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Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture, are 

 varying phases of one sense of the beautiful. Criticism 

 is interchangeable in these arts. Feeling, execution, we 

 speak of in either. Feeling is genius ; execution, talent. 

 The comprehension of feeling is a great way in art. 



American art is scenic, external, no quick sympathy 

 with nature in her every-day mood. It must fly to moun- 

 tains, Niagaras, icebergs, as if the miracle of -nature were 

 not lying around us every day, to hold us with wonder or 

 thrill us with enthusiasm ; the ineffable significance in 

 common things, complexity in simplicity, simplicity in 

 complexity ; the infinite as conspicuous in a weed as in a 

 world. Zoologists might as well only study elephants, 

 botanists trees, or geologists mountains. Church, Bier- 

 stadt, do the whole of nature at a blow. Snow moun- 

 tains, middle distance, foreground, waterfalls, Indians, 

 encampments, enough for a dozen pictures in one. They 

 seem to say, "walk up, gentlemen, so much for your 

 money." One cannot take in so much at a time. You 

 might as well put tragedy, comedy, elegy, pastoral in one 

 poem. Turner is open to the same criticism ; but he had 

 an epic genius, sympathy, imaginative power, great ar- 

 tistic sensibility and expression. He is florid in taste, not 

 simple Byronic, the same unquiet impulses and arti- 

 ficial associations in subject, tourmentee surfeited with, 

 embarras de richesse. 



The French school is simple, does not attempt rashly 

 the sublime, nor do too much in one composition. They 

 paint the nearness and intimacy of nature, her every-day. 

 Nothing sensational, belittling, conventional or hackneyed 

 comes into their work. Nature is endless, and they know 

 it and cling to it. We, when we are not grandiose, are 

 pretty, never subtle. They are sincere, meet nature face 

 to face, need nothing local, romantic, trite or obvious to 



