364 PHYSIOGNOMY OP PLANTS. 



fresh combinations ; even in the icy north, herbs covering the earth, 

 large alpine blossoms, and a serene azure sky cheer a portion of the 

 year. Hitherto landscape painting has pursued amongst us her 

 pleasing task, familiar only -with the simpler form of our native 

 floras, but not, therefore, without depth of feeling, or without the 

 treasures of creative imagination. Even in this narrower field, 

 highly gifted painters, the Caracci, Gaspar Poussin, Claude Lorraine, 

 and Ruysdael, have, with magic power, by the selection of forms of 

 trees and by effects of light, found scope wherein to call forth some 

 of the most varied and beautiful productions of creative art. The 

 fame of these master-works can never be impaired by those which I 

 venture to hope for hereafter, and to which I could not but point, in 

 order to recall the ancient but deeply-seated bond which unites natu- 

 ral knowledge with poetry and with artistic feeling; for we must 

 ever distinguish in landscape painting, as in every other branch of 

 art, between productions derived from direct observation, and those 

 which spring from the depths of inward feeling and from the power 

 of the idealizing mind. The great and beautiful works which owe 

 their origin to this creative power of the mind applied to landscape- 

 painting, belong to the poetry of nature, and, like man himself, and 

 the imagination with which he is gifted, are not riveted to the soil, 

 or confined to any single region. I allude here more particularly to 

 the gradation in the form of trees from Ruysdael and Everdingen, 

 through Claude Lorraine to Poussin and Annibal Caracci. In the 

 great masters of the art, we perceive no trace of local limitation ; but 

 an enlargement of the visible- horizon, and an increased acquaintance 

 with the nobler and grander forms of nature, and with the luxuriant 

 fulness of life in the tropical world, offer the advantage not only of 

 enriching the material substratum of landscape-painting, but also of 

 affording a more lively stimulus to less gifted artists, and of thus 

 heightening their powers of production." 



( M ) p. 245. " From the rough bark of Creseentias and Gfustavia." 

 In the Crescentia cujete (the Tutuma or Calabash-tree, whose 

 large fruit-shells are so useful to the natives for household purposes) 

 in the Cynometra, the Theobroma (the Cacao-tree), and the Pe- 

 rigara (the Gustavia of Linnaeus) the delicate flowers break through 



