CHAP. I. AS COMPONENT PARTS OF GENERAL SCENERY. 207 
comes to read over what he has written, and finds some part of it obscure, or 
of doubtful construction, he is obliged to have recourse to his grammatical 
knowledge. 
One of the many difficulties we have had to contend with, in getting the 
drawings and engravings of trees prepared for this work, is, the tendency, both 
of draughtsmen and engravers, to show here and there in their portraits, and 
sometimes, indeed, throughout the whole portraits, the distinct shapes of 
the individual leaves. . This is just as bad as it would be, in making a drawing 
of a house, to give the distinct shapes of the bricks. It is true, that the 
surface of a tree is composed of leaves, as a house is composed of bricks; 
but our knowledge of these facts is not the result of our looking at the tree 
or house at a distance as a whole, or as a mere mass of light, shade, and 
colour, but of knowledge of another kind, quite otherwise acquired. Now, 
if the artist would only bear constantly in mind, that he is not required to 
convey, in his picture of the object represented, more knowledge than what a 
person who knew nothing of its nature might acquire by looking at it from 
a distance, he could not fail to succeed. The very expression, “ Art,’ im- 
plies that the ordinary manner of conveying ideas is not to be adopted; 
and to show that a tree is composed of leaves; or a house built of bricks, 
by giving definite figures of the one or the other, is taking a license which 
robs art of all its charms. 
It may be remarked here, that the touch of young trees is in no case so 
powerfully marked and characteristic in nature as that of old trees, for reasons 
familiar to every gardener, and which it may be well to notice here for the 
sake of artists. We have already said that the touch is formed by the cluster- 
ing of the leaves at the extremities of the shoots. Now, as the terminating 
shoots of all young trees are chiefly or entirely of one year’s growth, they, of 
course, are long, and terminate in a very few leaves, placed alternately or 
otherwise, round the shoot or axis, and at some distance, often an inch or 
more, from each other. Such leaves can never form those striking ciusters 
which are so conspicuous in most old trees; particularly in the oak, the 
starry touch of which, and especially that of the Quércus pedunculata, which 
is very different from that of Quércus sessiliflora, is well known to every 
artist. The terminating shoots of old trees are generally shoots which grow 
only an inch or two, or, perbaps, not so much, every year; and, consequently, 
according to the manner in which trees grow, what is only a single leaf in the 
young tree of ten years’ growth, is, in the spray, or terminal branches, of the old 
tree, a spur of several years’ growth; that 1s, it is a spur or shoot of half an inch 
or more in length, protruding from the other shoot, and terminating in a clus- 
ter of leaves, perhaps half a dozen or a dozen, all radiating from the same very 
short axis. These radiating leaves form the touch. Any one may prove this by 
comparing a young oak tree with an old one. Notwithstanding the great 
difference between the touch of an old tree and a young tree of the same 
species, there is a certain distinctive character of touch even in young trees, 
and much more so in some species than in others; a horsechestnut, for in- 
stance, whether young or old, has a very distinct character of touch, from the 
large size and marked form of its leaves: so have all other trees having large 
leaves, and most of those having compound leaves, such as the robinias, ashes, 
elders, &c. 
It may not be irrelevant to observe that there is as great a difference between 
the character of the ramification of an old tree and that of a young one, as 
there is between the character of their touch. There is a certain degree of 
sameness in the disposition of the branches of all young trees, from their 
tendency upwards, and perhaps still more from their being so fully clothed 
with leaves. Old trees, on the other hand, have generally a majority of their 
branches in horizontal or very oblique directions, and they are never so fully 
covered with leaves and spray as is the case with young trees. As a result of 
what we have stated, the general forms of young trees present a certain degree 
of sameness; while in old trees of distinct species there is generally a very 
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