varied and beautiful productions of creative art. The fame 

 of these master works can never be impaired by those which 

 I venture to hope for hereafter, and to which I could not 

 but point, in order to recal the ancient and deeply-seated 

 bond which unites natural knowledge with poetry and 

 with artistic feeling, for we must ever distinguish, in 

 landscape painting as in every other branch of art, be- 

 tween productions derived from direct observation, and 

 those which spring from the depths of inward feeling 

 and from the power of the idealising mind. The great 

 and beautiful works which owe their origin to this crea- 

 tive power of the mind applied to landscape-painting, 

 belong to the poetry of nature, and like man himself and 

 the imagination with which he is gifted, are not rivetted to 

 the soil or confined to any single region. I allude here 

 more particularly to the gradation in the forms of trees from 

 Ruysdael and Everdingen, through Claude Lorraine to Poussin 

 and Annibal Caracci. In the great masters of the art we 

 perceive no trace of local limitation ; but an enlargement of 

 the visible horizon, and an increased acquaintance with the 

 nobler and grander forms of nature, and with the Luxuriant 

 fulness of life in the tropical world, offer the advantage not 

 only of enriching the material substratum of landscape paint- 

 ing, but also of affording a more lively stimulus to less gifted 

 artists, and of thus heightening their power of production. 



I would here be permitted to recal some considerations 

 which I communicated to the public nearly half a century 

 ago, and which have an intimate connection with the subject 

 which is at present under notice ; they were contained in a 

 memoir which has been but little read, entitled " Ideen zu 



