DELINEATIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 93 



He who, with a keen appreciation of the beauties of nature 

 manifested in mountains, rivers, and forest glades, has himself 

 traveled over the torrid zone, and seen the luxuriance and di- 

 versity of vegetation, not only on the cultivated sea-coasts, 

 but on the declivities of the snow-crowned Andes, the Hima- 

 laya, or the Nilgherry Mountains of Mysore, or in the primi- 

 tive forests, amid the net-work of rivers lying between the 

 Orinoco and the Amazon, can alone feel what an inexhausti- 

 ble treasure remains still unopened by the landscape painter 

 between the tropics in both continents, or in the island-world 

 of Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippines ; 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 

 travelers whose want of artistical education, and whose differ- 

 ently directed scientific pursuits afforded few opportunities of 

 their perfecting themselves in landscape painting. Only very 

 few among them have been susceptible of seizing on the total 

 impression of the tropical zone, in addition to the botanical in- 

 terest excited by the individual forms of flowers and leaves. 

 It has frequently happened that the artists appointed to ac- 

 company expeditions fitted out at the national expense have 

 been chosen without due consideration, and almost by acci- 

 dent, and have been thus found less prepared than such ap- 

 pointments required; and the end of the voyage may thus 

 have drawn near before even the most talented among them, 

 by a prolonged sojourn among grand scenes of nature, and by 

 frequent attempts to imitate what they saw, had more than 



partmeut of miniatures, drawings, and engravings), a treasure of art 

 which, owing to its peculiarity and picturesque variety, is incomparably 

 superior to any other collection. The title of the papers edited by Von 

 Kittlitz is Vegetations- Ansickten der Kustenldnder und Inseln des sti2len 

 Oceans, aufgenomvien 1827-1829, auf der Entdecktings-reise der kais. 

 Russ. Corvette Senjdwin (Siegen, 1844). There is also great fidelity to 

 nature in the drawings of Carl Bodmer, which are engraved in a mas- 

 terly manner, and which greatly embellish the large work of the trav- 

 els of Prince Maximilian of Witd in the interior of North Americn. 



