62 With Feet to the Earth 



otherwise, affect his acting, too. It is 

 easy to understand that such a man would 

 enjoy a tempered cheerfulness, even though 

 he confesses to a vein of melancholy, such 

 as you always find conjoined to humor. 

 Nature he loves, but solitude or gloom 

 frightens him. Poe and Chopin he abjures, 

 but Corot and Mendelssohn he admires. 

 Music moves him deeply, and he acts bet- 

 ter if his orchestra is in good form. He 

 thought of having his daughter play for 

 him while he painted, to stimulate his im- 

 agination, for all of his pictures are com- 

 posed ; none copied. Color, even on a 

 palette, delights him, especially golden 

 browns and purples. He criticised the 

 precisians in painting, the Ge"r6mes and 

 Bouguereaus, and said that for him land- 

 scape was the highest form of art, "the 

 fruits of our best thoughts. It is the last 

 to come, and as men do not go backward, 

 this proves it the best Until the time of 

 Turner and Constable men saw only each 

 other, but now they are beginning to un- 

 derstand that woods, fields, skies, and 

 rivers typify or express our purest senti- 



