90 LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 



clouds, the haze resting on the distance, the succulency of 

 the herbage, the brightness of the foliage, the outline of the 

 mountains, are elements which determine the general im- 

 pression. It is the province of landscape painting to ap- 

 prehend these, and to reproduce them visibly. The artist is 

 permitted to analyse the groups, and the enchantment of 

 nature is resolved under his hands, like the written works 

 of men (if I may venture on the figurative expression), into 

 a few simple characters. 



Even in the present imperfect state of our pictorial f epre- 

 sentations of landscape, the engravings which accompany, 

 and too often only disfigure, our books of travels, have yet 

 contributed not a little to our knowledge of the aspect of 

 distant zones, to the predilection for extensive voyages, and 

 to the more active study of nature. The improvement in 

 landscape painting on a scale of large dimensions (as in 

 decorative or scene painting, in panoramas, dioramas, and 

 neoramas), has of late years increased both the generality 

 and the strength of these impressions. The class of repre- 

 sentations which Vitruvius and the Egyptian Julius 'Pollux 

 satirically described as "rural satyric decorations/' which, 

 in the middle of the sixteenth century, were, by Serlio's 

 plan of sliding scenes, made to increase theatrical illusion, 

 may now, in Barker's panoramas, by the aid of Prevost 

 and Daguerre, be converted into a kind of substitute for 

 wanderings in various climates. More may be effected 

 in this way than by any kind of scene painting ; and this 

 partly because in a panorama, the spectator, enclosed as in a 

 magic circle and withdrawn from all disturbing realities, 

 may the more readily imagme himself surrounded on all sides 

 by nature in another clime. Impressions are thus produced 



