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INCITEMENTS TO THE STUDY OF NATURE. 



IT. Landscape painting Graphical representation of the physiog- 

 nomy of plants Characteristic form and aspect of vegetation 

 in different zones. 



As fresh and vivid descriptions of natural scenes and objects 

 are suited to enhance a love for the study of nature, so also 

 is landscape painting. Both shew to us the external world 

 in all its rich variety of forms, and both are capable, in 

 various degrees, according as they are more or less happily 

 conceived, of linking together the outward and the inward 

 world. It is the tendency to form such links which marks 

 the last and highest aim of representative art; but the 

 scientific object to which these pages are devoted, restricts 

 them to a different point of view ; and landscape painting can 

 be here considered only as it brings before us the charac- 

 teristic physiognomy of different positions of the earth's 

 surface, as it increases the longing desire for distant voyages, 

 and as, in a manner equally instructive and agreeable, it 

 incites to fuller intercourse with nature in her freedom. 



In classical antiquity, from the peculiar direction of the 

 Greek and Roman mind, landscape painting, like the poetic 

 description of scenery, could scarcely become an indepen- 

 dent object of art: both were used only as accessories. 

 Employed in complete subordination to other objects, 



