86 LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 



artis'ic feeling shall at length awaken in those elevated 

 highlands ! 



All that belongs to the expression of human emotion and 

 to the beauty of the human form, has attained perhaps its 

 highest perfection in the northern temperate zone, under the 

 skies of Greece and Italy. By the combined exercise of 

 imitative art and of creative imagination, the artist has de- 

 rived the types of historical painting, at once from the depths 

 of his own mind, and from the contemplation of other beings 

 of his own race. Landscape painting, though no merely 

 imitative art, has, it may be said, a more material sub- 

 stratum and a more terrestrial domain : it requires a greater 

 mass and variety of direct impressions, which the mind 

 must receive within itself, fertilize by its own powers, 

 and reproduce visibly as a free work of art. Heroic land- 

 scape painting must be a result at once of a deep and 

 comprehensive reception of the visible spectacle of external 

 n^ure, and of this inward process of the mind. 



Nature, in every region of the earth, is indeed a reflex of 

 the whole ; the forms of organised being are repeated every- 

 where in fresh combinations ; even in the icy north, herbs 

 covering the earth, large alpine blossoms, and a serene 

 azure sky, cheer a portion of the year. Hitherto, land- 

 scape painting has pursued amongst us her pleasing 

 task, familiar only with the simpler forms of our native 

 floras, but not therefore without depth of feeling or with- 

 out the treasures of creative imagination. Even in this 

 narrower field, highly-gifted painters, the Caracci, Caspar 

 Poussin, Claude Lorraine, and Jluysdael, have, with magic 

 power, by the selection of forms of trees and by effects of 

 light, found scope wherein to call forth some of the most 



