CULTIVATION OF EXOTIC PLANTS. 459 



It undoubtedly enters within the compass of landscape 

 painting to afford a richer and more complete picture of 

 nature than the most skilfully arranged grouping of cultivated 

 plants is able to present, since this branch of art exercises an 

 almost magical command over masses and forms. Almost 

 unlimited in space, it traces the skirts of the forest till they 

 are wholly lost in the aerial distance, dashes the mountain 

 torrent from cliff to cliff, and spreads the deep azure of the 

 tropical sky alike over the summits of the lofty palms and 

 over the waving grass of the plain that bounds the horizon. 

 The luminous and coloured effects imparted to all terrestrial 

 objects by the light of the thinly veiled or pure tropical sky 

 gives a peculiar and mysterious power to landscape painting, 

 when the artist succeeds in reproducing this mild effect of 

 light. The sky in the landscape, has, from a profound 

 appreciation for the nature of Greek tragedy, been ingeni- 

 ously compared to the charm of the chorus in its general and 

 mediative effect.* 



The multiplication of means at the command of paint- 

 ing for exciting the fancy T and concentrating the grandest 

 phenomena of sea and land on a small space, is denied to our 

 plantations and gardens, but this deficiency in the total effect 

 is compensated for by the sway which reality everywhere 

 exercises over the senses. When in the Messrs. Loddiges' 

 palmhouse, or in the Pfauen-Insel, near Potsdam, (a monu- 

 ment of the simple love of nature of my noble and departed 

 sovereign,) we look down from the high gallery in the 

 bright noonday sun on the luxuriant reed and tree -like palms 

 below, we feel, for a moment, in a state of complete delusion 

 as to the locality to which we are transported, and we may 

 even believe ourselves to be actually in a tropical climate, 

 looking from the summit of a hill on a small grove of palms. 

 It is true that the aspect of the deep azure of the sky, and the 

 impression produced by a greater intensity of light, are want- 

 ing, but, notwithstanding, the illusion is more perfect, and 

 exercises a stronger effect on the imagination than is excited 

 by the most perfect painting. Fancy associates with every 

 plant the wonders of some distant region, as we listen to the 

 rustling of the fan-like leaves, and see the changing and flit- 



* Wilhelm von Humboldt, in his Briefwechsel mit Schiller, 1830, 

 8. 470. 



