FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 55 



such is Geology to a Landscape Artist. For all the different varie- 

 ties of scenery, woods with pleasant avenues, sweet footpaths wind- 

 ing through soft pastures, rivulet and river, nestling village, and pines 

 rearing themselves upon the crests of mountains, may be considered 

 as a garment spread by God's hand from one edge of the horizon 

 to the other, and drooping like the folds of a mantle from a King's 

 shoulders. For all this is merely the drapery of the earth, and it 

 again is sustained and shaped by the rocks, as the muscles are by 

 the bones. Therefore the soil cannot be rightly drawn without a 

 scientific knowledge of the rocks which govern it. Again, if one has 

 any ambition to paint trees, (and in what picture do they not occur?) 

 a knowledge of Botany is indispensable. How many pictures have 

 we seen in which it was not only impossible to tell whether the trees 

 represented were oak, pine, palmetto or crab-apple, but where every 

 law of tree-growth was violated, and the result a huge monstrosity 

 and absurdity, calculated to fill the mind with disgust instead of ad- 

 miration. Either of these two points might be enlarged upon and 

 have been with absorbing interest, by Ruskin, in volumes four and 

 five of his "Modern Painters." 



Who would dare to say he had painted water correctly, without 

 an intimate acquaintance with the laws which govern varied forms? 

 These are best investigated by Natural Philosophy, under Hydraulics 

 and Hydrostatics. "Yes," says our friend Mr. Stockstill, " I can see 

 how the sciences which investigate Nature bear directly on the sub- 

 ject, but what have your pure Mathematics, and your Greek and 

 Latin got to do with the matter? " 



Much, every way. Geometry is involved in all Architectural de- 

 signs ; they cannot be demonstrated without it ; and Perspective, as 

 difficult a branch of Mathematics as Conic Sections, comes in at 

 every view in which distance is at all considered. In regard to the 

 Classics, nearly all our higher culture in Art is attained by a study 

 of the Antique. What possible veneration can one have for the 

 masterpieces of Phidias or Praxiteles without an acquaintance with 

 the age in which they lived, their manners, customs, literature, 

 thoughts, "religion ? The Greek Mythology, the most poetic and 

 fantastic which the world has ever known, was the direct inspiration 

 of the statues and has been handed down to us, still unsurpassed, 

 as models of loveliness and ideals of perfect beauty. Who can be- 

 hold Raphael's frescoes in the Farnese Palace, of Cupid and Psyche, 

 and appreciate half the exquisite design without understanding the 

 Greek Fable? What meaning would that convey to one unac- 

 quainted with the mode of Greek thought? How grasp the delicate. 



