244 I^IELD AND HEDGEROW. 



them like coronals for present ornament and future re- 

 galement These creatures are nevertheless artists. On 

 the walls of caves they have painted the antelope and 

 the lion in bright colours ; they have not only caught 

 the shape and hue of the animals about them, but their 

 action and movement. The figures are in motion, 

 skilfully drawn and full of spirit. 



If any one asks, Is the application of Art to the chase 

 really so old, so very very old, as this ? I refer them to 

 the stars. How long ago is it since the constellations 

 received their names ? At what date were they first 

 arranged in groups ? Upon the most ancient monuments 

 and in the most ancient writings they have the same 

 forms assigned to them as at this day, and that too in 

 countries remote from each other. The signs of the 

 Zodiac are almost as old as the stars themselves ; that 

 is, as old as the time when the stars were first beheld of 

 human eyes. Amongst them there is the Archer — 

 Sagittarius — the chase in the shape of man ; greatest 

 and grandest of all the constellations is Orion, the mighty 

 hunter, the giant who slew the wild beasts by strength. 

 There is no assemblage of stars so brilliant as those which 

 compose the outline of Orion ; the Hunter takes the first 

 place in the heavens. Art exists in the imagination — 

 imagination drew lines from star to star, and repeated its 

 life on earth in the sky. 



So it is true that the first picture — whether drawn by 

 the imagination alone in the constellations, on the walls 

 of the cave with ochre and similar materials, or engraved 

 with keen splinters of f^int on the mammoth's tusk — the 

 first picture was of the chase. Animals are earliest, the 

 human form next, flowers and designs and stories in 

 drawings next, and landscape last of all. Landscape is 

 peculiarly the art of the moderns — it is the art of our 



