LANDSCAPE PAINTING. ) 



sketches will enable the artist to dispense with all the decep- 

 tive aid of hothouse forms, and so-called botanical delineations. 



A great event in the history of the world, such as the 

 emancipation of Spanish and Portuguese America from the 

 dominion of European rule, or the increase of cultivation in 

 India, New Holland, the Sandwich Islands, and the southern 

 colonies of Africa, will incontestably impart to meteorology 

 and the descriptive natural sciences, as well as to landscape 

 painting a new impetus and a high tone of feeling, which 

 probably could not have been attained independently of these 

 local relations. In South America populous cities lie at an 

 elevation of nearly 14,000 feet above the level of the sea. 

 From these heights the eye ranges over all the climatic grada- 

 tions of vegetable forms. What may we not, therefore, 

 expect from a picturesque study of nature, if, after the 

 settlement of social discord, and the establishment of free 

 institutions, a feeling of art shall at length be awakened in 

 those elevated regions? 



All that is expressed by the passions, and all that relates to 

 the beauty of the human form, has attained its highest perfec- 

 tion in the temperate northern zone under the skies of Greece 

 and Italy. The artist, drawing from the depths of nature, no 

 less than from the contemplation of beings of his own species, 

 derives the types of historical painting alike from free crea- 

 tion and from truthful imitation. Landscape painting, though 

 not simply an imitative art, has a more material origin, and a 

 more earthly limitation. It requires for its development a 

 large number of various and direct impressions which, when 

 received from external contemplation, must be fertilized by 

 the powers of the mind, in order to be given back to the 

 senses of others as a free work of art. The grander style of 

 heroic landscape painting is the combined result of a pro- 

 found appreciation of nature, and of this inward process of 

 the mind. 



Everywhere, in every separate portion of the earth, nature 

 is indeed only a reflex of the whole. The forms of organ- 

 isms recur again and again in different combinations. Even 

 the icy north is cheered for months together by the presence 

 of herbs and large Alpine blossoms covering the earth, and 

 by the aspect of a mild azure sky. Hitherto landscape paint- 

 ing amongst us has pursued her graceful labours, familial 



