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other arts. Antient sculpture followed in the footsteps of poetry, and 

 petrified her conceptions ; but had i)oetry slumbered through the morning 

 of time, or delayed her advent till the other arts had reached their per- 

 fection, it was more than probable that most of such works would never- 

 theless have been produced. Art, as a German writer had observed, 

 would itself have arrived at and invented gods, had it not found them ; 

 and it was possible that many of the highest and exclusive triumphs of 

 poetry, as far as witliin its scope to embody them, would have been won 

 by sculpture, and the Iliads and Odyssies have been written on stone. 



After what had been advanced relative to the sculptor's province in 

 the present day, he thought little needed to be said on that of the 

 painter, as far as history and portraiture were concerned. The latter 

 were fields he could only share with the sculptor ; but landscape art was 

 one in which there could be no rivalry with sculpture ; it was peculiar 

 to the painter, and was his private walk, untrod by any other. As the 

 branch of painting peculiar to the modems, it claimed particular notice. 

 What was cliiefly to be desired in reference to it was, that the landscape 

 artist would see nature with his own eyes, and not through the medium 

 of the schools, and give his whole energy to a truthful rendering of her 

 facts, on which all his combinations were to be based. Though the 

 same object might thus come to be differently rendered by different 

 artists, yet if each had given his own impression of it — its image on his 

 own soul, their works would be all true pictures, — psychical truths. In 

 thus faithfully representing nature, the artist followed the example of 

 the poet, who but held the mirror up to nature, and with him he would 

 find no lack of room for the faculties of genius. Imagination and 

 feeling were to penetrate the arcana of nature, and lead to a detecting 

 of those beauties which to the dull or feeble were nfever manifested, to 

 vivify the impression received, and influence the treatment of the 

 subject. Landscape painting must not be underrated ; while we ex- 

 patiated on the refinement, spirituality, and difiiculties of expression in 

 sculpture and in historical painting, we were apt to forget that external 

 nature had also a soul to express, and that subtleties analogous to those 

 existed in the art of the landscape painter. Expression, in historical or 

 figure painting, was in the form, as the artist saw it before him, and to 

 catch it was doubtless the highest effort of delineation ; but to seize the 

 harmonious spirit of external nature, as it revealed itself through the 

 mysterious and fleeting glories of light, and shade, and colour, — to 

 discover the secrets by which the effects of chiaro scuro were produced — 



To untwist the magic links that tie 

 The secret soul of harmony, — 



to do this was also a task not unworthy of the highest minds. 



