454 COSMOS. 



only with the simpler forms of our native floras, but not, on 

 that account, without depth of feeling and richness of creative 

 fancy. Dwelling only on the native and indigenous forms of 

 our vegetation, this branch of art, notwithstanding that it has 

 been circumscribed by such narrow limits, has yet afforded 

 sufficient scope for highly gifted painters, such as the Carracci, 

 Gaspard Poussin, 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 different 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, cannot impair 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 elements 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 

 idealising mental power. The grand conceptions which land- 

 scape painting, 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, independent of place. These remarks especially 

 refer to the gradations in the forms of trees from Ruysdael 

 and Everdingen, through the works of Claude Lorraine to 

 Poussin and Annibal Caracci. In the great masters of art 

 there is no indication of local limitation. But an extension 

 of the visible horizon, and an acquaintance with the nobler 

 and grander forms of nature, and with the luxurious fulness 

 of life in the tropical world, afford the advantage of not 

 simply enriching the material groundwork of landscape paint- 

 ing, but also of inducing more vivid impressions in the 

 minds of less highly gifted painters, and thus heightening 

 their powers of artistic creation. 



I would here be permitted to refer to some remarks which 

 I published nearly half a century ago, in a treatise which has 

 been but little read, entitled Ideen zu einer Physiognomik der 

 Gewachse* and which stands in the most intimate connection 



* Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, 2te Ausgabe, 1826, bd. i. s. 7, 

 16, 21, 36, and 42. Compare also two very instructive memoirs, 



