o composition, and depart with the praise of God he signs of a debased, mistaken, and false school The skill of the artist, and the perfection of his proved until both are forgotten. The artist has ill he has concealed himself,-the art is imperfect le, the feelings are but feebly touched, if they eason on the methods of their excitement. In the reat poem, in the hearing of a noble oration, it is the writer, and not his skill,-his passion, not his ch our minds are fixed. We see as he sees, but we We become part of him, feel with him, judge, be; but we think of him as little as of ourselves. of Eschylus while we wait on the silence of Casf Shakspeare, while we listen to the wailing of 30. The power of the masters is shown by their on. It is commensurate with the degree in which es appear not in their work. The harp of the intruly touched, if his own glory is all that it ry great writer may be at once known by his guidfar from himself, to the beauty which is not of his the knowledge which is past his finding out. it ever be otherwise with painting, for otherwise it Her subjects have been regarded as mere themes. artist's power is to be displayed; and that power, Eation, composition, idealization, or of whatever the chief object of the spectator's observation. It his fancies, man and his trickeries, man and his poor, paltry, weak, self-sighted man,-which the orever seeks and worships. Among potsherds and mong drunken boors and withered beldames, y scene of debauchery and degradation, we follow fine touch in the Frogs in Aristophanes, alluding probably the Agamemnon. “Ἐγὼ δ' ἔχαιρον τῇ σιωπῇ καὶ με τοῦτ ̓ ον ἢ νῦν ὁι λαλοῦντες.” The same remark might be well seemingly vacant or incomprehensible portions of Turner's eir mysterious and intense fire, there is much correspondence ind of Eschylus and that of our great painter. They share ng in common-unpopularity. Ὁ δημος ἀνεβόα κρίσιν ποιεῖν. νούργων ; ΑΙ. νη Δί, οὐράνιον γ' ὅσον. ΞΑ. μετ' Αἰσχύλου δ' σύμμαχοι; ΑΙ. ὀλίγον τὸ χρηστόν ἐστιν. the erring artist, not to receive one wholesome lesson, not to be touched with pity, nor moved with indignation, but to watch the dexterity of the pencil, and gloat over the glittering of the hue. I speak not only of the works of the Flemish School-I wage no war with their admirers; they may be left in peace to count the spicule of haystacks and the hairs of donkeys—it is also of works of real mind that I speak,-works in which there are evidences of genius and workings of power,-works which have been held up as containing all of the beautiful that art can reach or man conceive. And I assert with sorrow, that all hitherto done in landscape, by those commonly conceived its masters, has never prompted one holy thought in the minds of nations. It has begun and ended in exhibiting the dexterities of individuals, and conventionalities of systems. Filling the world with the honor of Claude and Salvator, it has never once tended to the honor of God. Does the reader start in reading these last words, as if they were those of wild enthusiasm, as if I were lowering the dignity of religion by supposing that its cause could be advanced by such means? His surprise proves my position. It does sound like wild, like absurd enthusiasm, to expect any definite moral agency in the painters of landscape; but ought it so to - sound? Are the gorgeousness of the visible hue, the glory of the realized form, instruments in the artist's hand so ineffective, that they can answer no nobler purpose than the amusement of curiosity, or the engagement of idleness? Must it not be owing to gross neglect or misapplication of the means at his command, that while words and tones (means of representing nature surely less powerful than lines and colors) can kindle and purify the very inmost souls of men, the painter can only hope to entertain by his efforts at expression, and must remain forever brooding over his incommunicable thoughts? The cause of the evil lies, I believe, deep-seated in the system of ancient landscape art; it consists, in a word, in the painter's taking upon him to modify God's works at his pleasure, casting the shadow of himself on all he sees, constituting himself arbiter where it is honor to be a disciple, and exhibiting his ingenuity by the attainment of combinations whose highest praise is that they are impossible. We shall not pass through a single gallery of old art, without hearing this topic of praise blently advan appearance hich the meddli his hand bran rature, is advar ne of abstract for the utter character of obje varks of the old stantly held u the grand or hist dapure ideal. ment of all subje perert knowledg adering, of the man, beast, or fl ment of such spe tw of truth, of features of natur Find audacity, in crates, works dvanced. The sense of artificialness, the absence ance of reality, the clumsiness of combination by ddling of man is made evident, and the feebleness branded on the inorganization of his monstrous dvanced as a proof of inventive power, as an eviracted conception ;-nay, the violation of specific ter abandonment of all organic and individual object, (numberless examples of which from the old masters are given in the following pages,) is Id up by the unthinking critic as the foundation of historical style, and the first step to the attainment l. Now, there is but one grand style, in the treatubjects whatsoever, and that style is based on the ledge, and consists in the simple, unencumbered the specific characters of the given object, be it -r flower. Every change, caricature, or abandonspecific character, is as destructive of grandeur as of beauty as of propriety. Every alteration of the ature has its origin either in powerless indolence