LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 95 



to the senses of others as a free work of art. The grander 

 style of heroic landscape painting is the combined result of a 

 proibund appreciation of nature and of this inward process of 

 the mind. 



Every where, in every separate portion of the earth, nature 

 is indeed only a reflex of the whole. The forms of organisms 

 recur again and again in different combinations. Even the 

 icy north is cheered for months together by the presence of 

 herbs and large Alpine blossoms covering the earth, and by 

 the aspect of a mild azure sky. Hitherto landscape painting 

 imong us has pursued her graceful labors familiar only with 

 the simpler forms of our native floras, but not, on that account, 

 without depth of feeling and richness of creative fancy. Dwell- 

 ing only on the native and indigenous forms of our vegetation, 

 this branch of art, notwithstanding that it has been circum- 

 scribed by such narrow limits, has yet afforded sufficient scope 

 for highly-gifted painters, such as the Caracci, Gaspard Pous- 

 siu, Claude Lorraine, and Ruysdael, to produce the loveliest 

 and most varied creations of art, by their magical power of 

 managing the grouping of trees and the effects of light and 

 shade. That progress which may still be expected in the dif- 

 ferent departments of art, and to which I have already drawn 

 attention, in order to indicate the ancient bond which unites 

 natural science with poetry and artistic feeling, can not im- 

 pair the fame of the master works above referred to, for, as 

 we have observed, a distinction must be made in landscape 

 painting, as in every other branch of art, between the ele- 

 ments generated by the more limited field of contemplation 

 and direct observation, and those which spring from the 

 boundless depth of feeling and from the force of idealizing 

 mental power. The grand conceptions which landscape paint- 

 ing, as a more or less inspired branch of the poetry of nature, 

 owes to the creative power of the mind', are, like man himself, 

 and the imaginative faculties with which he is endowed, inde- 

 pendent of place. These remarks especially refer to the grada- 

 tions in the forms of trees from Ruysdael and Everdingen, 

 through the works of Claude Lorraine, to Poussin and Anni- 

 bal Caracci. In the great masters of art there is no indica- 

 tion of local limitation. But an extension of the visible hori- 

 zon, and an acquaintance with the nobler and grander forms 

 of nature, and with the luxurious fullness of life in the tropical 

 world, afford the advantage of not simply enriching the ma- 

 terial ground- work of landscape painting, but also of inducing 

 more vivid impressions in the minds of less highly-gifted 



