452 COSMOS. 



and how all the spirited and admirable efforts already made in 

 this portion of art fall far short of the magnitude of those 

 riches of nature, of which it may yet become possessed. Are 

 we not justified in hoping that landscape painting will flourish 

 with a new and hitherto unknown brilliancy when artists of 

 merit shall more frequently pass the narrow limits of the 

 Mediterranean, and when they shall be enabled, far in the 

 interior of continents, in the humid mountain valleys of the 

 tropical world, to seize, with the genuine freshness of a pure 

 and youthful spirit, on the true image of the varied forms of 

 nature? 



These noble regions have hitherto been visited mostly by 

 travellers, whose want of artistical education, and whose dif- 

 ferently directed scientific pursuits, afforded few opportunities 

 of their perfecting themselves in landscape painting. Only 

 very few amongst them have been susceptible of seizing on 

 the total impression of the tropical zone, in addition to the 

 botanical interest excited by the individual forms of flowers 

 and leaves. It has frequently happened that the artists ap- 

 pointed to accompany expeditions fitted out at the national 

 expense, have been chosen without due consideration, and 

 almost by accident, and have been thus found less prepared 

 than such appointments required; and the end of the 

 voyage may thus have drawn near before even the most 

 talented amongst them, by a prolonged sojourn amongst grand 

 scenes of nature, and by frequent attempts to imitate what 

 they saw, had more than begun to acquire a certain technical 

 mastery of their art. Voyages of circumnavigation are, 

 besides, but seldom of a character to allow of artists visiting 

 any extensive tracts of forest-land, the upper courses of large 

 rivers, or the summits of inland chains of mountains. 



Coloured sketches, taken directly from nature, are the only 

 means by which the artist, on his return, may reproduce the 

 character of distant regions in more elaborately finished pic- 

 tures ; and this object will be the more fully attained, where 

 the painter has, at the same time, drawn or painted directly 

 from nature a large number of separate studies of the foliage 

 of trees ; of leafy, flowering, or fruit-bearing stems ; of pros- 

 trate trunks, overgrown with pothos and orchidece; of rocks 

 and of portions of the shore, and the soil of the forest. The 

 possession of such correctly drawn and well proportioned 