or y, in the folly which forgets, or the insolence which orks which it is the pride of angels to know, and e to love. times hear such infringement of universal laws the plea, that the frequent introduction of mythractions into ancient landscape requires an imagier of form in the material objects with which they Something of this kind is hinted in Reynolds's se; but nothing can be more false than such reathere be any truth or beauty in the original conceppiritual being so introduced, there must be a true nection between that abstract idea* and the fea 1. Know any passage in ancient literature in which this connecquisitely illustrated than in the lines, burlesque though they of the approach of the chorus in the Clouds of Aristophanes, the way, who, I believe, knew and felt more of the noble acter of his country than any whose works have come down omer. The individuality and distinctness of conception-the haracter which every word of this particular passage brings lewy and bright existence, are to me as refreshing as the real nountain winds. The line “ διὰ τῶν κοίλων καὶ τῶν δασέων, d have been written by none but an ardent lover of hill who had watched, hour after hour, the peculiar oblique, side tures of nature as she was and is. The woods and waters which were peopled by the Greek with typical life were not different from those which now wave and murmur by the ruins of his shrines. With their visible and actual forms was his imagination filled, and the beauty of its incarnate creatures can only be understood among the pure realities which originally modelled their conception. If divinity be stamped upon the features, or apparent in the form of the spiritual creature, the mind will not be shocked by its appearing to ride upon the whirlwind, and trample on the storm; but if mortality, no violation of the characters of the earth will forge one single link to bind it to the heaven. : Is there then no such thing as elevated ideal character of landscape? Undoubtedly; and Sir Joshua, with the great master of this character, Nicolo Poussin, present to his thoughts, ought to have arrived at more true conclusions respecting its essence than, as we shall presently see, are deducible from his works. The true ideal of landscape is precisely the same as that of the human form; it is the expression of the specific-not the individual, but the specific-characters of every object, in their perfection; there is an ideal form of every herb, flower, and tree it is that form to which every individual of the species has a tendency to arrive, freed from the influence of accident or disease. Every landscape painter should know the specific characters of every object he has to represent, rock, flower, or cloud; and in his highest ideal works, all their distinctions will be perfectly expressed, broadly or delicately, slightly or completely, according to the nature of the subject, and the degree of attention which is to be drawn to the particular object by the part it plays in the composition. Where the sublime is aimed at, such distinctions will be indicated with severe simplicity, as the muscular markings in a colossal statue; where beauty is the object, they must be expressed with the utmost refinement of which the hand is capable. This may sound like a contradiction of principles advanced by the highest authorities; but it is only a contradiction of a particular and most mistaken application of them. Much evil long action of descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and ravines of the hills. There are no lumpish solidities-no pillowy protuberances here. All is melting, drifting, evanescent,-full of air, and light, and dew. eto art by the remarks of historical painters on _ccustomed themselves to treat their backgrounds boldly, and feeling (though, as I shall presently consequence of their own deficient powers) that to completeness of detail therein, injures their erfering with its principal subject, they naturally the peculiar and intrinsic beauties of things which jurious, unless subordinate. Hence the frequent by Reynolds and others, to neglect specific form in a treat its materials in large masses, aiming only at -the flexibility of foliage, but not its kind; the ek, but not its mineral character. In the passage y bearing on this subject (in the eleventh lecture nolds), we are told that "the landscape painter the virtuoso or the naturalist, but for the general e and nature." This is true, in precisely the same sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for observer of life and nature. Yet the sculptor is reason, permitted to be wanting either in knowlssion of anatomical detail; and the more refined n can be rendered, the more perfect is his work. to the anatomist, is the end,-is, to the sculptor, The former desires details, for their own sake; the means of them, he may kindle his work with life, with beauty. And so in landscape ;-botanical or ails are not to be given as matter of curiosity or rch, but as the ultimate elements of every species and order of loveliness. servations on the foreground of the St. Pietro oshua advances, as matter of praise, that the plants ated "just as much as was necessary for variety, "Had this foreground been occupied by a group e should have been surprised to be told that the pent, and the dove, or whatever other creatures een introduced, were distinguished from each other as was necessary for variety, and no more. Yet is osed that the distinctions of the vegetable world are , less essential, or less divine in origin, than those ? If the distinctive forms of animal life are meant nt observance, is it likely that those of vegetable life ely to be swept away? The latter are indeed less |