by the great masters do. Much picture, must be ruthlessly discarded, is left to be conceived and filled in by however beautiful. The neglect of this the spectator. This communicates a rule has led the pre-Raphaelites often sense of activity to his intellect, and into error. But their failure must not makes him feel himself to be a fellow- deter painters from the true road to the worker with the artist, in the effect pro- loftiest ends of art. duced upon him. But great as this style may become in the hands of an artist like Cox, it can not be considered the highest sphere of landscape painting. The other, and in our opinion the greater school, aims at a more downright rendering of actual fact. It neglects no characteristic detail, since every accessory may in itself be suggestive, and contribute to the general effect. Pictures of this order can not be understood at a glance. They require attention, and repay it by the new beauties which may constantly be found in them. Turner is the chief master of this style. In his works we see that he has sought to give the most perfect realization of the object which he studied, and at the same time to communicate to us the impression which it made on him. The greatest landscape painting is that which is fullest, which represents most, so long as every detail be subordinate to one dominant conception. Therefore, in considering his subject, the artist should not neglect the geological features, the vegetation, the character of the soil, the trees, the animal life, the cultivation, the houses, and the people-everything, in short, which may render his portrait of

We may now turn from a consideration of the scope and aims of landscape painting to review the present state of its appreciation in our country. Whatever may be said about the rank which different styles of painting ought to take, landscape is clearly the most genuine production of the present century. We have been far surpassed in figure painting by the great masters of Italy. Sculp türe can hardly be said to exist, so feeble are its achievements in our day; but landscape has attained a dignity and a power in England to which all efforts of all other schools have only been the prelude. But though this art has such important claims upon our sympathy, full justice has not yet been done it. The system of classifying styles of painting into high and low tends to mislead our judgment. Newspaper critics always speak in terms of disappointment of an exhibition where there is much landscape, and regret the grand old days of figure painting. No doubt the greatest grasp of intellect, and the deepest comprehension of human interests are exhibited in producing such works as those of Raphael and Michael Angelo. Their value, as the means of education, inasmuch as they display the

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