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hall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beauty, that en as a source of pleasure, is feeble compared to form;

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but this we cannot insist upon at present; we have only to do with simple truth, and the obserwe have made are sufficient to prove that the artist who or forgets a truth of form in the pursuit of a truth of crifices what is definite to what is uncertain, and what al to what is accidental.

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§ 1. The import

truths.

CHAPTER VI.

RECAPITULATION.

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It ought farther to be observed respecting truths in general, that those are always most valuable which are most historical, that is, which tell us most about the past and fuance of historical ture states of the object to which they belong. a tree, for instance, it is more important to give the appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs which is indicative of growth and life, than any particular character of leaf, or texture of bough. It is more important that we should feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping higher and higher into the sky, and be impressed with the current of life and motion which is animating every fibre, than that we should know the exact pitch of relief with which those fibres are thrown out against the sky. For the first truths tell us tales about the tree, about what it has been, and will be, while the last are characteristic of it only in its present state, and are in no way talkative about themselves. Talkative facts are always more interesting and more important than silent ones. So again the lines in a crag which mark its stratification, and how it has been washed and rounded by water, or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, because they tell more than the stains of the lichens which change year by year, and the accidental fissures of frost or decomposition; not but that both of these are historical, but historical in a less distinct manner, and for shorter periods.

§ 2. Form, as ex

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Hence in general the truths of specific form are plained by light the first and most important of all; and next to first of all truths. them, those truths of chiaroscuro which are necesTone, light and color are second- sary to make us understand every quality and part of forms, and the relative distances of objects among each other, and in consequence their relative bulks.

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ther lower than these, as truths, though often most imporas beauties, stand all effects of chiaroscuro which are proive merely of imitations of light and tone, and all effects of r. To make us understand the space of the sky, is an end hy of the artist's highest powers; to hit its particular blue -old is an end to be thought of when we have accomplished First, and not till then.

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Finally, far below all these come those particuscuro the lar accuraciesor tricks of chiaroscuro which cause objects to look projectingfrom the canvas, not hy of the name of truths, because they require for their nment the sacrifice of all others; for not having at our osal the same intensity of light by which nature illustrates objects, we are obliged, if we would have perfect deception ne, to destroy its relation to the rest. (Compare Sect. II. ». V.) And thus he who throws one object out of his pic, never lets the spectator into it. Michael Angelo bids you w his phantoms into the abyss of heaven, but a modern ach painter drops his hero out of the picture frame. This solidity or projection then, is the very lowest truth that ean give; it is the painting of mere matter, giving that as for the eye which is properly only the subject of touch; it neither instruct nor exalt, nor please except as jugglery; it esses no sense of beauty nor of power; and wherever it charrizes the general aim of a picture, it is the sign and the eviee of the vilest and lowest mechanism which art can be ined by giving name to.

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CHAPTER VII.

GENERAL APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES.

tation selection of facts order.

$1. The different

consequent on the several aims at imitation or at truth.

WE have seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof of what was before asserted, that the truths necessary for deceptive imiare not only few, but of the very lowest We thus find painters ranging themselves into two great classes; one aiming at the development of the exquisite truths of specfic form, refined color, and ethereal space, and content with the clear and impressive suggestion of any of these, by whatsoever means obtained; and the other casting all these aside, to attain those particular truths of tone and chiaroscuro, which may trick the spectator into a belief of reality. The first class, if they have to paint a tree, are intent upon giving the exquisite designs of intersecting undulation in its boughs, the grace of its leafage, the intricacy of its organization, and all those qualities which make it lovely or affecting of its kind. The second endeavor only to make you believe that you are looking at wood. They are totally regardless of truths or beauties of form; a stump is as good as a trunk for all their purposes, so that they can only deceive the eye into the supposition that it is a stump and not

canvas.

$2. The old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation.

To which of these classes the great body of the old landscape painters belonged, may be partly gathered from the kind of praise which is bestowed upon them by those who admire them most, which either refers to technical matters, dexterity of touch, clever oppositions of color, etc., or is bestowed on the power of the painter to deceive. M. de Marmontel, going into a connoisseur's gallery, pretends to mistake a fine Berghem for a window. This, he says, was affirmed by its possessor to be the greatest praise the picture had ever received. Such is indeed the notion

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What truths gave.

rt which is at the bottom of the veneration usually felt for old landscape painters; it is of course the palpable, first idea gnorance; it is the only notion which people unacquainted art can by any possibility have of its ends; the only test by ch people unacquainted with nature can pretend to form thing like judgment of art. It is strange that, with the t historical painters of Italy before them, who had broken oldly and indignantly from the trammels of this notion, and xen the very dust of it from their feet, the succeeding land›e painters should have wasted their lives in jugglery: but t is, and so it will be felt, the more we look into their works, that the deception of the senses was the great and first end of all their art. To attain this y paid deep and serious attention to effects of light and tone, to the exact degree of relief which material objects take inst light and atmosphere; and sacrificing every other truth hese, not necessarily, but because they required no others for eption, they succeeded in rendering these particular facts h a fidelity and force which, in the pictures that have come n to us uninjured, are as yet unequalled, and never can be passed. They painted their foregrounds with laborious instry, covering them with details so as to render them decepe to the ordinary eye, regardless of beauty or truth in the ails themselves; they painted their trees with careful attenn to their pitch of shade against the sky, utterly regardless all that is beautiful or essential in the anatomy of their foliand boughs they painted their distances with exquisite use transparent color and aerial tone, totally neglectful of all ts and forms which nature uses such color and tone to relieve adorn. They had neither love of nature, nor feeling of beauty; they looked for her coldest and most commonplace ects, because they were easiest to imitate; and for her most gar forms, because they were most easily to be recognized by e untaught eyes of those whom alone they could hope to ease; they did it, like the Pharisee of old, to be seen of men, d they had their reward. They do deceive and delight the practised eye; they will to all ages, as long as their colors dure, be the standards of excellence with all, who, ignorant of ture, claim to be thought learned in art. And they will to

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