THE ARCHITECTURE OF TREES 169 



drawing of stems and branches Ruskin has 

 just been quoted. Hamerton points out that 

 Harding drew trees ** according to his own 

 appreciation of their characteristics," and that 

 ** his desire to unite foliage into masses led 

 him, in many cases, to create a mass when 

 the natural beauty of the tree depended upon 

 a delicate termity, and it was a consequence 

 of the same tendency that made him clip away 

 the light sprays from the summits and sides 

 of his trees as a gardener clips a hedge ". 

 None the less Hamerton can say : " But in 

 spite of these drawbacks Harding's analysis 

 of trees was so masterly that the thorough 

 study of it must always be a valuable early 

 discipline for landscape painters. It has the 

 immense advantage of clearing away before 

 the learner the terrible intricacy and confusion 

 of the natural forest, and of presenting, as it 

 were, an easier nature already simplified and 

 analysed." 



Ruskin notes the same defect as Hamerton 

 in Harding's tree-drawing, in the particular 

 instance of the aspen, of a chalk drawing of 

 which tree, reproduced in the fourth volume of 

 Modern Painters, he says that it is '* quite 



